First published 2024. Profile Books paperback, 2024, pp 368, c.90,000 words. This is a very accessible analysis of how likely the world is to get to net zero (increase in CO2 in the atmosphere from human related sources) by 2050. On the whole it presents an optimistic picture, making a convincing case that plausible routes […]
Possible — Chris Goodall Read More »
First published 1990. Alison and Busby paperback, 1992, pp 192, c.62,000 words. A British family buys a rundown property in rural France as a holiday home. It has been done before: Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence springs to mind which was published just a year before this. Indeed this does have quite a lot
House in the Sunflowers, A — Ruth Silvestre Read More »
First published 2004. Arrow paperback, 2006, pp 254, c.62,000 words. The great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor stands hovering in the background of this journey round the Mediterranean. Like in Fermor’s most read works, it is based on the travels of a very young man, written from the perspective of his much older self. It
Mediterranean Winter — Robert D. Kaplan Read More »
First published 1998. Granta paperback, 1999, pp 503, c.150,000 words (main text). Right towards the end, Fleming compares the UK’s exploration of the gaps in the map of the globe during the early nineteenth century, the topic of this book, to the USA’s space programme in the late twentieth century. In both cases, huge expenditures
Barrow’s Boys — Fergus Fleming Read More »
First published 2000. Copernicus hardback, 2000, pp 361 (pp 287 main text), c.90,000 words (main text). I was planning to write a book about why humans have not yet encountered any evidence for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. My thesis was to be that the conditions that led to life here on Earth are
Rare Earth — Peter D Ward and Donald Brownlee Read More »