The turgidly-named book On the Ideological Front: The Russian Intelligentsia and the Making of the Soviet Public Sphere, adapted from the dissertation by Stuart Finkel, is a ground-breaking, fascinating study of what the Soviet Union did to its thinkers — professors, doctors, engineers, artists — in the years after the October Revolution.

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Posted at 01 March 13 at 19.03 in Books

Skyscrapers are said to be the cathedrals of the twentieth century. If that is the case, then perhaps parking garages are the village churches of our time. We must start by taking time to consider the mundane. The Architecture of Parking by Simon Henley is the kind of text that jumps out from the shelf to very few people, but of course, I am one of them.

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Posted at 28 February 13 at 16.02 in Culture, Books

There’s no question why people actually read Woodword’s books: they’re compelling as hell. When everyone talks so that Woodward can write the definitive story of a topic, the national consciousness is indelibly shaped by it. It’s an incredible amount of power. Which begs the question of why the hell people still talk to Bob Woodward.

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Posted at 27 February 13 at 13.02 in Politics, Books