Books and Non-fiction

James Lovelock - The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

12 Aug 2009

He has been likened to ‘an Old Testament prophet’ by John Carey, identified as the creator of an ‘evil religion’ by biologist John Maynard Smith, and labelled a writer of ‘pop-ecology literature’ by Richard Dawkins. James Lovelock, veteran scientist and…

Ariel Leve - The Cassandra Chronicles

23 Jul 2009

‘There are two things in life I enjoy. Talking on the phone and drinking coffee. Better yet, talking on the phone while drinking coffee. That’s about it.’ Welcome to the wonderfully dark and witty world of Ariel Leve. This collection of her much-loved…

Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins

9 Jul 2009

‘I witter on like a budgie, as my mum would say.’ Lanarkshire-born writer Grace Maxwell is chuckling as she talks about Falling and Laughing, her story of partner Edwyn Collins’ miraculous rehabilitation from two devastating brain haemorrhages in 2005.

Film Book round up

25 Jun 2009

Former stand-up comedian Robert Sellers hops across the pond to detail wild and fast times of Hollywood’s original bad boys with Bad Boy Drive (Preface) ●●●. Following on from his previous opus Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard…

David Aaronovitch: Voodoo Histories

14 May 2009

Pearl Harbour was engineered by FDR so America could enter World War II. Princess Di was bumped off by MI6. And 9/11 was the master plot of a wicked American administration. All because TV documentaries, the internet or some bloke down the pub told us…

Also Published: 5 Paperback Biographys

14 May 2009

John Peel The Olivetti Chronicles Chosen by Peely’s wife and kids, this mix of early journalism, diaries, letters and odds ‘n’ sods pretty much amounts to a second memoir. Corgi. Richard Madeley Father and Sons Judy’s fella turned to a distinctly…

Storm Thorgerson

30 Apr 2009

Born in 1944, Storm Thorgerson’s childhood would not have been thought unusual were it not that he went to school with Roger Waters and Syd Barrett. ‘Roger and I had two connections, one of which was through our mothers, who happened to be pals, and…

Also Released - 5 History Books

16 Apr 2009

Robert Wallace & H Keith Melton with Henry Robert Schlesinger Spycraft One of these guys is a former director of the CIA, so this look at the organisation’s top gadgets should be on the money. Bantam. Max Arthur The Real Band of Brothers Subtitled…

Mark Radcliffe - Thank You for the Days

2 Apr 2009

Showbiz is, as many will attest, a fickle business. Radio DJ, TV presenter, musician and all-round music boffin Mark Radcliffe has managed to exist on its periphery, trousers and dignity both relatively intact, for over two and a half decades. That’s…

Also Published - 5 True Crime Paperbacks

2 Apr 2009

Peter Woolf - The Damage Done Woolf grew up as a kid in London’s criminal underworld and is now dedicated to helping others avoid the deadly pitfalls. Bantam. Mazher Mahmood - Confessions of a Fake Sheik This investigative journo has helped expose…

Leander Kahney - Inside Steve's Brain

19 Mar 2009

BUSINESS ANALYSIS Bill Gates may be king of the computer geeks, but Steve Jobs shall ever remain the electronic consumer’s guru. Jobs started Apple in the 80s from a garage full of spare parts and a desire to do something different. This book…

Film Books Roundup

19 Feb 2009

There’s something of a publishing boom in books about cinema at the moment. Whether anyone is actually going to buy these books is obviously a moot point, the current mantra of publishers and university presses is ‘publish and be damned, libraries will…

Hitlist - Books

19 Feb 2009

● Jason Donald Born in Dundee and raised in South Africa, Donald came back to Scotland to study creative writing at Glasgow. See the spectacular results at the launch of his debut novel, Choke Chain, a gripping tale of growing up in the threatening…

Food for Thought - Nell Nelson

19 Feb 2009

Eat Well With Nell has just been published, so I’ve got to look well at the moment! Food really plays a huge part in giving you loads of energy, clear wrinkle-free skin, strong nails and glossy hair and the recipes are all geared to making you look and…

A quiet life

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that we’ve all become a little wary of silence. The sizeable majority of British society who own mobile phones may agree. Plug in, jump online, talk in libraries, and you’re doing OK. Withdraw however, and you have issues. Accomplished…

Noam Chomsky - The Essential Chomsky

13 Nov 2008

(Bodley Head) For over 40 years, ‘the world’s greatest public intellectual’ has been not so much a thorn in the side of the West’s establishment structures as a battering ram to everything held dear by liberals and conservatives alike. Now fast…

Hitlist-Books

13 Nov 2008

● Alastair Campbell New Labour’s arch doctor of spin tackles matters concerning real health with his debut novel, All in the Mind, based on his own mental breakdown back in the 1980s. Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 19 Nov. ● Alexei Sayle In the not too…

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Also released - 5 Poetry Books

13 Nov 2008

● Vera Brittain Because You Died A collection of poems and prose from the author of Testament of Youth, all about the men she loved who perished in the First World War. Virago. ● Dennis O’Donnell Stepping Stones This one features interviews with…

Jim Holt - Stop Me If You've Heard This

30 Oct 2008

If there is one art form often deemed to be beyond analysis, it's comedy. You hear, see or read something funny and then you laugh. End of. Right? Anyone who seeks to go beneath the skin of stand-up and explain the mechanics only succeeds in killing the…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

4 Sep 2008

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Janice Galloway interview: full transcript

4 Sep 2008

Transcript of an interview that took place in the residence drawing room of the Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh on Friday the 22nd of August. Janice Galloway is interviewed about the first volume of her memoirs, This Is Not About Me, which covers her life…

Sean Connery & Murray Grigor - Being a Scot

4 Sep 2008

Many Scots cynics, upon seeing the title of this new coffee table volume by our most famous actor, might be inspired to enquire just how much research on the subject can be done by an ex-pat who hasn't lived in the country for decades. It's an…

Barbara Ehrenreich - Going To Extremes: Notes From a Divided Nation

17 Jul 2008

POLITICAL NON-FICTION (Granta) Although any balanced reader might browse the political essays and features of left-wing American commentator Barbara Ehrenreich and get a vague sense of agitprop being deployed, perhaps that’s just the author’s bold…

Bob Levin - Most Outrageous

3 Jul 2008

NON-FICTION/BIOG (Fantagraphics) Looking for a suitable subject for the follow-up to his book The Pirates and the Mouse – a wickedly funny account of a gang of comic book creators who satirised themselves into court with the Disney Corporation, Bob…

Taylor Clark

28 Feb 2008

Full fat? Half fat? Skinny? A shot of eggnog syrup maybe? Since the coffee house revolution of the 1990s, your morning cup comes in an endless myriad of permutations. It wasn’t always like this of course, there was a time PS (Pre Starbucks) that coffee…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Virgins

Anke Bernau

20 Sep 2007

In these enlightened days, discussions about virginity are spread freely across many areas of life from the school playgrounds of the world to the policy departments of the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always this way. In this lively book from Anke…

Neil Boorman

6 Sep 2007

LIFESTYLE TALE Your response to this book by London lifestyle journalist and publisher Neil Boorman is likely to correspond directly with your attachment to the very thing it challenges: brands, and the emotionally loaded consumerist machinery that…

Sid Waddell

6 Sep 2007

SPORTS MEMOIR Certainly among the most quixotic sports memoirs to have been published in recent times, this trip down memory lane from the iconic Geordie darts commentator Sid Waddell is a blessing for fans of the man and the sport (although it’s…

Julian Baggini

16 Aug 2007

Julian Baggini is certainly not afraid to engage with popular culture. He recently wrote this on BBC online: ‘Matt Groening is the true heir of Plato, Aristotle and Kant’. Although this article landed Baggini a mention in Private Eye, he talks of the…

Lavinia Greenlaw

16 Aug 2007

Lavinia Greenlaw’s latest book, The Importance of Music to Girls, is a memoir recalling her girlhood rendered through music. Beginning with her first musical memory of waltzing on her father’s feet, it meanders through the musicals and recorder practice…

Matthew Collin

16 Aug 2007

At the turn of the 21st century, uprisings against undemocratic governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine benefited from a prominent youth resistance, with groups using humour and satire to undermine the authorities. ‘After Otpor in Serbia, similar…

Richard Dawkins

16 Aug 2007

These are combative times to be a God-denier. It’s not only loopy Christians who are trying to make us believe the world was made in a week, now certain Muslims are jumping on the creationist bandwagon. Turkey’s Adnan Oktar, writing as Harun Yahya, has…

Germaine Greer

16 Aug 2007

Writer, academic, critic and commentator Germaine Greer has been a particularly bristly thorn in establishment sides for the best part of 40 years. A native of Melbourne, she sprang fully-formed onto the global literary stage with The Female Eunuch, her…

Andrew Marr

16 Aug 2007

Andrew Marr has always used his vast intellect with such wit and verve that he has always come across as a political pundit real people could enjoy. It’s hard to imagine David Frost interviewing Gordon Brown on a Sunday morning, as Marr did last month…

Will Hutton

9 Aug 2007

It’s not many people that can make dense economic theory and political machinations accessible to the casual reader, but Will Hutton is one such man. Formerly the editor-in-chief of the Observer and What the Papers Say political journalist of the year…

Frank Muir

9 Aug 2007

If Festival visitors were asked where they expect Scottish crime novels to be set, a fair few would probably think of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh first, or Denise Mina’s Glasgow.

Kids Events

9 Aug 2007

When you say ‘comic’ to a kid they might think of the Beano or Roy of the Rovers (if you’re a kid over 35) but the event with Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy will open up the eyes of teenagers and any young at heart adults in tow. Graphic novels are something…

Anthony Holden

Old school poker shark

9 Aug 2007

As a biographer of the Royals, Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky, as well being the classical music critic of the Observer, Anthony Holden has always been a respected writer but it is the less respectable subject of poker that has given him his biggest sales.

Get Smashed

(Hodder & Stoughton)

9 Aug 2007

MEDIA HISTORY This is the story of the 1960s advertising revolution that led to the shedding of jingles and rigid formulae in favour of a certain whimsy, spurred on by the visions of a handful of people who made a tidy fortune. Sam Delaney chronicles…

Bad Men

Clive Stafford Smith

23 Apr 2007

POLITICAL ESSAY Clive Stafford Smith has been privy to some horrible maltreatments of human beings down the years. As a Cornishman with dual UK/US citizenship, he is seen as a saviour to the many Death Row prisoners he has tried to rescue from lethal…

Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion (Bantam)

28 Sep 2006

Like a latter day John Thomas Scopes (the Tennessee biology teacher who was the inspiration for the play and film Inherit the Wind) Richard Dawkins has long been vocal about his belief that all children should be taught the Darwinian Theory of Evolution…

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore (Bloomsbury)

4 Sep 2006

It would have been so easy for Al Gore to have become a horribly embittered individual after being cheated out of the US presidency in 2000. No one would have faulted him for spending the rest of his life sticking pins into effigies of Florida governor…

Al Gore

An Inconvenient Truth (Bloomsbury)

1 Sep 2006

SOCIAL ESSAY It would have been so easy for Al Gore to have become a horribly embittered individual after being cheated out of the US presidency in 2000. No one would have faulted him for spending the rest of his life sticking pins into effigies of…