Straw Dogs
‘Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals’ by John Gray; Granta, 2002. 246pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 1 December 2003 For anyone who believes that humans have the potential to make the world a better place, John Gray’s book Straw Dogs is a depressing read. Humans, he says, are a plague on the planet, are comparable with slime mould, and can expect their numbers to be culled within the next hundred years. It is...
Interview with Peter Schwartz
‘Inevitable Surprises: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century’ Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2003. 320pp Peter Schwartz interview by Austin Williams | 20 November 2003 I first heard Peter Schwartz speak when he attended the press launch of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report’ at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. He joined an impressive panel of speakers who had been assembled to describe,...
Rebranding Parochialism
Austin Williams | 21 November 2003 There’s a point in most cowboy movies from the Fifties, when the out-of-town sheriff steps in to stop an angry mob from taking the law into their own hands. Even though these films are in black and white – in more than one sense – the townspeoples’ spontaneous anger is usually mollified by the elected sheriff’s insistence on due process. Admittedly, these events are...
The Making of Paris
Austin Williams | 13 November 2003 This year sees the 150th anniversary of Haussmann’s appointment as Prefect of the Seine, engaged to draw up the plans for Paris, one of the greatest, most audacious proposals in town planning ever seen. One-and-a-half centuries later, and in New Localism or New Centralism? Planning and the Regions, Sir Jeremy Beecham, chairman of the UK’s Local Government Association, argues that ‘counties are under...
The vision thing
Austin Williams | 13 November 2003 Here we explore the methods, the madness, the legacy and the redefinition of Baron Haussmann’s influential work in Paris and ask whether it could happen today. This year sees the 150th anniversary of Haussmann’s appointment as Prefect of the Seine, engaged to draw up the plans for Paris, one of the greatest, most audacious proposals in town planning ever seen. One and a half centuries...
Futuro: Tomorrow’s House from Yesterday
‘Futuro: Tomorrow’s House from Yesterday’ by Marko Home and Mika Taanila (Eds); Desura (Finland), 2003. 192pp Review by Maari Vertainen | 4 November 2003 The book of the film of the concept of the building. When, in 1965, Dr Jaakko Hiidenkari asked Matti Suuronen to design a ski cabin that would be ‘quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain’ the result was a simple, space-age structure that...
Tomorrow's People
‘Tomorrow’s People: How 21st Century Technology Is Changing The Way We Think And Feel’ by Susan Greenfield; Allen Lane, 2003. 304pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | October 2003 In Tomorrow’s People, Greenfield, renowned neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, indulges her literary ambitions to create a speculative dystopia owing much to Huxley. In this updated Brave New World, she imagines a near-future...
The Art of Travel
‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain De Botton; Penguin, 2003. 272pp Reviewed by Elisabetta Gasparoni-Abraham | 25 October 2003 This fascinating book, written by Alain De Botton, examines the diverse motives that moved great men of the past – like Charles Baudelaire and Edward Hopper, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humbolt and William Wordsworth – to venture to new shores. He does this by juxtaposing their great...
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
‘Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything’ by James Gleick; Abacus, 1999. 326pp Reviewed by Peter Smith | 25 July 2003 Faster is a quick paced, entertaining description of the spread of technology and its impact on our lives. Unlike other superficial accounts Gleick locates recent developments in consumer goods and information technology within a broader context of development, citing railroads and the telephone...
Rocket Dreams
‘Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond’ by Marina Benjamin; Simon & Schuster, 2003. 242pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 27 June 2003 What became of our dreams of the aspirations that fuelled the ‘space age’ of the 50’s and 60’s? In this fascinating study Marina Benjamin takes on this problem in a fresh and innovative way. Rather than recount the familiar story of cut funds and scrapped...
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