Books I read in December 2023

I often look for books that get rare positive reviews in Private Eye magazine and A wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Uolis is a really opening look at where our waste is. Franklin-Uilis explores many uncomfortable truths about the recycling and washing of green during his travels around the world, starting from a recycling center in Essex and followed by a mega-zi site in India, a textile market in Ghana, a processing plant in California, where recycling and recycling. The inheritance of wealthy countries exporting their waste in the more overwhelming countries, as well as overproduction and corporate greed, have created shocking problems with waste disposal. The most disgusting is how so many alleged solutions ultimately fail to make any real difference or cause more problems down the line. With textiles, for example, cotton total bags should be used 7000 times to match the environmental cost of a disposable plastic bag, clothing made of recycled fibers are much more difficult to recycle and 25% of the clothing is never sold because it is discarded by companies and not reused. If the first two -thirds of the book did not make you feel sufficiently depressed, wait for you to read about environmental impact of 97% of the global waste generated by the industry, including mining and nuclear waste 3% dwarfs generated by households. Franklin-Wilis offers some reports of hope about how to reduce consumption, although I still finished the book, feeling very buried by the scale of the problem. Main read and record in the last minute for one of my books of the year.

Helen Pearson’s Life Project It is for scientists and researchers who create studies tracing cohorts of children born in the UK after World War II. The first study followed thousands of babies born in March 1946 and was followed by similar cohorts in 1958, 1970 and 2000. These studies provide invaluable data on the health, education and development of children and emphasized how poverty and social inequality were more likely to lead to more life results. This may sound very obvious today, but it is the data from these cohorts that confirmed, such as the impact of smoking during pregnancy. Cohorts have influenced government policy such as the creation of secure initial centers, but also proved politically inconvenient to other politicians. The study requires huge sums of money and resources, and Pearson outlines the numerous obstacles that social scientists have faced, who have made enormous efforts to get the cohorts out of the ground and the “Life Project” is a very interesting study on how these insufficiently evaluated research projects have formed Britain.

After the longer than the expected difference of eight years, I reached The big scammer from Pierre Lemitre Before turning to the second and third books in the Paris of the French author between the trilogy of the wars that are All human wisdom and Mirror of our sorrows Accordingly, translated by Frank Win. It was useful to revise the first book that details Albert Mailard and Edward Pericurt’s plan to sell war monuments, they did not intend to build the Henry Anai-Pradel scheme to restore French soldiers to cheaper unattached caskets. Henri marries Edward’s sister, Madeleine, who is the main protagonist of the second book, which is the victim of the financial disaster in 1928 and seeks revenge on those who have caused her misery. The Mirror of Our Smokes again introduces Louise, who briefly met Edouard as a child in the Big Rotation. Until 1940, she was a waitress and sought her half -brother, just as the threat of German occupation exceeded France. Lemaitre gives the same weight to historical details, bright characteristics and twisting graphics in this sequence of novels. Each volume has a memorable opening piece, and Lemaitre is especially good at depicting villains. Since the links between the main characters are quite loose, the three books could easily be read as independent novels, but as a trilogy they form a compelling portrait of France at a critical moment in history.