Category: Review (Page 120 of 132)

The Spy with 29 Names: The story of the Second World War’s most audacious double agent by Jason Webster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Garbo, Alaric, Rags, Mrs Gerbers and Stanley have two things in common; they were all false, and they were all one man. However, he did have a real name, and a wife and children, and it is claimed that he is the one of the greatest double agents that we know of; but just who was Juan Pujol?

Pujol was a Spanish man, who disliked totalitarianism. He was involved in the Spanish civil war, avoiding serious action, but somehow managing to switch sides. With the rise of Germany in Europe, he slowly worked his way into the trust of the Nazi’s as a spy providing intelligence and information. His intelligent reports were eagerly received by them, and as the transcripts were read at Bletchley Park, they were equally worried by them. Pujol really wanted to work for MI5, and so he engineered a way of getting to the UK. Not long after he arrived, he was using all his powers of persuasion to convince them to take him on.

So began one on the most audacious double crosses yet known. Pujol’s fertile imagination led to the creation a fictional network of agents. These characters supposedly had some grudge against the state, and he placed them at specific ports and area of interest to the Germans. The Abwehr thought that they had a whole network of 29 spies in Britain; the reality was very different. With the assistance of the Double Cross team in MI5 he spoon fed a carefully concocted blend of truth and lies that misled the entire German high command, including Hitler himself.

This is another of those non-fiction books that read like a spy thriller. Truth and lies were blended in such a way that agents lives and movements were fabricated with all manner of details, and the Nazi’s swallowed the whole thing. The whole deception plan had genuine success too, even though it was touch and go at times; Operation Fortitude managed to keep the German Panzer Divisions near Calais where the next invasion was expected and away from Normandy after the D Day invasion, this allowed troops to establish themselves with much less resistance. This is still a fascinating story about an imaginative and audacious spy first revealed in Macintyre’s book, Double Cross. Macintyre has the edge on Webster as a writer, but this is still worth reading.

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The Book of Tides by William Thomson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Twice every day without fail the UK expands in area, and twice every day it shrinks. This phenomenon is caused by nothing more than the tide going in and out, driven primarily by our celestial neighbour, the Moon. Seeing the power of the sea inspired Thomson to develop his own business and to travel around the British coast living with his young family in their camper van and studying the tides whilst indulging in a spot of surfing whenever he could.

The book is divided into eight chapters on all aspects of the tides around the UK. Each chapter uses bold, clear and beautiful infographics as he explains all about rip tides, rapids, whirlpools and waves. There are further chapters on the concept of stream, something that I had never heard of before, and just what a tidal bore is and the best rivers to see them on. The tsunami merits a whole chapter; thankfully they are rare, in this country at least.

I have always been fascinated by the sea and the effects that the tide has on the coastal environment. My closest patch, Poole Harbour, merits a special mention because of its double high tide twice a day. Strangely, Jersey, which has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world doesn’t get any mention at all. Even though the books is crammed full of facts and fascinating details, it is still very readable and more importantly it is a beautiful book to hold and refer back to.

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The Pie At Night: Nights Out in the North by Stuart Maconie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When you think of the North of England an industrial landscape would come to mind, with the factories, mills and heavy industry. It is a hardworking place; but it knows how to have a good time and play hard too. Maconie decides that he needs to dust off his suit, polish his shoes and go out on the town in search of a good time.

Using the best intelligence that he can get, Maconie travels round the north, revisiting the classic haunts of leisure from Blackpool to the dogs, football and rugby of course. Any day off is enhanced by going out for a curry before walking it all off with a stroll across the moors. He hears a brass band, before trying something out of the ordinary and after all that needs a restorative pint.

This is another good book and kind of a companion book to The Pie at Night by Maconie as he travels back and forwards across the North finding out what they do in their leisure time. It is not particularly challenging to read, mostly as he writes in such an easy going and chatty way. That does not mean that he is not perceptive and it is laugh out loud in places too, as he has a knack of getting to the spirit of the event he is partaking in whilst not taking it too seriously. Another one of his that was worth reading.

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At the Edge: Riding for My Life by Danny MacAskill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The UK has got a lot of talented cyclists now, there are some that can beat allcomers in a sprint for the line, we have a highly talented team that can ride the velodrome and beat the world, a small number of top class riders who feature highly in the Grand Tours and some who can throw themselves down mountains in some sort of controlled terror.

Then there is Danny MacAskill.

If there was one guy who could be said to defy gravity, it would be him. He rides a trials bike, a sort of squashed mountain bike, that he can control in an unbelievable way. He has the ability to leap several feet in the air with it, using that height he jumps to climb vertical surfaces and clear gaps with a breath-taking ability. Couple this with a fertile imagination and a healthy disregard for safety he has created astonishing videos like Imaginate, Wee Day Out and Cascadia and become a You Tube sensation. They are the sort of video that you need to see twice, as you can’t quite believe that someone can do that on a bike.

In this book, MacAskill takes us back to his childhood, through his rebellious phase and brushes with the law on the island of Skye. He tells us of his initial venture into riding street trials and how he learnt his craft. His first video, Inspired Bicycles, was filmed by a friend and uploaded onto You Tube one weekend. He thought nothing of it until he received a call the next day from the BBC wanting to interview him. Overnight he had had 100,00 views of the video and from that moment on, everything went mad. Sponsorship deals followed and the quality of his videos increased dramatically.

It is an enjoyable book to read learning about his early escapades and how he has pushed what he can do on a bike to the very limit. If you’re expecting a lyrical narrative though, you might be disappointed, but MacAskill tells it how it is and it is quite refreshing for that. One for the fan, but even if you do’t want to read it you must see some of his videos. 3.5 stars

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Can You Solve My Problems?: Ingenious, Perplexing, and Totally Satisfying Math and Logic Puzzles by Alex Bellos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Puzzles of all sort have fascinated people for ages, they have varied from riddles, counting challenges, crosswords, logic puzzles and mathematical conundrums. Spending 20 minutes or so on a puzzle is not wasted time; it has been shown that they can in some instances improve cognitive ability. It is not fully conclusive, but the main draw for doing all sorts of puzzle is that they are fun. Some of our greatest minds including codebreakers and Nobel Prize winners have used puzzles to keep their minds sharp and as a distraction from normal life.

The popular maths guru, Alex Bellos has bought together all sort of different puzzles into one book. These 125 different puzzles have been grouped together into broad categories, like logic, geometry and of course the mathematical ones. Each puzzle has an introduction and a little history about it which makes for fascinating reading. Some of the puzzles that Bellos has found for us to stretch our grey matter are deceptively simple and there are some in here that are are fiendishly difficult!

Some of these puzzles date back millennia; Bellos has bought them right up to date with this collection. Most fascinating is the history and evolution of these puzzles. As brilliant minds solved one they then dreamt up even more complex ways to torment us. There is something for everyone in here, not just for fans of Sudoku, and the different levels of puzzles mean that you have some that intrigue, other that need a little more effort and some that may make your head hurt. It is an excellent book for encouraging mathematical exploration without out frightening some people.

Thank goodness though, the answers are in the back…

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May We Borrow Your Language? by Philip Gooden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One billion other people around the world speak my language; except it isn’t really my language as English is famous for purloining and absorbing other peoples words and making them its own. This melding of languages has been happening for thousands of years. People have arrived in our island, stayed for a while, and left only smudges in the soil and a handful of words in the vocabulary. Careful searching in our language can uncover Celtic and Roman and Saxon words deep in our language. More than that, we have shamelessly stolen words and phrases as we have travelled the seas and oceans for places as far away as Hawaii and Australia, and claimed them as our own.

In this lovely book Gooden brings us a mere dusting of some of those words that are familiar and unusual, ancient and strange, but all looted from other languages. Each carefully selected word has details on its origin as well as a date when we misappropriated it into English, along with anecdotes and the story behind the word. There are nuggets of information in here on all his chosen words and each is written with wit and aplomb as he reveals the history and details on words as diverse as cwen, lust, delphinan and bathos. It is more than that though as these words mark the expansion of our language as we absorbed words into it, sometime taking the meanings, sometimes not. The ages of some of the words is fascinating too, I would have put juggernaut as a modern word; turns out it isn’t. It is a worthy addition for anyone with an etymological collection of books, and if you like Mark Forsyth this is right up your street.

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Thanks to Nudge

The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold: Adventures Along the Iron Curtain Trail by Tim Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Growing up as a teenager in the 1980’s the cold war and the Soviet threat was very real indeed. The whole system imploded at the end of that decade and the Iron Curtain that separated Western Europe from Communist bloc for decades was drawn aside. This physical and ideological border stretched from the Black Sea all the way up to the Barents Sea on the Finnish border with the USSR. This continental wide border is now the route for Eurovelo 13 (EV13) a 10,400km trail that passes through 20 different countries, countless monuments and a huge variety of landscapes of the countries that once were opposed.

It was this route that Tim Moore sets out to cycle. Not on a fancy bike though, oh no, the one he has chosen is a two geared, tiny two wheeled shopping bike. His velocipede of choice is a MIFA 900, a bike made in the GDR with broadly similar attributes to that of the Trabant. For some mad reason he was starting on the Russian Norwegian border in the midst of an Arctic winter.

Ambitious? Definitely, but what could possibly go wrong…

The route he takes is littered by the long forgotten and sinister paraphernalia of a once impenetrable border; razor wire, rusting towers and abandoned checkpoints. Cycling on the snow on a properly prepared bike is hard enough, but riding on this remnant of the GDR it is really tough going. He is kept in high spirits by the kindness of strangers, sleeps in hotels and hostels and occasionally peoples spare rooms. His tenacity to keep pedalling is matched only by his addiction to the Magic Man energy drink with its warming addition. He meets all sorts of characters on his journey, all affected by the change as the region changed from Communist control to modern Europe and free borders.

I have read all of Moore’s other books, so I was really looking forward to this. He manages to dream up some quirky and unusual travels, walking across Spain with a donkey, locating those that have had the ignominy of getting ‘nul points’ in the Eurovision and rediscovering his inner Roman in the re-enactment world. He is ever so slight nutty, and this makes for very funny moments in his travels. His self-depreciating attitude means that he rubs along with most people he meets, and give us a series of amusing anecdotes too. It was well worth reading as have been all his others. It didn’t quite reach French Revolutions though which is still one of the funniest book I have ever read.

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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Copses and wood seem static places, only changing as the seasons ebb and flow. The forests of Europe and the UK have inspired writers, built towns and fleets and provide food warmth and shelter for millennia. But all is not as it seems in this wooded world, as Wohlleben details in his book with the latest research and understanding of just how a tree is created, grows and dies. The science behind these ground-breaking new discoveries is revealing a secret world of communication, nurture and microclimates. The environment that they create from the roots to the tips of the crown is carefully controlled, they shelter young trees from fierce summer sun, pass nutrients through the fungal webs in the ground and protect each other from the battering in winter storms. There is details on how they manage to pump gallons of water high into the air; something that is not fully understood yet and how they react to when you hack a branch off. No wonder they can live five times longer than us.

He is deeply passionate about woods and forests, something that is evident from the very first chapter. The science that he reveals is almost unbelievable really, but it is backed up with solid evidence and examples; but there is still so much that we do not know or understand. As he has come to understand the deep complexity of these individual trees, and the forest as a whole, he has changed from being a logger to a forest ambassador and arguing that maintaining and enjoying the forests in a sustainable way is the best for us and the forests. Forests add so much to our health and our lives, and more importantly the well-being of our planet and this philosophy is as beneficial to us as it is to the management of the forests. This is a well written call to learn to love our wooded areas once again.

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Fun Science: A Guide to Life, the Universe and Why Science Is So Awesome by Charlie McDonnell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just the mention of science to any inactive teenager is enough to make them move rapidly in the other direction, but the You-Tuber Charlie McDonnell has made it his mission to bring the wonders of science and the world to them. He will take us on a journey through all types of science, from the solar system and the cosmos and right back to the Big Bang. He covers all manner of other things too, from the human body, particles physics and a brief introduction to chemistry.

If you can prise the screen out of their hands, then this book is a good introduction to all things sciencey. It is not a serious science book, but those that this book is aimed at is not expecting that and therefore it makes it ideal for those who think that science is scary and difficult. It is full of funky fonts, fun page layouts and weird and wonderful drawings that make the facts appealing and amusing anecdotes to make the reader smile. I have now passed it to the target audience, my teenage daughters, for their opinion, so will report back on this later on.

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