Book of the Week

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Recommended by George Davies

24 years after its publication, Jared Diamond’s seminal account of human history as we know it remains unrivalled in its impressively broad and interdisciplinary approach to the fundamentals of human development and inequality. You can find it on Geography, Politics, Anthropology, and International Relations lists anywhere you look, and it retains a strong hold on the 'Popular Science' section of your local Waterstones - at the very least, it is deemed worthy of enthusiastic endorsement by our own school’s Geography department. So what’s all the hype really about?

Book of the Week

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Recommended by Alexandre Vecchioli

Authored by Niccolo Machiavelli at a time of significant political upheaval, The Prince sought to address the political and ethical dilemmas faced by Renaissance rulers.

Machiavelli saw a need to advise leaders of Italian states, by mean of a political treatise, in the effective application of political policy and in the process delivered one of the most significant milestones in the history of political thought.  In pre-Machiavellian thought, ethics and politics converge.  Plato's Republic, for instance, propounded the view that these two ideals were inseparably connected.  The separation of these two subjects created a less philosophical and more pragmatic approach to political science.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - A Hundred (ish) Years On

Just over a hundred years since the publication of James Joyce's bildungsroman, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Lower Eighth Paulines share their opinions on this seminal novel.

George Orwell's gift of dystopia

At a time when the Trump bump has sent sales of 1984 rocketing, and the White House labels lies 'alternative facts', Jasper Green reconsiders the political novels of George Orwell.

George Orwell attempted to present, through his novels, the dangers of a totalitarian government. The issue was contemporary for Orwell as many countries, including Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain, were under controlling governments. Orwell’s most well known novels include Animal Farm and 1984. These stories attempted to raise the dark views that Orwell held on the USSR’s ruling communist party.