Second paragraph of third chapter:

Information emerges on a computer screen as lines and dots, but there are pieces missing. The DNA extracted from this tooth has spent more than a millennium in the ground, resulting in incomplete genome coverage.³ It doesn’t show the individual’s eye colour or provide information on their appearance. However, while the minute sequences of the DNA prove difficult to decipher, the chromosomes are clear. The team members search repeatedly, yet across every sample they find no evidence of a Y chromosome anywhere. Instead, there is a clear pattern of two X chromosomes.
³ Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson et al, ‘A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 164, No. 4 (2017), pp. 853-860.

A book asserting that there are lots of interesting stories to tell about the centrality of women in the Middle Ages, which basically is preaching to the converted as far as I am concerned. It starts however in 1913: Emily Davison, who was trampled to death by the King’s horse when her suffragette protest went wrong at the Derby, was a qualified and enthusiastic medievalist who saw the political empowerment of women as fully consistent with history.

Ramirez goes on to look at the Loftus Princess; Cyneðryð and Æðelflæd of Mercia; the Viking woman from Birka; Hildegard of Bingen; the women who made the Bayeux Tapestry; the women of the Cathars; Jadwiga of Poland; and Margery Kempe. It’s a solid piece of work which simultaneously rides the two horses of “these were remarkable individuals” and “women in general were much more important in the Middle Ages than you have probably been told”.

I didn’t know much about any of these particular cases, and had ever heard of some of the – and I’ve read quite a lot of medieval history in my time. So I felt enlightened and encouraged by the end of the book. You can get it here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The crowd apparently hardly knew at first how to receive the Sultan of Turkey, but the universal good feeling was in his favor, and finally rounds of hand clapping and cheers greeted his progress along the splendid avenue.

This is a rollicking 1898 Edison fanfic sequel to The War of the Worlds, in which the nations of the earth, shocked by a Martian attack on New York, fund a retaliatory mission to Mars led by Thomas A. Edison and Lord Kelvin, with the author putting himself in first person in the middle of the fray. Edison has conveniently invented both a disintegration ray and an anti-gravity drive, so the large Earth expedition is ultimately successful despite tribulations along the way. (This is not a spoiler – the end of the story is given away by the title of the book.)

There’s an amusing fantasy diplomacy bit at the beginning with the rulers of the world converging on Washington and Queen Victoria dancing with President McKinley (she turned 79 that year). The cliches of space travel and war with other planets are explored here for the first time; the Martians are subhuman savages, with all that that implies; there is a beautiful human hostage, the last of her kind; and Thomas Edison wins the war, for humanity. (Apparently he was consulted about being made the hero of the book, and consented.)

The Project Gutenberg version is enlivened by the illustrations created by Bernard Manley, Jr, for the 1947 printing of the story. Manley lived to 91 and died as recently as 2012. You can get it from Project Gutenberg here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

When the gale cleared we found that the pack had been driven in from the north-east and was now more firmly consolidated than before. A new berg, probably fifteen miles in length, had appeared on the northern horizon. The bergs within our circle of vision had all become familiar objects, and we had names for some of them. Apparently they were all drifting with the pack. The sighting of a new berg was of more than passing interest, since in that comparatively shallow sea it would be possible for a big berg to become stranded. Then the island of ice would be a centre of tremendous pressure and disturbance amid the drifting pack. We had seen something already of the smashing effect of a contest between berg and floe, and had no wish to have the helpless Endurance involved in such a battle of giants. During the 3rd [March 1915] the seal meat and blubber was re-stowed on hummocks around the ship. The frozen masses had been sinking into the floe. Ice, though hard and solid to the touch, is never firm against heavy weights. An article left on the floe for any length of time is likely to sink into the surface-ice. Then the salt water will percolate through and the article will become frozen into the body of the floe.

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1915-18 ended in failure, but gloriously documented failure. Ernest Shackleton planned to lead a party across Antartica via the South Pole, from the Weddell Sea south of the Atlantic to the Ross Sea south of the Pacific, to meet up with a second group based there. Disaster struck; both ships got stuck in the ice and were eventually destroyed; Shackleton led his own crew to precarious shelter on Elephant Island, off the Antarctic coast, and then undertook a 1300 km journey in an open boat to South Georgia to secure rescue; amazingly, all of the Weddell Sea group survived. (All of the humans, that is; the dogs and the ship’s cat were not so lucky.) Another rescue party then had to go and find the Ross Sea party, three of whom had died in the meantime. They returned to civilisation to find that the war, which had broken out just before their departure with promises that it would end quickly, was still raging, and most of the expedition members dispersed to join the forces.

The 100th anniversary edition of Shackleton’s expedition report is beautifully illustrated with the many photographs taken on the spot, including the poignant moment when the Edncurance slipped below the ice of the Weddell Sea (to be found 106 years later). Shackleton’s diaries, always intended for publication, are vivid about the difficulties faced by his group, and the extraordinary challenges of the punishing environment. The Ross Sea group’s records are less detailed, and it’s pretty clear that Aeneas Mackintosh, the leader, lost his nerve at quite an early stage, and eventually died in a futile attempt to cross the ice of McMurdo Sound. But these were very tough circumstances.

What really struck me was the confidence that Shackleton in particular had about navigation. The South Pole is really just a dot on the map, but he was sure that if he had landed he would find it, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would find the Ross Sea team once he crossed the continent. He writes of supply depots left by previous expeditions that he locates and uses. In particular, I’m stunned by the navigational feat of finding South Georgia in the vast ocean.

One does have to wonder what it was all for? The scientific advances made were minimal, and the expenditure of resources huge, not to mention the fact that lives were lost. Fifty years later, the space race attracted greater resources and press coverage, but one senses the same kind of drive for exploration behind it. Shackleton himself died on South Georgia in the early stages of another expedition in 1922 aged 47, of a heart attack brought on by stress. I guess the story of the expedition, doomed as it was, is a compelling record anyway. You can get it here.

When I was a student in Cambridge in the 1980s, I used to visit Ray Adie, head of the Scott Polar Research Institute, whose wife was a distant cousin of mine. He achieved notoriety as a young geologist by proposing that the Falkland Islands had once been part of Africa that had split off and rotated by 180 degrees, a wild idea in the 1950s which is now widely accepted. He had helped prepare Vivian Fuchs for the successful Trans-Antarctic expedition forty years later. I wish I had asked him more about it.

South was my top unread non-fiction book. Next on that pile is NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, by Steve Silberman.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was rare for him to be home in the Persian heartlands of his youth. In the last two decades he had spent most of his time on horseback in far-flung places acquiring lucrative territory. But, for now, Cyrus was pleased to be at Pasargadae. Spring was the right time to be there and he was delighted to see how, over the years, his fine garden had matured with tall cypress trees running in straight avenues alongside bubbling streams which passed through endless stone water channels and little pools. Flowerbeds burst with the colour of exotic flora imported from each part of the empire, and every now and then Cyrus saw the red hash of a rooster’s coxcomb as the haughty bird strutted through the garden, its feathers shimmering black-blue-gold. Cyrus had a dozen cockerels, an unexpected gift of the Indian ambassador. Bas-bas they were called in Persian. They were angry and aggressive and Cyrus was shown by the ambassador how, in India, they were trained and used for sport. Consequently, he and his best friends wagered fortunes on cock-fights. But this particular cockerel did not fight. He was allowed to wander the gardens of Pasargadae and service the fat brown hens who gave Cyrus eggs on a daily basis – a new phenomenon for a society that knew only the seasonal hatchings of geese, swans, and ducks. His chickens were precious birds and Cyrus entrusted them to the safe keeping of their own warden, the Master of the bas-bas.

This book is about the Persian empire of the Achaemenids, starting with Cyrus II in the sixth century BCE, with the explicit intention of redressing history’s bias towards the Greeks whose side of the story has become the standard account.

I regret to say that I gave up on it before finishing the second chapter. I found the style too novelistic – how on earth can a historian tell us what was going through Cyrus’ mind at crucial stages, or give us details of what he was wearing on a particular day? This might have been excusable if the writing was sourced through footnotes or even GRRRRR endnotes, but there are none apart from a list of further reading.

Very disappointing; I had been looking forward to a proper analysis of a part of history I don’t know much about, but this ain’t it. You can get it here.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

In terms of the three main features of electoral systems introduced in the previous chapter, the main point of distinction between the majoritarian systems and FPTP is over the ‘electoral formula’; there are also some differences over ‘ballot structure’. The electoral formula distinction may appear quite simple, but it is seen as crucial by the proponents of majoritarian systems. Instead of requiring only a plurality of votes (i.e. more votes than any of the other candidates but not necessarily an overall majority) in order to win the seat, a candidate must get an overall majority (i.e. at least 50 per cent plus one), hence the title ‘majoritarian’ systems.

A survey of electoral systems published in 1997; I very vaguely know the author, whose father was a colleague of my father’s, and I know several of his cousins rather better.

This is basically a survey of electoral systems in the sense of formulae for translating votes cast into seats won, and goes through first-past-the-post, second ballots, alternative vote, list systems, additional member systems and finally the Single Transferable Vote, which is of course the best system of them all (surely an uncontroversial conclusion).

It’s thorough and informative, though I regret that there is not more Eastern Europe in it – by 1997, many of the new democracies were in their second or third electoral cycle and could have supplied useful data. Nowadays we have seen stable multi-party systems emerge in many parts of the world, and also electoral innovation even in the UK.

I see that a third edition of the book is coming out in November, at an eye-watering price; you can still get the 1997 edition here.

Next and last of my lost-but-found books on elections purchased in 2016 is Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by the late great Ron Johnston.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There, a group of five men clustered around a crackling bonfire, next to a poorly built wooden cabin. Behind them stood a high wall built to block people from accidentally falling down the vast drop into the lower levels of the city. The wall had a human-sized hole in it. These were the smugglers I was looking for. Now I only had to find out how fast they would drop me.

Another carefully and richly constructed secondary world, but not interesting enough to carry me past the first fifty pages. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2019 and not by H.G. Wells. Next on that pile is What Might Have Been: The Story of a Social War, by Ernest Bramah.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

This link between theory and practice is exactly what the great economist John Maynard Keynes meant when he said: ‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.’¹ Below, I debunk five of the most common myths about government and explain why they’re problematic for a mission-oriented approach to changing capitalism.
¹​John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), p. 383.

This is a rather uplifting book, about how it’s entirely possible to get governments to lead grand projects, also involving the private sector and civil society – if only they want to do it. It’s not based on messianic vision or pure idealism – the author has advised on major state and EU initiatives on how to implement things like the Green Deal. Her central point here is that creating a more just and greener society is entirely possible, as long as it is made a core mission of government and approached as an Apollo-style project.

It would also be instructive to read her analysis of why this doesn’t often happen in real life – in particular, I’m looking with some concern at the managerial approach of the new Starmer government in the UK, and wondering how transformational this can ever really be – but it’s reassuring that a senior practitioner believes that it actually can be done if the political will is there. As Margaret Mead said… (…well, you know what she said). It’s also mercifully short.

You can get Mission Economy here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2021; next on that pile is How I Learned To Understand the World, by the late great Hans Rosling.

This may seem like an odd pairing of books, and in fact I have to admit that it is an odd pairing of books. But these are the top books of 1924 among Goodreads and LibraryThing users respectively. (Third is We, by Evgeny Zamyatin.)

The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Boxcar Children is:

“What shall we do? Where shall we go?” thought Jessie.

I had never heard of this book before starting this exercise. It is a short children’s novel about four siblings (and their dog) whose parents have died and who take up residence in an abandoned railway boxcar. The local doctor takes an interest in them and there is a happy ending. A bit improbable – surely even in 1924 there were government authorities looking out for orphaned children – but very wholesome.

It is the first in a series of, wait for it, over 160 novels, still being published, where the children mostly solve mysteries during the school holidays, which are hugely popular across the pond. I understand that the children have not aged much since 1924. I found it a naïve and hopeful tale. A novel written today about four homeless siblings would be a lot grittier, even if aimed at the same 7-10 age range. You can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of A Passage to India is:

“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”

I remember seeing the 1984 film starring Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft, possibly in the course of a week I spent at the English public school Downside. To be honest the only bit of it that I remember is the climax of the trial scene, when Judy Davis’s character recants her testimony. I also remember how strange it was to watch such an imperial film in such an imperial setting. Downside itself seemed spiritually rather unhealthy – this was of course decades before the sexual abuse scandals emerged.

I started off rather liking the book, which clearly critiques the British presence in India and sees its imminent end, twenty-five years before it actually happened. The portrayal of the snobbish and racist Anglo-Indian community is clearly based on close observation. But the more he got into writing about Indians, the more the book slipped into Orientalism, and the final section, set around a festival in an Indian-ruled state, seemed to me much less humane than the earlier part of the book. Also, of course, I am spoiled by decades of reading Indian (and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) writers about India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), rather than white people’s commentary.

This also poisons the portrayal of the relationship between the English and Indian male protagonists, which again is based on Forster’s personal experience, of deep friendship with Syed Ross Masood, but ends up not very satisfactory to either the fictional characters or the reader.

Anyway, you can get it here.

I was surprised to discover that the title of the book is taken from a Walt Whitman poem, “Passage to India”, which is actually not about India at all but compares the opening of the Suez Canal with the manly expansion of American power across the continent. I thought it was the usual doggerel from Whitman – “The gigantic dredging machines” “Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God” “Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?” – but when I said so on social media it turned out that he still has his fans. Judge for yourself.

The three top books of 1924 – The Boxcar Children, A Passage to India and We – could not be much more different from each other; a happy kids’ book, a grumpy reportage on colonialism, and a dystopian vision of the future. (Compare 1923 when I had two murder mysteries and mystic poetry.)