Ten reasons to be very cheerful
FROM WEINSTEIN TO BLAIR AND CO, ANTHONY CUMMINS PICKS THE VERY BEST IN NON-FICTION FOR CHRISTMAS
suggests is a ‘data bias in a world designed for men’, which affects women in myriad ways, from queueing longer for the loo to having less chance of surviving a heart attack.
THE PATIENT ASSASSIN
by Anita Anand
(Simon & Schuster)
This utterly involving whydunnit tells the almost unbelievable story of Udham Singh, a Punjabi labourer who, in London in 1940, shot dead a former colonial official who had served in British India at the time of the Amritsar massacre of unarmed civilians 21 years earlier. It’s a cliché to praise a work of non-fiction for reading like a thriller but that’s exactly what broadcaster Anita Anand has served up here.
BLACK, LISTED: BLACK BRITISH CULTURE EXPLORED
by Jeffrey Boakye (Dialogue Books) Styled as a glossary of 83 words used around black identity, from BAME to ‘urban’, this light-footed cultural analysis riffs elegantly on subjects including Meghan Markle and Marvel’s Black Panther. Boakye, a British-Ghanaian schoolteacher, is a sharp critic, citing a Radio 1 DJ’s surprise that grime star Skepta knew the lyrics to Spandau Ballet’s Gold as an instance of how society underplays the Britishness in ‘black British’.
COMMANDER IN CHEAT: HOW GOLF EXPLAINS TRUMP
by Rick Reilly (Headline) ‘When it comes to golf, very few people can beat me,’ Donald Trump once told a rally, pointing to his haul of 18 club championships. Not so, according to this brilliantly slantwise investigation from the US sports writer Rick Reilly, who argues that the president’s boasts rest on strong-arm tactics and straight-out fibbing – such as claiming to have won at a course that hadn’t even been opened yet. Terribly sad!