Eccentric Linguist

Success & Self Development

2022-12-12T05:50:48.370Z

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The year in food: ten recipes for 2022

2022-12-10T14:17:51.535Z

The viral, the mouldy and the delicious

Dec 9th 2022

The book of Ecclesiastes says that “there is no new thing under the sun”. This aphorism of ennui, set down more than 2,000 years ago, remains largely true today in the kitchen. Most people cook familiar crops and species using time-tested methods. But what is routine for one person may be delightfully new to another. Just because nothing is new under the sun does not mean nothing is new on your plate. What follows are ten recipes that had a particular resonance for this author in the year just past. Like all lists, it is personal, incomplete and ready to be argued over.

The viral
Doubtless to the dismay of chefs who have toiled for years perfecting their craft, many home cooks these days turn to TikTok, a video-sharing app, for “food hacks” and similar recipe-like instruction. Sometimes this works out. Then, this summer, “pink sauce”—a homemade concoction that contained dragon fruit, garlic, lemon juice and milk—swept the interwebs. Unfortunately, the shade of pink varied in each batch and, following allegations that some bottles blew up in transit, many people worried that the sauce lacked proper preservatives. Its creator, who goes by the name of “Chef Pii”, issued an apology of sorts, but the incident is a sobering reminder that recipes can start out viral—and end up bacterial.

The marinade
Still, not all microbes are an enemy. In Japan koji—a strain of mould grown on cooked grains—has been used for centuries to make miso, sake and soy sauce. Its popularity has grown in recent years; new fans may be pleased to learn it is easy to grow koji at home. Cooks can buy dried, pre-inoculated rice and soak it in room-temperature water and salt for a week or so, bringing the spores to life. This creates shio koji, an inexpensive marinade and cure that can be spread thinly over fish prior to grilling, or over chicken a day or two before roasting. The result is tender meat with a complex, umami flavour. Koji-converts will enjoy “Koji Alchemy: Rediscovering the Magic of Mould-Based Fermentation”, an extensive guide written by Rich Shih and Jeremy Umansky.

The pickle
Friendly microorganisms are also to thank for kimchi, a Korean pickle. The most familiar type in the West is baechu kimchi, coloured red and made from napa cabbage, ginger and chillies. The vegetables are submerged in salty brine where they ferment with the aid of lactic-acid bacteria. But the world of kimchi is vast, as Eric Kim makes clear in his terrific “Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home”. His recipe for baek kimchi, made without chillies, is mild, delicious and, like other forms of the dish, teeming with healthy probiotics.

The cookbook
J. Kenji López-Alt is a food and science writer with a large and often obsessive following that includes your correspondent. His latest, “The Wok: Recipes and Techniques”, is devoted to everything that can be done with the titular vessel, which turns out to be quite a bit. It features sections not just for stir-fries, but also for soups, noodles, simmering, braising and deep-frying. It is easy to be drawn back to dubu jorim, a quick, flavoursome dish of braised tofu, or to an inventive stir-fry of spring vegetables with olives and Sichuan peppercorns.

The blog
Mr López-Alt did not release the year’s only bestselling cookbook with “wok” in its title. The four-person Leung family’s “Woks of Life” is as charming and useful as their blog of the same name. Their online recipes come with stories and detailed descriptions (to the delight of more patient readers) and all work well, as does the family dynamic. The one that deserves a space on your holiday table is their sticky-rice stuffing, spiked with mushrooms and lop cheong, a Cantonese pork sausage.

The condiment
The perfect sauce to stir into that stuffing, or indeed any bowl of rice, is chilli crisp, a blend of ground red chillies and spices that cook in hot oil. The classic version is produced by Lao Gan Ma and comes in a squat jar emblazoned with a picture of its somewhat reproving-looking founder. Recently, numerous small-batch competitors have sprung up, but few are as good as the original. Making the sauce at home is easy, too, and recipes abound: Genevieve Ko’s crunchy, oniony iteration is a great place to start.

The festive
A different condiment has pride of place in one of the year’s weirdest recipes: Mr López-Alt’s holiday turkey, featuring lashings of herb-spiked mayonnaise. The order to “slather a half-cup” of the wobbly stuff over a raw bird with your hands will set many tummies atwirl. But the idea is to give the turkey a lacquered skin without the bother of basting. And though your ordinarily mayo-averse correspondent has not tried this technique on a festive fowl (preferring the time-honoured combination of dry-brining and smoking), he must admit that it works wonders on grilled fish.

The everyday
The green bean is among the duller legumes, especially when boiled or drowned in a gluey casserole. So why do they keep appearing on holiday tables? Chickpeas are tastier, more nutritious and more versatile. For a spicy but soothing twist on an everyday pulse, try Meera Sodha’s “workers’ curry”, more commonly known as chana masala. She recommends using dried chickpeas: by putting them to soak in the morning and then using a pressure cooker, they soften beautifully and take no more time than the tinned variety.

The side
If you want to wander farther afield, Sean Sherman’s recipe for tepary beans with agave and chilli is worth trying. Think of it as a cousin to baked beans with a smoky kick. Native Americans in the south-west have grown tepary beans since time out of mind; they are remarkably resistant to drought and disease, with a nutty flavour and a bit more chew than the average bean. Mr Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota, has removed colonial ingredients from his cooking and is devoted to making space for indigenous cuisine on the American table.

The dessert
Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has sparked justified interest in Ukrainian culture, including its diverse and unique cuisine. Its desserts are rarely too sweet, relying instead on fruit, fermented milk products and, unusually, poppy seeds. In cooler weather, Olia Hercules’s poppy-seed strudel studded with nuts and apples, steamed dumplings filled with berries, and a plaited, poppy-seed babka are most enticing. Rangetop travellers who turn to her magnificent “Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine” will also gain fresh insight into Ukrainian culture. To cook unfamiliar recipes is to enlarge your world—a pursuit both worthy and delicious. ■

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The best television series of 2022

2022-12-10T13:07:53.372Z

They were about chefs, comedians and washed-up spies

Dec 2nd 2022

Our favourite shows of 2021 were about Emily Dickinson, Muhammad Ali—and the Roy family. Read that piece and similar “best of” lists here.

“Andor”
Though set in the pulpy “Star Wars” universe, there are no Jedi knights, Sith Lords or even mentions of the mystical “force”. Instead this 12-episode series (a second and final instalment is expected in 2024) focuses on the bureaucratic operations, negligence and oppression of the Empire and the way it sparked a commoners’ rebellion that would eventually enlist Luke Skywalker. The result is extraordinary—and the best entry in this sprawling franchise since “The Empire Strikes Back”.

“Bad Sisters”
Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) is married to an awful man—so awful, in fact, that her sisters refer to their brother-in-law as “The Prick”. Each of Grace’s four siblings has a personal or professional reason to hate him. When his tormenting of Grace reaches its apogee one Christmas, they decide to act. Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote the show and stars in it, brings a dark wit to a script that captures sisterly dynamics perfectly. Sarah Greene (“Normal People”) is particularly enjoyable as the vengeful Bibi.

“Barry”
Bill Hader, an erstwhile cast member of “Saturday Night Live”, is the creator, showrunner, star and lead director of this HBO show, which follows an assassin who takes up amateur dramatics. He hopes to covertly confess his guilt, but instead finds himself on a troubled path to Hollywood stardom. It is nominally a comedy (each season has been nominated in that category at the Emmys); but the show becomes increasingly dark as its protagonist’s violent history, buried post-traumatic stress disorder from his time as a soldier in Afghanistan and burgeoning career endanger those around him.

“The Bear”
Two stories released in 2022 captured the claustrophobia and chaos of a professional kitchen. Both “Boiling Point”, a British movie filmed in one continuous shot, and “The Bear”, an American series, focus on talented, troubled chefs who must wrangle unruly employees, a messy workspace and a business beset by financial difficulties. Christopher Storer’s show stood out in depicting the gulf between the grim, hierarchical world of haute cuisine and the disorderly, unpleasant sandwich shop in Chicago to which the protagonist returns after his brother’s death.

“Better Call Saul”
Even in an era of endless franchise spin-offs, this prequel series was audacious. It had its premiere only a year and a half after the final episode of its acclaimed predecessor, “Breaking Bad”. Moreover the show made a protagonist from a bit-player, a criminal-defence lawyer. Yet “Better Call Saul” quickly proved that prequels can not only match expectations, but exceed them. In the final season Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould delivered a beautiful conclusion to Saul’s story, as well as a critique of the past quarter-century of anti-hero television—“Breaking Bad” included.

More of our recommendations from 2022:
• The best podcasts
• The best films
• The best albums
• The best books

“Derry Girls”
Another good thing came to an end this year: Lisa McGee’s joyous sitcom. Throughout its three seasons, the show balanced teenage high jinks with poignant reflections on life in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. Its finale was a truly moving exploration of the impact of the Good Friday Agreement on its young characters’ lives. The third series featured a brilliant soundtrack, hilarious set pieces (such as a fight over Fatboy Slim tickets) and an outstanding cameo from Liam Neeson.

“Hacks”
This comedy-drama, about the professional relationship between two women from different generations, is more than the sum of its parts. In the second season Deborah (Jean Smart), an established stand-up, and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), an upstart writer, take their comedy set on tour across America. The intent is to hone Deborah’s craft and confront her traumas, but the series also interrogates the cruelty and frailty of its two leads without judging either or forgetting to be funny.

“Pachinko”
Adapted from Min Jin Lee’s bestselling novel of 2017, this Apple tv+ series fits a great deal into its eight episodes (or “chapters”). It follows four generations of a family, jumping between Japan and its former colony, Korea, in the first half of the 20th century, and Tokyo in the late 1980s. The plot touches on prejudice, organised crime, gambling and the second world war. It never lags, thanks to deft storytelling, sumptuous cinematography and convincing performances.

“Severance”
Imagine if your mind could be divided: surgically separated into two selves so that you might better “work hard” and “play hard”. That is the premise of this thrilling workplace dystopia, co-directed by Ben Stiller. Each element has been executed with the precision of a neurosurgeon; together the set design, editing, split-personality performances, writing and score highlight the internal conflicts of its characters. The result is a suspenseful examination of labour rights and the elusive quest for work-life balance.

“Slow Horses”
Based on the spy novels by Mick Herron, this show goes beyond the usual trappings of British espionage dramas by mixing serious stakes with cynical humour. The titular “Slow Horses” are based in the dimly lit and dilapidated Slough House, a division of MI5 intended to punish failed and exiled intelligence agents by way of busywork. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) is their inebriated and belligerent taskmaster. With original music by Mick Jagger, this show is a welcome addition to a well-trodden genre. ■

For more on the latest books, films, tv shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter

The best podcasts of 2022

2022-12-10T13:06:21.782Z

They explored America’s democracy, the death of an artist and why people throw dinner parties

Nov 25th 2022

Our favourite podcasts of 2021 were about economics, reality television, the German far right and the GameStop saga. Read that piece and similar “best of” lists here.

“Can I Tell You a Secret?”
Matthew Hardy, a British cyber-stalker, harassed at least 62 women and was arrested ten times. But it took more than a decade to convict him. He was finally sentenced to nine years behind bars in January 2022, one of the longest-ever penalties for stalking in Britain. (The average is less than 17 months.) This show, hosted by Sirin Kale of the Guardian, is a sensitively reported, chilling interrogation of Mr Hardy’s crimes, his psyche and the way the British justice system fails women all too often.

Special mention: If you like this, also consider “Sweet Bobby”, a podcast about a catfishing scam that Tortoise Media released last year.

“Death of an Artist”
In 1985 Ana Mendieta, a Cuban-American feminist artist, fell to her death from the 34th-floor apartment she shared with her husband, Carl Andre, a prominent minimalist sculptor. He was charged with her murder but later acquitted. In “Death of an Artist” Helen Molesworth, its host and the former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, probes the art world’s reaction to this incident, particularly their refusal to speak about it. The show dwells on Mendieta’s life and the role of museums in deciding which artists are remembered—or forgotten forever.

“Ghost Church”
American spiritualism is “not a cult”, Jamie Loftus, the host, emphasises at the beginning of “Ghost Church”. It is in fact an unusual religious movement that peaked in the 19th century and whose adherents think the living can communicate with the dead. On a quest to learn more about these curious beliefs, Ms Loftus heads to one of the few remaining Spiritualist camps. Her musings on death and faith showcase the intimate power of the medium—and mediums themselves.

“How We Survive”
The property market in Miami is booming. But how can that be when rising sea levels threaten its coastline and weaken key infrastructure? Amy Scott, senior housing correspondent at Marketplace, takes a long, hard look at how global warming is affecting the riotous party city. Hurricane Ian pummelled Florida during the final stages of reporting, highlighting the urgency of climate-change adaptation. The podcast underlines that not even the richest country on Earth is immune to the consequences of a warming climate.

“Not Lost”
Brendan Francis Newnam, a journalist, reckons that dinner parties are the best way to get under the skin of a new place. So he and a travel companion try to “get invited into someone’s house for dinner”. “Not Lost” is a record of their attempts. It is often a fruitless quest but the show, crafted mostly without narration, is nonetheless a delightful romp through dining rooms, cities, mountains and islands, mostly in North America.

“The Run-Up”
Joe Biden said in October that this year’s midterms would “shape what this country looks like for the next decade or more”. But it is the past, more than the future, which preoccupies “The Run-Up”, a podcast the New York Times launched ahead of the elections. It draws on events of the past decade to make sense of American politics today. The result is a clear-eyed reflection on the country’s recent political history and a thoughtful examination of the current moment.

More of our recommendations from 2022:
• The best books
• The best films
• The best television series
• The best albums

“Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV”
Is reality television “the dumbest genre in entertainment” or the most perceptive? Pandora Sykes and Ms Kale (the prolific host of “Can I Tell You a Secret?”) set out to answer this question in their 10-part audio documentary for the BBC. They interrogate the ethical issues that bedevil the much-maligned genre, which, they explain, is often described as “bottom-feeding” and the “end of civilisation”. But they also revel in the joy the format can bring to audiences and participants. Trashy telly need not be a secret shame—particularly if you treat it with the anthropological rigour “Unreal” does.

“Wild Boys”
Two emaciated brothers walked out of the forest in 2003 and into the small town of Vernon in deepest British Columbia. They had grown up among the trees, they said, largely untouched by civilisation. One of them ate only fruit. In this gripping podcast, a former resident of Vernon recounts how the pair divided an otherwise harmonious community. Yet the story takes an unforeseen turn, making “Wild Boys” much more than a modern Romulus and Remus tale.

“Will be Wild”
In December 2020 then-President Donald Trump encouraged his Twitter followers to attend a “big protest in D.C.”. “Be there, will be wild!” he tweeted. This podcast, named after that fateful tweet, investigates what drew rioters to the Capitol on January 6th 2021. By speaking to people on both sides of the barricades, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, two veteran Trump reporters, manage to add fresh insight into the recent stain on America’s democracy.

“Were We Three”
This three-part podcast from the New York Times and the producers of “Serial” reveals the damage that vaccine scepticism inflicted on American families during the pandemic. Rachel McKibbens lost her father and her healthy 44-year-old brother, Peter, to covid-19. Both were unvaccinated. Peter was fearful of the jabs and people who had them. As Ms McKibbens uncovers what happened to her loved ones in their final days, this podcast also tells a wider story: one about inequality, America’s ailing health-care system and how conspiracy theories thrive when authorities are not trusted. ■

Listen to The Economist’s podcasts here

For more on the latest books, films, tv shows, albums and controversies sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

The best films of 2022

2022-12-10T13:00:54.023Z

As well as Hollywood blockbusters, this year’s list includes French, Indian, Iranian, Irish and Swedish movies

Nov 23rd 2022

Our favourite films of 2021 included “Summer of Soul”, “The Power of the Dog” and “Titane”. Read that piece and similar “best of” lists here.

Note: this list is mostly drawn from British release dates.

“Aftersun”
In Charlotte Wells’s quietly devastating debut drama, a Scottish 11-year-old girl (Frankie Corio) and her 31-year-old father (Paul Mescal, the star of “Normal People”) go on holiday to a shabby resort in Turkey, sometime in the late 1990s. There are no crises, or even any weighty heart-to-heart speeches, but Ms Wells conjures up a listless, uneasy atmosphere, and an ominous sense that this will be the last holiday the two ever take together.

“The Banshees of Inisherin”
Martin McDonagh follows up his Oscar and bafta winner, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, with an absurdist black comedy about two old drinking buddies (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) on a rural Irish island in 1923. Their friendship comes to an abrupt conclusion when one of them announces that he will chop off his own fingers if the other one ever talks to him again. An exquisitely scripted and acted meditation on kindness, mortality, the value of art—and the ridiculous stubbornness of men everywhere.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Imagine if “The Matrix” was remade by Michel Gondry, the director of “Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind”, and you’ll have some sense of this ambitious, unpredictable, sci-fi kung-fu action-comedy. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan star as two lowly launderette owners who have to save reality from obliteration. Like this year’s best Marvel blockbuster, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” hops between numerous different realities. Though it clearly has a smaller budget than Marvel’s film, it has enough big ideas and emotions to compensate.

More of our recommendations from 2022:
• The best podcasts
• The best books
• The best television series
• The best albums

“Happening”
Based on the autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, “Happening” stars Anamaria Vartolomei as a student who gets pregnant on a one-night stand in 1963. She tries to secure an abortion, even though the procedure was illegal in France at the time, but soon finds that few will help her—and several will stand in her way. Audrey Diwan stages her flawlessly acted and perfectly paced film in the style of a contemporary indie drama, without the usual signifiers of the 1960s, so you could easily assume that it was set in the present day. If the location were different, it could be.

“Hit the Road”
Panah Panahi’s Iranian comedy-drama starts as a light, humorous road movie about an affectionately bickering family. Only later does it become apparent that one of the boys in the car is being smuggled out of the country at great expense and greater risk, and that the others might never see him again. “Hit the Road” grows into an elegiac, beautifully scenic and magically surreal fable—without losing any of its initial lightness and humour.

“Moonage Daydream”
There have been countless documentaries about rock superstars, but none quite like Brett Morgen’s 140-minute meditation on David Bowie, which ignores many of its subject’s albums, films and key collaborators, and instead charts his philosophical and emotional development. Hypnotic and psychedelic, “Moonage Daydream” suggests that Bowie might well have been a time-traveller, an alien or a demigod; but he was definitely a clever, thoughtful and highly articulate fellow.

“Pinocchio”
Two major Pinocchio films came out this year. Disney’s live-action remake of the classic cartoon was feeble, but Guillermo del Toro’s heart-rending version was a revelation. He sets the tale in fascist Italy (complete with a cameo appearance by Mussolini), and fills it with as much death and darkness as his earlier films, “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”. But it’s also a rollicking delight, with rousing songs, gorgeous stop-motion animation and an endearingly pompous cricket voiced by Ewan McGregor.

“RRR”
S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language epic proved to audiences around the world that Indian films could be as action-packed, entertaining and excessive as anything produced in Hollywood. Set in Delhi under the British Raj in the 1920s, “RRR” is the tale of two Indian revolutionaries who become best buddies while concealing their true allegiances from each other. The dance routines and fight sequences are gloriously ridiculous, but there is a complex, earnest story of sacrifice and liberation in there somewhere.

“Top Gun: Maverick”
Few people predicted that one of the biggest and most lauded films of 2022 would be a much-delayed sequel to a cheesy, 36-year-old paean to the US Navy. And yet “Top Gun: Maverick” turned out to be as painstakingly designed and assembled as any of the jet fighters flown so spectacularly by Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and his cocksure trainees. Exhilarating but wistful, this is almost unique among sequels in that it honours its predecessor while improving on it in every way.

“Triangle of Sadness”
Ruben Ostlund’s second film in a row to win the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes Film Festival, “Triangle of Sadness” is a satirical attack on the rich and entitled, from social-media influencers to arms dealers. Its first half is set aboard a luxury cruise liner, where the super-rich guests patronise the staff; the second half, after a shipwreck, is set on a desert island where money counts for nothing. It isn’t subtle, but Mr Ostlund’s anger at society’s unfairness is thrilling and hilarious.

“Turning Red”
A Pixar cartoon about a 13-year-old girl (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) who turns into a huge red panda whenever she is upset, “Turning Red” is groundbreaking in all sorts of ways. It has a nerdy Chinese-Canadian heroine, it is candid about puberty and menstruation, and its narrative focus is not on noble heroes and nefarious villains, but on the friction between loving parents and children. All that aside, it is one of the most buoyant and purely fun films that Pixar has ever produced. ■

For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only culture newslett

These are The Economist’s best books of 2022

2022-12-10T12:59:23.430Z

Their subjects include financial scandals, a witness to the Holocaust and cell theory

Dec 6th 2022

Listen to this story.

Our favourite books in 2021 considered God, opioids, China and cannibalism. Read that piece and similar “best of” lists here.

Politics and current affairs

The Impossible City. By Karen Cheung. Random House; 319 pages; $28 and £23

An illuminating and moving personal account of how Hong Kong descended into the mass street unrest of 2019, and of the pandemic-abetted repression that has crushed it since. The author speaks powerfully for a desperate generation of young Hong Kongers conscious that their home city has lost what made it home.

There Are No Accidents. By Jessie Singer. Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $27.99

A look at why Americans are so much more likely to suffer violent “accidents” than people in other rich countries. The author shows how poor road design, rather than bad driving, explains the persistence of car crashes and how factories use rule books and disciplinary procedures as a cheap substitute for real safety improvements.

Confidence Man. By Maggie Haberman. Penguin Press; 608 pages; $32. Mudlark; £25

A chronicle of the life and lies of the 45th president of the United States, from outer-borough brat to White House bully. This portrait of a master scammer is by a New York Times journalist who covered Donald Trump for decades. He learned early, she notes, that celebrity was power.

We Have Tired of Violence. By Matt Easton. New Press; 341 pages; $27.99

A meticulous narration of the efforts to bring to justice the killers of Munir, a prominent Indonesian human-rights activist murdered in 2004. It reads like an enthralling legal-procedural whodunnit, as evidence is slowly unearthed from telephone records, lost documents are retrieved from deleted computer files and intriguing new witnesses emerge.

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water. By Matthieu Aikins. Harper; 336 pages; $27.99. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £12.99

In 2016 the author, a Canadian journalist, went undercover to accompany an Afghan friend on his perilous journey to a new life in Europe—always knowing that, if push came to shove, he could fall back on his Western citizenship, while his friend would have to rely on his luck. The result is a devastatingly intimate insight into the refugee crisis.

The Age of the Strongman. By Gideon Rachman. Other Press; 288 pages; $27.99. Bodley Head; £20

It is striking how many of today’s leaders fit the strongman mould, notes a columnist for the Financial Times (formerly of The Economist). His subjects, including Xi Jinping and Prince Muhammad bin Salman, are a threat not only to the well-being of their own countries, he says, but to a world order in which liberal ideas are increasingly embattled.

The Economic Weapon. By Nicholas Mulder. Yale University Press; 448 pages; $32.50 and £25

A fortuitously timed history of the use of economic sanctions during the interwar period of the 20th century. Their mixed success cautions against hoping that the West’s sanctions against Russia can bring about an end to war in Ukraine.

More of our recommendations from 2022:
• The best podcasts
• The best films
• The best television series
• The best albums

Business and economics

Money Men. By Dan McCrum. Bantam Press; 352 pages; £20

The dramatic story of the demise of Wirecard, once one of Europe’s brightest tech stars. The author, a journalist at the Financial Times, was one of a small band of sceptics who believed the firm was a giant fraud. Faced with a vicious counter-attack from the company and its spies, and the German establishment’s reluctance to accept a national champion could be a sham, they had a long wait for vindication.

Chip War. By Chris Miller. Scribner; 464 pages; $30. Simon & Schuster; £20

Semiconductors are central to modern life—they power everything from advanced weapons systems to toasters—but the supply chain is alarmingly fragile. Many countries see chips as a strategic asset. This timely book shows how economic, geopolitical and technological forces shaped an essential industry.

Dead in the Water. By Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel. Portfolio; 288 pages; $27. Atlantic Books; £18.99
Books about merchant shipping are rarely so gripping, but this one looks at what really happened when pirates attacked the Brillante Virtuoso in the Gulf of Aden in 2011. A startling tale of fraud and impunity.

The Power Law. By Sebastian Mallaby. Penguin Press; 496 pages; $30. Allen Lane; £25
Venture capitalists are often accused of prioritising growth at all costs, so feeding a recklessly aggressive capitalist culture. In this authoritative book a former journalist at The Economist—and husband of the current editor-in-chief—acknowledges the industry’s shortcomings but eloquently defends its achievements.

For Profit. By William Magnuson. Basic Books; 368 pages; $32 and £25
A magnificent history of corporations, stretching from the societas publicanorum of ancient Rome, through Renaissance Florence, the Age of Discovery and the might of American industrial capitalism to Silicon Valley. Private enterprises have produced some of humankind’s greatest achievements. But often the most dazzling overstep the mark, leaving a trail of debris and distrust behind them.

Butler to the World. By Oliver Bullough. St Martin’s Press; 288 pages; $28.99. Profile Books; £20

After making a decision to attract footloose international capital after the second world war, Britain went on to roll out the welcome mat for plutocrats and oligarchs. This is an indictment of the lawyers, pr firms and others who help siphon dirty money through London’s banks and property market.

Slouching Towards Utopia. By J. Bradford DeLong. Basic Books; 624 pages; $35 and £30

Written with wit, style and a formidable command of detail, this book places the successes and disasters of the 20th century in their economic context. In doing so, it provides insights into how things have gone wrong in more recent years—and what must go right if catastrophe is to be avoided in the current century.

Power Failure. By William Cohan. Portfolio; 816 pages; $40. Allen Lane; £35

A monumental study of the firm founded in 1892 as the General Electric Company. Its story makes clear how important brilliant people are to business success—and how their brilliance can sometimes become a dangerous vulnerability.

Biography and memoir

The Escape Artist. By Jonathan Freedland. Harper; 400 pages; $28.99. John Murray; £20

In 1944 Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz and helped produce a report on its genocidal horrors. Reluctant as some were to face the truth of the death camps, his bravery and tenacity saved many lives. This harrowing and astonishing story is told with pace and verve, and is an important addition to Holocaust historiography.

The Facemaker. By Lindsey Fitzharris. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 336 pages; $23.99. Allen Lane; £20

An account of the pioneering work done by Harold Gillies in the early 20th century at specialist maxillofacial units in Britain. An engaging biography of a masterful plastic surgeon, it is also a heartening tribute to medical progress.

Agatha Christie. By Lucy Worsley. Pegasus Crime; 432 pages; $29.95. Hodder & Stoughton; £25

On December 3rd 1926 the famous novelist left her husband and young daughter and went missing for 11 days. That mysterious disappearance is at the heart of this colourful new biography, which pieces together what really happened that winter.

The Huxleys. By Alison Bashford. University of Chicago Press; 576 pages; $30. Published in Britain as “An Intimate History of Evolution”; Allen Lane; £30

Julian Huxley and Thomas Henry Huxley, his grandfather, were both acolytes of Darwinism. They shared a scientific genius, an appetite for culture (both were keen poets) and a tragic tint of mental instability. Both lives are painstakingly illuminated in this double biography.

Inventor of the Future. By Alec Nevala-Lee. Dey Street Books; 672 pages; $35 and £25

Buckminster Fuller was a path-breaking American architect and engineer. This portrait gives him his due as a stunningly original thinker and prophet of technology. He comes alive as a visionary who rose above his imperfections to labour for the benefit of humankind.

Hayek. By Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger. University of Chicago Press; 824 pages; $50 and £35

An elegant account of one of the most interesting figures in 20th-century economics. It is packed with great anecdotes and punctures myths about the Austrian-British economist. Mostly it confirms the view that he was a rather strange man, and not always a very nice one.

History

Budapest. By Victor Sebestyen. W&N; 432 pages; £25
Forever caught between East and West, the capital of Hungary encapsulates the drama of central Europe in its wonders and horrors. The author, who left the city as a child after the uprising against communist rule in 1956, excels in describing Budapest’s Habsburg heyday, the historical role of its Jewish population and the hubris and humiliations that have helped shape the city.

The Siege of Loyalty House. By Jessie Childs. Bodley Head; 318 pages; £25
The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless.

The Serpent Coiled in Naples. By Marius Kociejowski. University of Chicago Press; 506 pages; $27.95. Haus Publishing; £20

To write about Naples, you really need to be a poet—or, even better, an antiquarian bookseller. This author is both and has produced a delightful work that is as eclectic, labyrinthine, ironic and shocking as the great Italian city itself.

A Pipeline Runs Through It. By Keith Fisher. Allen Lane; 768 pages; £35

A sprawling, scrupulously researched history of oil from the Palaeolithic era to the first world war. Black gold has been as much a curse as a blessing for the people on whose land it has been found. A compelling read and an immensely valuable guide to a great and terrible industry.

The World: A Family History. By Simon Sebag Montefiore. W&N; 1,344 pages; £35. To be published in America by Knopf in May; $45

Don’t be put off by the doorstopper length: this history of the world, told through the stories of eminent families, is a riveting page-turner. The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life with pithy, witty pen portraits, ladling on the sex and violence. An epic that both entertains and informs.

Fiction

The Candy House. By Jennifer Egan. Scribner; 323 pages; $28. Little, Brown; £20

A novel about what humans lose in offering up their private lives to algorithms that mine them for profit. For all its fluency in the languages of gaming, addiction and tech, this is a social novel with numerous characters and perspectives; a kind of 21st-century “Middlemarch”.

Maror. By Lavie Tidhar. Head of Zeus; 560 pages; £20

Corruption, drugs and assassination feature in this wildly ambitious saga set over four decades in Israel from the early 1970s. It is loosely organised around a series of murders on a coastal road and the career of a crooked cop, but takes detours to Lebanon, Los Angeles, Colombia and Cancún. A caustic alternative history of the dream and development of Israel.

Still Born. By Guadalupe Nettel. Translated by Rosalind Harvey. Fitzcarraldo Editions; 200 pages; £12.99. To be published in America by Bloomsbury in August; $26.99

A novel about the choices women make over whether to have children, and what happens if their offspring turn out differently from how they expected. An unsentimental and tightly plotted story.

The Trees. By Percival Everett. Graywolf Press; 320 pages; $16. Influx Press; £9.99

Someone is murdering white people in Money, Mississippi. A mutilated black body is found at the crime scenes but keeps disappearing. At first the victims are connected to the lynching of Emmett Till in the neighbourhood in 1955; but then the circle of comeuppance widens. Two wisecracking detectives head down to investigate. A bitingly funny, boldly satirical, deadly serious tale of racism and the legacy of injustice.

Small Things Like These. By Claire Keegan. Grove Press; 128 pages; $20. Faber; £10

In the lead-up to Christmas in 1985, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, is making deliveries in his small Irish town. His mind is on his unsettled childhood and festive arrangements for his own offspring—until he comes across a distressed girl, locked up in one of the country’s Magdalene laundries (ie, homes for “fallen women”). A haunting short book with a quiet, ordinary hero at its heart.

When We Were Birds. By Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. Doubleday; 304 pages; $27. Hamish Hamilton; £14.99

Set in Trinidad, this debut novel tells of the separate struggles and twinned destinies of two characters from contrasting walks of life. What looks set to be a simple tale of boy meets girl soon develops into a thoroughly original and emotionally rich examination of love, grief and inheritance.

Culture and ideas

Of Boys and Men. By Richard Reeves. Brookings Institution Press; 256 pages; $28.99. Swift Press; £20

In some ways the world remains male-dominated, yet many men are falling behind, says the author. Boys do worse than girls in school in many countries, and are more likely everywhere to end up in prison or kill themselves. He suggests practical, incremental reforms, such as having boys start school a year later.

Life is Hard. By Kieran Setiya. Riverhead Books; 240 pages; $27. Hutchinson Heinemann; £16.99

A professor of philosophy at mit argues that suffering need not diminish or spoil a good life. Living well and hardship can go together, he says; clear thinking is the key. A humane, consoling guide to this vale of tears, with a glimmer of hope.

The Subplot. By Megan Walsh. Columbia Global Reports; 133 pages; $16 and £11.99

China’s modern literary landscape teems with corruption exposés, homoerotic fantasy, emotive migrant-worker poetry, time-travelling entrepreneurs and desolately radical science fiction. The author makes a powerful case for Anglophone readers who want to understand China to look past the headlines and turn to books.

Papyrus. By Irene Vallejo. Translated by Charlotte Whittle. Knopf; 464 pages; $35. Hodder & Stoughton; £25
A lively history of books in the ancient world. The committing of words and stories to papyrus scrolls was, the author says, as disruptive as the internet.

Magnificent Rebels. By Andrea Wulf. Knopf; 512 pages; $35. John Murray; £25

An arresting group biography of the “Jena Set”, a gang of young German intellectuals who played an outsize part in the movement that came to be known as Romanticism. It reads as if Iris Murdoch had set a novel during an especially muddy phase of German metaphysics.

Science and technology

The Song of the Cell. By Siddhartha Mukherjee. Scribner; 496 pages; $26.99. Bodley Head; £22

A tour d’horizon of cell theory, by a clinical oncologist and professor of that subject at Columbia University. Cases from the author’s own career illustrate the results of both cellular understanding and the lack of it. The result is part history lesson, part biology lesson and part reminder of how science itself actually proceeds.

Elusive. By Frank Close. Basic Books; 304 pages; $26. Allen Lane; £25

A compelling account of the long search for the Higgs boson: its existence was predicted in 1964, but it did not show its face to the world until 2012. This is also a biography of Peter Higgs, the shy physicist after whom the particle was named.

An Immense World. By Ed Yong. Random House; 464 pages; $30. Vintage; £17.99

Human senses can only perceive a fraction of the energy and information moving through the world. Animals manage much more: some birds can sense magnetic fields, bees can see ultraviolet light and bats perceive their surroundings using sound waves. By examining how such creatures sense their environments, this book lifts the shroud on previously invisible dimensions of the world itself.

Beyond Measure. By James Vincent. W.W. Norton; 432 pages; $32.50. Faber; £18.99
Humans are list-makers, this deeply researched history of measurement argues. From Aristotle’s “Categories” to the Linnaean taxonomy of biology, people are splitters, not lumpers, forever seeking to parse and quantify the world.

The Equality Machine. By Orly Lobel. PublicAffairs; 368 pages; $30 and £25

This author agrees with those who fear artificial intelligence can be biased. But, in a brilliant act of intellectual jiu-jitsu, she argues that the answer is not to slow the technology, but to speed it up to solve those defects and achieve social progress.

This Mortal Coil. By Andrew Doig. Bloomsbury; 384 pages; $34 and £25

A biochemist at the University of Manchester provides a surprisingly upbeat history of death—and points to medical marvels that may lie ahead. An empowering story of human ingenuity. ■

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Your 4 Step Plan to Improve Your English

2022-12-05T11:26:08.820Z

Your 4 Step Plan to
Improve Your English

1) Use English everyday.

This can be done many ways. Listening to the radio or downloading podcasts in English and listening to them on your way to and from work can significally improve your English. Read English newspapers or magazines on topics that interest you (travelling, health or gossip). For more ideas on how to use English on a daily basis visit the following article on how to study English. Actually this article explains most of the things that you should be doing. If you choose a couple activities from each skill area (listening, reading, writing and speaking) you will improve your English quickly and easily.

2) You need to be persistent.

Basically you could start any course that you like (online course, private classes or just choosing activities from my list) and if you do it regularly and make an effort over a period of time…you will 100% improve. No question. The problem is that most people stop. It isn’t the product that fails, but the motivation, dedication and effort made by the student that does.

To quote myself: "A website or a teacher is just a tool that helps you learn. You need to keep yourself involved and keep motivated, because in the end it is YOU that teaches yourself a language, not a website. -Diana Tower

3) If you need to improve your English skills, specifically for your job here are a couple suggestions. I would subscribe to a pharmaceutical Magazine in English. Or register on a website so that you can read them online. (Use word champ to help you get more out of your reading. Word Champ is a new web tool that helps you know the meaning and pronunciation of words instantly with the click of a button.

Reading regularly, aloud, will help your speaking dramatically. It will also help to improve your ear for English as well. The more you hear English the better you will understand it. Your goal is to immerse yourself in English, as if you were living in Canada.

4) What about frequency?

How many times a week and for how long? I am going to tell you the truth here. To see a difference with minimal effort, you need to do something everyday. Maybe take one day off or the weekend but minimum 5 days a week for 30 mins. Think of it like muscle…if you work out regularly your muscles get stronger. If you don’t work out for a month and then do a full workout, you are going to be sore the next day. So keep your English flexible and strong. Every day for 30 mins.

That is it. Four things that you can do to improve your English.

If you would like something similar to a weekly plan look at the following idea:

MONDAY:
During your commute to work, listen to English podcasts that you find interesting OR read a magazine, novel or anything in English. (Obviously NOT during your commute if you are driving!)

TUESDAY:
Try to find an intercambio (a language exchange). Get together for some conversation over a coffee or a beer for an hour. You could do an hour of English and an hour of your native language to help them learn.

Meetup.com is a great resource for finding groups of people with similar interests. Or just look in the classifieds of a newspaper or online.

WEDNESDAY:
Sign up for a free course from livemocha.com. They have 4 courses that can help you improve all aspects of your English.

As you are a higher level they may be too basic for you but try the fourth course and see if it is appropriate.

THURSDAY:
Watch a movie in English or watch a TV episode in English. If this is too hard, which it with English subtitles as well.

If you have satellite TV, change all movies to the original version and watch them in English.

FRIDAY:
Review some grammar, phrasal verbs or idioms to help express yourself more naturally. Use a grammar text book or websites from the internet.

Try to choose phrasal verbs or idioms that are useful to you so that you will use them frequently.

SATURDAY:
Go out and see a movie in original version, then have another intercambio with a native speaker.

SUNDAY:
Relax, but try to think in English. :)

These are just some of many ideas to help you improve your English.

The importance of proper and improper English

2022-12-02T10:25:33.206Z

What not speaking proper English teaches you about language—and about life

“LET’S talk properly.” Tom Sherrington had little reason to think that his blog post, so titled, would cause controversy. A British consultant and former head teacher, he had called on educators to work harder at getting their students to stop saying things like “We done lots of great activities” and “I ain’t done nothing.” He recycled the blog post recently on Twitter—to a fierce and (to him) surprising backlash from linguists.

Led by Rob Drummond, a linguist at Manchester Metropolitan University, and joined by Oliver Kamm, a journalist at the Times, critics focused in particular on the word “properly”, along with related words like “correct”. The ding-dong perfectly encapsulates the way academic linguists (especially sociolinguists, who focus on things like class) see standard English, and how teachers do.

The biggest misunderstanding is about the nature of dialects, especially urban ones. (Country dialects get a pass, for being quaint.) Teachers see “I ain’t done nothing” as simply wrong. But linguists have found that dialects are rule-governed, coherent and fully expressive, and have written extensive grammars of them. They sound “broken” only to outsiders who don’t know their rules.

The debate, of course, also has a political dimension. The London teens who say “We done lots of great activities” are likely to have other social strikes against them, especially being poor or non-white, with parents who themselves are not highly educated. Poverty and lack of formal education are behind the mistaken belief that these dialects themselves are somehow defective. If the people who speak them are poor, goes the faulty reasoning, their impoverished and fractured language must be part of what holds them back.

In a long follow-up, Mr Sherrington reframed “proper” as “appropriate”: children must speak and write the correct variety of English for school. For their part, Mr Drummond and Mr Kamm agree that of course “standard English” exists, that it is valuable and that children need to learn it—poor children most of all. All sides agree that although it can be spoken with any accent, it does not permit “I done” or “he ain’t”.

What is at issue is how to teach the standard kind of English to children who speak something else at home. For the sociolinguists, there certainly is a place for dialect, even if it ain’t in the job interview or the lecture hall. All language varieties are valuable to their speakers; they give a sense of community and belonging. For a child to come to school and be told that how he speaks and how his parents speak is embarrassing—something he must abandon—is more likely to make him think school is not for him than it is to get him hitting the books trying to learn to speak like Henry Higgins in Shaw’s “Pygmalion” (“My Fair Lady” on the big screen). As in that story, contempt for other people’s speech only tends to drive them away.

But a change of mentality can remove a lot of the tension in the debate. All children in Britain and America do need standard English. But they do not need it all the time. Indeed, there is absolutely no need for them to abandon their home speech; people are perfectly able to switch speech varieties. Watch the many talented black American comedians, from Richard Pyror to Eddie Murphy to the duo of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, whose effortless swapping between a buttoned-up English and black vernacular is played for laughs. For plenty of people this is a survival skill, one that deserves respect. Fortunately, it can also be taught.

The core of doing so is recognising how language varies naturally by occasion. Both teachers and students should be taught to think about this variation with curiosity. If both dialects and the standard are valuable, what is interesting is just when, and how, people switch between them. Children can learn to recognise the differences, and even translate from one to the other. One classic study in Chicago of “contrastive analysis”—essentially of black students trained to translate their native “we was” into the standard “we were”—found a 59% reduction in the usage of the “we was” style. (A control group drilled in traditional methods showed a slight increase.) The group with contrastive analysis not only discovered something about English. In learning to navigate race, class and the importance of the right words at the right time, they also learned something deeper about the world where they will grow up to use it.

Don’t ditch standard English. Teach it better

2022-12-02T09:55:55.605Z

ther dialects have their place. But the standard version remains vital

Oct 2nd 2021

Teaching english as a first language is not easy—many youngsters leave school feeling they never quite mastered its finer points. Recently some commentators have been wondering whether the standard version of English really deserves to be singled out as “proper” and worthy of teaching at all. The debate they set off has been unedifying because of entrenched views that have as much to do with politics as with language.

Listen to this story.

Speaking recently to the Daily Telegraph, Willem Hollmann of Lancaster University argued that standard English is not uniquely “correct”. This view is common among linguists. Today’s standard English just happens to descend from the dialect prevailing near the seats of power (London) and learning (Oxford and Cambridge) at the critical time when printing took off. It uses “you were”, and not “you was”, only because that dialect did so—not because “you were” is more logical. (If standard English were logical, “to be” would have a single past-tense form, as every other verb does.)

Linguists know perfectly well, though, that standard English does have a social superiority, if not a grammatical one. It is the language of serious writing (including linguistics journals) and formal speech. It binds together Dorset, Kent, Yorkshire and London, as well as Alabama, Massachusetts and California. It can be spoken with any accent, allowing a speaker from Belfast to talk to one from Johannesburg or Auckland with little misunderstanding. There is nothing wrong with black vernacular American or Yorkshire English; they just don’t happen to be the dialect that newspapers are written in, or parliamentary debates are conducted in. Both halves of that proposition are equally true, and pupils should be apprised of both.

But when linguists make this case, they are often misconstrued as saying students should not be marked down if, for instance, they write “you was” instead of “you were” when deploying standard English. No longer considering “you was” to be incorrect in formal prose would imply the end of any standard at all.

Even from the left-wing perspective that many academics share, that would be counterproductive. Sociolinguists are at pains to point out that all dialects are valuable to their speakers—Yorkshire English and so on persist for that very reason. But standard English is valuable to its speakers too. It is dear to those lucky enough to have it as their native tongue (a category that includes most newspaper columnists). But it is also hugely important to those many strivers who didn’t grow up with it—yet hope to master it, so that they can join the wider community around the world that uses it.

And there are ways to inculcate it without resorting to snobbery. To begin with, it helps to avoid irrelevant pet peeves. In a column in the Times replying to Mr Hollmann and supposedly sticking up for standard English, Clare Foges was distracted by things like accent (saying fencin for fencing), slang (including the British tag-question innit?) and minor variations such as off of in place of off.

These ephemera have nothing whatever to do with standard English. “G-dropping” isn’t lazy, merely an accent; it used to be an upper-class habit, too. Nor does relaxed have to mean incorrect: innit may not be common in the boardroom, but it has its place in casual British English. And off of is standard in America, if not in Britain.

Pedagogues have already devised thoughtful approaches for teaching standard English without making students feel stupid for speaking another variety. Linguists like Mr Hollmann are working to get these techniques into classrooms.In the early years, they might include what are in effect translation exercises, getting kids to take the “you was” of their home English and turn it into “you were” for essays. In advanced classes, that sort of task may open up the chance to talk about things like dialects, class and power. Mr Hollmann says all this makes for a “deeper, more engaging and more inclusive discussion of standard English”—not an elimination of it.

Yes, standard English stems from the vernacular of power in the 1500s, and is preferred by a middle- and upper-class, mostly white elite today. Some academic types hang labels like “hegemonic” on it. So be it; but it was also the English that Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela enlisted to fight for change. Mandela learned Afrikaans, too, while imprisoned on Robben Island. He did not reject the languages of his oppressors. He knew that changing their minds first required knowing how to reach them.

Eccentric Linguist

Success & Self Development

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Their subjects include financial scandals, a witness to the Holocaust and cell theory

Politics and current affairs

Business and economics

Biography and memoir

History

Fiction

Culture and ideas

Science and technology

Your 4 Step Plan to Improve Your English

Your 4 Step Plan toImprove Your English

The importance of proper and improper English

What not speaking proper English teaches you about language—and about life

Don’t ditch standard English. Teach it better

ther dialects have their place. But the standard version remains vital

Your 4 Step Plan to
Improve Your English