JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
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Hardly civilised
ALEX HALL asks whether ‘western civilisation’ is simply a disruptive polarisation in what was historically a diverse and interconnected world
BARBARITY: Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike where displaced people were staying in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Monday, May 27, 2024. Palestinian health workers said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 people in the area. US weapons are alleged to have been used in the assault.
[Jehad Alshrafi/AP]
NADIA JOSEPH welcomes a survey of the role that TV played in the debate over apartheid and race relations in Britain
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RON JACOBS welcomes a sharp, intelligent and witty exposé of the corruption and right-wing politics that have taken over international professional football
ALEX HALL welcomes the memoir of a prominent British academic of Ugandan/Zimbabwean heritage
JONATHAN TAYLOR reviews a collection of short stories wherein news - and the absence of news - changes lives
How The World Made The West
Josephine Quinn, Bloomsbury, £30
WHEN Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he replied he thought it might be a good idea. Josephine Quinn, in her survey of 4,000 years of history, implies Gandhi might have been being quite generous.
Western civilisation doesn’t have much definitively Western in it, and it’s wrong to think in terms of a civilisation. There aren’t really “peoples,” there are people who travelled, learned, borrowed, and adapted. And often “civilisation” doesn’t quite stand up its reputation.
“Western civilisation” sees itself as the direct inheritance of ancient Greece and Rome. Democracy, liberty, philosophy, theatre and concrete are bequeathed to the West, from the ancients, via the Renaissance.
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BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
RON JACOBS welcomes a book that tells the story of the far right in Greece from the perspective of migrants