Humphrey Hawksley » Books

Tough Choices Make for Bad Governance

Humphrey — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:19:35 +0000

In is weekly column, Harlan Ullman of the Atlantic Council writes about a new specter that is haunting the world with great vengeance.

“Today’s specter is bad governance,” he writes. “Bad governance tops the list of the real and potential disasters facing virtually all states. Unless or until this failing can be addressed, resolving other issues will be difficult if not impossible.”

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We, The Drowned

Humphrey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:47:32 +0000

From the genre of Conrad, Melville and O’Brian comes an ‘impressive seafaring saga We, the Drowned, which follows four generations of fictional sailors from the Danish author’s island birthplace between the years of 1848 to 1945.

So says Tim Martin in this Saturday’s Financial Times describing the novel by my friend Carsten Jensen as ‘rich, powerful and rewarding.”

Carsten is also the latest recipient of the Olaf Palme Prize, dedicated to the assasinated Swedish prime minister who championed human rights.

TO BUY:

The Courtesan and the Samurai

Humphrey — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:10:27 +0000

It is 1868 — In Japan’s exotic pleasure quarters sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love…..

Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable…..

Lesley Downer’s stunning new epic from the Far East is totally superb.

Click here: The Courtesan and the Samurai

Literature and the Glasgow Kiss

Humphrey — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:13:37 +0000

Many thanks to Andrew Kelly, Katrina Brodin and others for bringing me to Glagow’s Aye Write Book Festival. Their hospitality, conversation and tutelage in the origins of the Glasgow Kiss will be unforgettable. Thanks also to Marc Lambert for skillfully guiding my session on globalisation. With the raconteur and journalist Alex Perry, the urbane and challenging Dominique Moisi and a stimulating audience we teased out some crucial issues. I like this one:- One of the bigger fall outs from the Western economic crisis is that China has been given a seat at the top table a decade or so too early. The greed for bankers bonuses tilted the strategic balance of power.

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Broken society

Humphrey — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:16:09 +0000

The average income in Britain is around £20,000 which is not enough for a family to live on. Employers knows this, but the lower the wages the higher their bonuses. Therefore, both parents have to work full time. Because parents are too exhausted to raise their children society has become ‘broken.’ This was the conclusion around the dinner table last night to the question of how can anyone live on the average salary. What a dangerous economic balance for a society to get itself into!

The Economist & Democracy’s Decline

Humphrey — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:25:42 +0000

The Economist has published one of the most carefully argued pieces I have seen on the democracy debate.

Here is an extract, but I urge you read the whole article:- Click here: Crying for Freedom – Democracy’s Decline

For freedom-watchers in the West, the worrying thing is that the cause of liberal democracy is not merely suffering political reverses, it is also in intellectual retreat. Semi-free countries, uncertain which direction to take, seem less convinced that the liberal path is the way of the future. And in the West, opinion-makers are quicker to acknowledge democracy’s drawbacks—and the apparent fact that contested elections do more harm than good when other preconditions for a well-functioning system are absent. It is a sign of the times that a British reporter, Humphrey Hawksley, has written a book with the title: “Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About the Vote?”.

Click here: Democracy Kills

Swiss Minarets

Humphrey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:40:32 +0000

The mainly Christian Swiss have voted to ban the building of any more minarets on Muslim places of worship. Now is this liberal or illiberal democracy at work?

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Argentina, New York, Dubai — what lessons learnt?

Humphrey — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:54:59 +0000

In 2002, the Argentine economy collapsed because of excessive borrowing; in 2008. America and Europe came close because of excessive borrowing; in 2009, Dubai (yawn, yawn) because of….. Come on, bankers, give us a break!

You can Google to see how economies work or try page 187 of Democracy Kills — very simple; very readable.

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Asian Review of Books

Humphrey — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:23:21 +0000

Peter Gordon on Democracy Kills in the Asian Review of Books.

Hawksley has an uncanny ability to connect transnational dots in an uncomfortable matter. He writes fluently and easily, whether about Africa, the Middle East, Asia or the Balkans, with a knack for merging observation, anecdote, opinion and analysis, moving from place to place and topic to topic, never dwelling so long on any one point that it becomes repetitive. His descriptions of the chocolate trade in the Ivory Coast and the mess in Iraq are devastating, emotionally as well as intellectually.

Click here: Asian Review of Books — Democracy Kills

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End of whose history?

Humphrey — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:13:39 +0000

Kishore Mahbubani author of The New Asian Hemisphere pays tribute ot Francis Fukiyama in a stimulating piece in the New York Times. He argues that modernisation has spread across the world, but it has been accompanied by de-Westernisation and provocatively states that Francis Fukiyama’s famous essay End of History may have done some serious brain damage to Western minds…which believed that the ‘end of history’ equalled the triumph of the West.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/opinion/12iht-edmahbubani.html?_r=1&ref=global

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