Book Reviews

Rating: 5/5 Biography A Normal Family - The Surprising Truth About My Crazy Childhood (And How I Discovered 35 New Siblings) by Chrysta Bilton This book is the author’s story of growing up in America in a small and unconventional family setting. You cannot help but get drawn into a story that reads like pure fiction due entirely to the author’s uncoventional mother and her chosen lifestyle. ...

Rating: 5/5 Health Vitamin C: The Real Story by Steve Hickey and Andrew Saul This is the story of the simple compound vitamin C (or more correctly L-Ascorbic Acid) has been used by a small band of pioneering doctors and scientists to cure the supposedly incurable for more than half a century. The authors of this book are two scientists with first hand experience in the use of and the benefits of vitamin C treatments. ...

Rating: 4/5 Cycling The Art of Cycling by James Hibbard I picked this book up expecting it to be an account of how the author entered professional cycling and their progress in their professional career. It is all of this and more because this book is essentially two stories; one about cycling and the other about the history of philosophy and how this directly relates to the author’s own personal and intellectual journey. ...

Rating: 5/5 Health How Not To Die by Michael Greger MD After first reading this book and being really impressed by it nearly three years ago, I decided to revisit it again after a recent conversation with a doctor about cholesterol and blood pressure. His view is that these are often hereditory diseases that worsen with age and for which drugs offer the only real solution. ...

Rating: 4/5 Sci-Fi Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Although I don’t read a lot of science fiction, this book intrigued me because it had universally great reviews and is also written by the same author that created The Martian which turned into a movie of the same name starring Matt Damon. The movie is well worth seeing if you haven’t. ...

Rating: 5/5 Business Power Play Elon Musk, Tesla and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins Although Elon Musk is the central character in this book, this isn’t a book just about Elon Musk as much as it is the story of Tesla Motors itself. The book primarily tells the story of the original founders of Tesla and their ambition to create an electric sports car unlike anything seen before. And how that idea turned into one of the most highly valued car corporations in the world. ...

Rating: 5/5 History Our Man In New York The British Plot to Bring America into the Second World War by Henry Hemming It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that manipulating the public on a mass scale to deliver a desired outcome are recent developments exemplified by the UK Brexit vote or Donald Trump’s win of the US Presidency in 2016; and that these results were only possible thanks to the influence and manipulation by hidden actors using modern technologies like social media. ...

Rating: 4/5 Politics Diary Of An MP’s Wife Inside and Outside of Power by Sasha Swire I had reasonably low expectations for this book despite the generally positive reviews elsewhere because most political memoirs and exposés tend to be a bit dry and dull. Not so with this book which details Hugo Swire’s entry into and career in politics in which he was supported by his wife, the author in question. ...

Rating: 5/5 Health Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor While it’s pretty obvious that we need oxygen to survive, who knew that the way we breathe can have such an enormous positive or negative impact on our health. Nestor is a science writer who came to the topic of breathing after researching free diving; the practice of holding breath for minutes at a time and diving tens of metres below the surface of the sea. ...

Rating: 5/5 Finance The Art of Execution by Lee Freeman-Shor As a casual investor that wants to take a long term view in terms of stock and share investments, I assumed that books like this one would be more suited to serious money managers and day traders rather than someone like me. However the information in this book would be hugely beneficial to anyone that wants to invest in stocks and shares; regardless of their level of experience and knowledge. ...