[books 2008] Start the Week selections

[inulro]

Two more books that I heard about when their authors were promoting them on Radio 4's Start the Week:

36. The Wisdom of Whores - Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Politics of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani

Pisani spent ten years as an epidemiologist researching AIDS throughout the world. Before that she was a journalist. This book is about how the science to stop AIDS in its tracks was available fairly early on, but policy never followed through - because it involves honestly talking about two things people don't like to talk about: sex and drugs. She supplies plenty of anecdotes (?case studies) from her time in the field, mostly with sex workers in Indonesia. This is a wonderful, entertainingly written, angry-making book. I got it from the library but am considering buying my own copy so I can foist it on other people.


37. The Phoenix: St. Paul's Cathedral And The Men Who Made Modern London by Leo Hollis

I can't resist anything about the history of London, even though this is not generally a period that does much for me. It encompasses the period from the Civil War and the plague and Great Fire, to the completion of the new St Paul's early in the 18th century. This coincides with the material covered in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and is concerned with very similar themes - the New Philosophy, founding of the Royal Academy, Hooke, Newton, Wren. The technical architecture bits occasionally baffled me, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed this. Definitely recommended.

Comments

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Both of those sound interesting - I'm working in HIV epidemiology at the moment, and I've certainly been disabused of a few myths in my six months working at the HPA. I think there's a copy floating around the department, I'll try to grab it.

I loved the Baroque Cycle, so I'll have to look out for the second book you mention. I'm reading The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow at the moment which covers similar ground (and is narrated by The Principia Mathematica, which is a bonus).

I gather London was almost rebuilt on a grid system but the legalities of property ownership proved to be too complicated, does it say if that was the case?

[inulro.livejournal.com]

That was part of it - they widened all the streets during the rebuild and had to reimburse the property owners for the space the new streets took up. The rebuilt city was closer to a grid system than the pre-Fire city, but the designs were for a grid system with big boulevards, as had already happened in parts of Paris.

I've been meaning to read The Last Witchfinder for a while. At this rate I'm going to become an expert on the late 17th and early 18th centuries without wanting to.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

We went to the Museum of London last month, where they showed the various designs that were proposed and talked about how the street boundaries were pinned out, but not in great detail.

I'd highly recommend a visit if you've not been there, I had no idea about a lot of the pre-medieval history, e.g. that the city was largely abandoned for centuries after the Romans.