'Indian Food Made Easy' by Anjum Anand

Over the past year or so I've made 39 of the 70 recipes in this book, some of them multiple times, so I feel like I'm in a reasonably good place to review it.

The experience of making recipes from this book was revelatory: having never made a curry from scratch before I found the intensity of the flavours incredible compared to shop bought, takeaway, and even many restaurant curries. Making dishes from this book led me to seeking out other cookbooks, making better and more interesting meals, and therefore improving my quality of life. For that, I will always be thankful to this book, regardless of the fact that it is probably not the best Indian cookbook available: the photography is of inconsistent quality, some of the instructions could be better written, and personally I was not interested in the fusion dishes.

The book serves its purpose well as a gentle introduction to Indian cooking. I imagine those with prior experience will find little of interest here, and will likely consider the recipes very basic, but if you are new to Indian cooking then regardless of your skill level this is a good place to start.

__________

Some of the author's comments in the book's introduction have dated and now seem a bit bizarre. Apparently, it used to be accepted wisdom that Indian food was unhealthy, an allegation the author hopes to refute. There is also a much wider array of Indian food available now in shops and restaurants compared to the situation Anand describes. Perhaps, we could therefore see the book (first published 2007) as part of an extremely successful cultural shift around Indian food over the past few decades.

Recipes are divided into nine sections: Light Meals & Snacks, Chicken, Meat, Fish & Seafood, Vegetables, Lentils & Beans, Bread & Rice, Raitas & Chutneys, Drinks & Desserts.

The vast majority of the recipes I cooked just for our household of two, but we also had friends over to sample our favourites as part of a larger meal consisting of a chicken or meat curry, a prawn or vegetable dish, a lentil curry, and rice or naan or both, and sometimes a raita. It was easy to adapt the recipes for vegan or vegetarian friends with only simple substitutions of fake chicken and vegan yoghurt.

Light Meals and Snacks (4/10 recipes made)

This section contains recipes which are the gentlest introduction to Indian cooking, and may be more fusion than traditional. Chicken Tikka Wraps, Tandoori Lamb Wraps, Paneer & Mushroom Wraps, Chilli Cheese Toast, Masala Scrambled Eggs. Tortillas are used rather than Indian flatbread in the wraps, and the chicken wrap even contains cheddar cheese - Anand says that the cheese was first introduced to please tourists but has now become standard. 

I didn't think these recipes sounded particularly exciting and only made the Cheese on Toast and Scrambled Eggs, which were both fine, but if you are already aware that seasonings can be added to these dishes then they are nothing special. However, I can imagine them being a pleasant introduction to the spices for someone more accustomed to blander food.

Of the more traditional sounding recipes in this section, I made the Semolina Pilaff and the Savoury Semolina Cake (Handvo). 

The pilaff was an excellent quick snack which I would happily make and eat again. I made the cake to take to a work fuddle as a bit of gamble, and both myself and my colleagues were initially sceptical of the idea of a savoury mixed vegetable cake, but were quickly converted after the first mouthful. It tasted incredible and was texturally divine: the crispiness, the sponginess, and all the vegetable textures. I absolutely want this to become a regular in my household.

Chicken (8/9 recipes made)

Recommended Chicken Recipes: Goan Coconut Chicken Curry, Oven-Fried Chilli Chicken, My Chicken Korma, Classic Northern Chicken Curry, Mangalorean Chicken. The Northern and Mangalorean dishes I have made on multiple occasions, and all the rest listed here I intend to make again at some point.

The remaining chicken dishes - Chicken in Creamy Yoghurt, Green Coriander Chicken, and Chicken with Peppercorns and Shredded Ginger - were not unpleasant but did not stand out compared to the better dishes.

I had no interest in making the Chicken Burgers fusion dish.

Meat (4/9 recipes made)

This section should really have been called Lamb, because no other meat is used - apart from chicken which gets its own section?

I found the Himalayan Lamb and Yoghurt Curry extremely disappointing, though at some point I do intend to try making it again with better quality lamb. The supermarket lamb I used was probably not good enough to give this simple dish enough flavour. I used lamb from a butchers for the Easy All-In-One Lab Curry, and it was great, so I do think that is what went wrong with my attempt at the Himalayan recipe.

Both the Honey-Roasted Spicy Leg of Lamb and Herby Lamb Chops sounded incredible, and they were certainly pleasant, but I didn't think either was good enough to justify the effort of making it or the cost of the meat.

I would still like to make other recipes in this section - in particular, North Indian Lamb Curry and Dry Coconut Lamb - if I can justify to myself the cost of lamb from a butchers. 

This section also contains an overtly fusion dish (Lamb Burgers with Herbed Yoghurt) and something which looks like a fusion pasta dish but is described as traditional (Curried Lamb Meatballs - served with noodles not pasta), neither of which I was interested in making.

Fish & Seafood (6/12 recipes made)

The two prawn curries I made - Mangalorean Prawn Curry and Prawn Balchao - are my two favourite recipes in this book. Gorgeous mixtures of flavours and spices that work incredibly with the both the texture and and taste of good quality prawns.

The Coconut Mackerel Curry was also excellent, while the North Indian Fish Curry and Green Fish Curry were both pleasant but underwhelming. The Coconut and Chilli Pan-Fried Halibut was a definitely superior to plain battered/bread-crumbed fish, but is not something I am likely to cook regularly.

Vegetables (6/14 recipes made)

The Southern Indian Mixed Vegetable Dish (Avial), Fried Spiced Okra (which we nicknamed 'Okra Chips'), and Paneer with Spinach are excellent as part of a feast, providing great textural contrast to other dishes, though I would not recommend them as meals in themselves.

The Spinach with Tomatoes, Stir-Fried Spring Onions, Aubergine Cooked in Yoghurt were underwhelming.

The other recipes I've not tried include two peanut salads, two sweetcorn dishes, two potato dishes, stir-friend cabbage, and stuffed jalapenos. I'm tempted to make the Five-seed Potatoes as well as the Stir-Fried Nigella Cabbage in future. 

Lentil and Beans (5/6 recipes made)

I was very happy with the curries in this section, and the toasted spiced chickpeas make a decent side dish. However, the Broad Bean Thoran was extremely bland and is probably the dish I liked least out of the entire book. 

On my second time making the Spinach and Lentil Curry, I used tomato puree as a substitute for the 'small tomatoes' and used ready chopped frozen spinach leaves, which made the recipe even simpler and, in my opinion, tastier and more aesthetically pleasing.

The first time I made the Garlic and Chilli Slit Pigeon Pea Curry, I accidentally burnt the garlic which made the dish very bitter. On the second try, the garlic was unburnt and it was great.

I've still to make the Buttery Black Lentils (Makhni Dahl), but I intend to make it in the next month or so.

Bread & Rice (3/9 recipes made)

I've made the Basmati Rice, Spinach Pilaff, and Mushroom Pilaff. The Spinach Pilaff is our favourite so far as the bright greenness of blended fresh spinach makes it stand out on the table. Looking through the rice recipes again while writing this review has made me realise that I should make the other rice recipes: Lemon Rice, Coconut Rice, Creamy Rice & Lentils, Simple Pilaff.

I cannot be bothered to make my own bread.

Raitas & Chutneys (1/5 recipes made)

The Cucumber and Mint Raita is refreshingly cooling, and I might get round to the other recipes in this section in future.

Drinks and Desserts (2/14 recipes made)

The Masala Tea wasn't for me, and the Coconut Sweets were delicious but I didn't cook them for long enough so they didn't set properly. Hopefully I'll get round to making some of the other recipes in this section; friends I've spoken to have said that they've never used the desserts sections of the Indian cookery books they own, and I would like to break that trend.

'Greater' by Penny Mordaunt & Chris Lewis

I got a copy of Penny Mordaunt's book when she was one of the frontrunners to win the Conservative leadership contest back in summer.

I was originally intending to write a proper review of it, but the experience of reading it has been so exhausting and frustrating that I do not want to spend that much energy on it. While there was the occasional interesting observation or argument which I could either get behind or constructively disagree with, it is not those that spring to mind when I think about the book.

What comes to mind is the inane waffle that pads out the word count; words for the sake of words, the literary equivalent of filibustering. The parts that are potentially interesting or worth reading are utterly drowned by a relentless deluge of shallow cultural commentary, tedious rehashes of already stale arguments, groan-inducing attempts at humour, and excessively long lists.

So. Many. Lists.

Every few pages there is an atrociously long list. Used sparingly, such lists could be good for humour or emphasis, but there are SO MANY of them, and some of them are SO LONG. A few times I verbally exclaimed in frustration when I reached the next one.

The book is appallingly written; all the padding gives it the feel of a rushed AS level essay written the night before the deadline. I am quite confident that at least 50% could be cut out, leaving behind an at least slightly better book.

However, a shorter book wouldn't look so impressive. The physical copy is a nice edition. The cover design is elegant, and its thickness gives it a satisfying weight and the illusion of depth and seriousness. It perfectly encapsulates the way politicians adopt the aesthetics of intelligence and competence to hide the shallowness of their thinking - see Jacob Rees-Mogg for a particularly extreme example of this tactic.

The book comes recommended by various political or business figures - Bill Gates wrote the foreword, and blurbs are provided by the likes of Tony Blair, Richard Branson, Elton John, and more. Assuming those quotes are genuine recommendations and not just a friendly favour, this is a damning indictment of our political class.

If you ever wanted a physical manifestation of the sheer intellectual and imaginative bankruptcy of the political class, then this book is for you!

Some excerpts:

'Failures of State' by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott

Despite me not being completely ignorant of how bad the UK government's response to the pandemic was, I still found this book shocking. It is a relentless catalogue of bad decisions, made by a government both callous and incompetent. Working in a hospital through COVID, the book put some things I remembered into a wider context.

I remembered colleagues sharing photos of the PPE worn by healthcare staff in other countries, and comparing it to the flimsy aprons we were given. Public Health England downgraded the threat ranking of Covid-19, which meant that only basic PPE needed to be worn, according to health and safety laws, and this was a way of getting around the shortage of PPE caused by the pandemic stockpile being allowed to run down or expire over the austerity decade.

I remembered the mixed messages given about masks, and learnt that there was a government desire early on in the pandemic to minimise the effectiveness of masks to the public, because there were fears that masks might run out if everyone rushed out to get them. The government was trying to buy as many commercially available masks as possible for the NHS, because of the austerity-ravaged stockpile. This then, obviously, backfired later when masks were made mandatory.

What shocked me the most was how much the politicians rejected scientific advice, or never sought it. The scientific advisors first heard about Eat Out To Help Out on the day it was announced to the public. Same with the nonsensical tier system. The government announced many changes to restrictions without asking for any modelling work to estimate the impact on infections or the NHS.

I remember the 'I back Boris 100% he's doing his best in a bad situation' crowd on social media being roundly mocked at the time, but there was nevertheless a sizeable chunk of the population who were sympathetic towards the government, believing them to be doing their best, making tough decisions while following the best scientific advice available. Unfortunately, that is a poisonous fiction.

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry will be the Johnson administration's Chilcott, and hopefully its outcome will have actual consequences for those whose terrible decisions led to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

I do recommend this book a lot. I learnt a lot from it, and it has made me even more disillusioned with our political system. 

In a just country, Matt Hancock would at least be a disgraced ex-politician, not a pseudo-celebrity joining a reality TV show while trying to flog a book. In a just country, Rishi Sunak would never have become Prime Minister, and even the thought of Boris Johnson returning as PM would have been anathema to all of the political class. Alas, that is not the country we live in.

UK Doomsday Preppers

 I watched a documentary on UK Doomsday Preppers this morning, and I was struck by how much the prepper mindset is rooted in, and fuelled by, social isolation and loneliness. The preppers' apocalyptic fantasies either serve as an affirmation of the individual's present isolation, or as an imagined negation of it. 

There are preppers whose fantasies are all about individual survival: a solitary badass macho man, sometimes accompanied by his immediate nuclear family, hiding away from the imagined evils of a society crumbling around them, surviving and thriving due to the Great Man's ingenuity and resourcefulness. Strength in isolation.

One has hidden a large cache in a hut in the Welsh countryside; he gets his family to do drills regularly, where they quickly pack their things, leave their Stockport home, and drive to the Welsh hideaway to practice living simply, away from the society whose imminent collapse they imagine. Really, it's just an elaborate excuse for a camping holiday.

Another has his supplies hidden on a small uninhabited island in the middle of a river, which he can navigate to with a kayak. He imagines he could survive alone on the island for several months, living off either his supplies or the island's flora and fauna. He does not mention the negative psychological consequences of a lack of human interaction, probably because they are such a constant in his present life that he sees them as normal.

On the other extreme, there are the preppers who imagine that the apocalypse would grant them opportunity for socialisation and community that they have been denied under present society. 

One prepper has stocked up on equipment for 'about a dozen like-minded people', who he imagines he will meet in the ruins. Crucially, they are not the friends and family he knows today, but imaginary future friends whom society is currently preventing him from meeting. He also imagines that 'because of [his] resources and knowledge, [he] would probably have leadership thrust upon [him].'

Another, who explains that she lives in an area that is majority Muslim, has several copies of the Qur'an in her doomsday supplies, which she might need to read during the apocalypse in order to fit in with her wider community. 

There's a latent curiosity apparent in this fantasy; she could, of course, read the Qur'an right now, get to know her neighbours, become active in the community, all of her own free will. Literally no one is stopping her but herself. But instead of doing that, she imagines apocalypses which force her to do all those things.

She also has a stockpile of condoms and lube, because sex is one of the few easily accessible comforts during an apocalypse, and you never know you will meet as society collapses, so it's best to be prepared.

Some people would rather spend £1000s on army surplus equipment and non-perishable food, than get therapy or learn social skills. One could also make a wider and deeper point about atomization, the breakdown of community, and the need for greater mental health services and therapy options in our hyper-individualistic capitalist society, but that's not something I can really be bothered going into in this particular Facebook post.

'Pennyblade' by J.L. Worrad

Grimdark is a genre I tend to bounce off, so I was a bit apprehensive going into this, and some quite unpleasant scenes early on were off-putting (there is an attempted sexual assault in the first chapter, and a bit later on some really horrific ableism). However, I am very glad I persevered, because once it really got going I was hooked. The fictional world is well drawn and fascinating. The story has good depth and complexity, with a heartfelt romance at its core, nuanced characters, and insightful-but-not-in-your-face commentary on the real world. 

Masks, literal and metaphorical, play an important role in the story: characters are often hiding their true selves behind superficial facades. And so is the book. As the protagonist's vulgarity and unpleasantness hides her inner sensitivity and vulnerability until her mask slips, so too does the book's gruesomeness obscure the work's emotional core and social commentary, until Worrad chooses to let the mask slip.

Discussing one of his novels, China Mieville said 'Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they’re not absurd.' That quote came back to me while reading Pennyblade. Worrad's fantasy race - the Commrach, elf-like humanoids related to cats - go into heat every year and become sex mad. Worrad has clearly spent a lot of time thinking how this aspect of their biology would affect the culture of an intelligent species as it developed civilisation. He's taken this ridiculous idea very seriously, and created a convincing culture for the Commrach, who are understandably more relaxed about sex compared to humans, and, being cat-like, are very up themselves.

There is a lot of sex in the book, which I would normally find quite tiresome, but I was impressed by the way Worrad described it. At no point did I feel like I was supposed to be getting aroused by what was being described; there was none of the cringe-inducing eroticism I normally expect from sex scenes. Instead, the sex is described with language that is a mixture of bluntly matter-of-fact and oddly poetic, which is at times hilarious, grim-in-a-funny-way. Tellingly, it is only the casual, meaningless sex scenes that are described; hidden 'off camera', but made reference to, are the private, meaningful, intimate acts between two lovers.

After finishing the book I'm better able to reflect on the unpleasant scenes I found off-putting near the beginning. I do think that having an attempted sexual assault in the first chapter was unnecessary and starts the book off on the wrong foot. However, the horrendous ableism serves a greater purpose within the story.

The Commrach civilisation in the book has a belief system like real-world eugenics. They are working towards 'the final countenance', the perfect form, and members of the society see themselves as vessels for the Blood to be passed on to the next generation through selective breeding.

I came to this book having recently read [book:Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics|59693838], so the real world links were very fresh in my mind: eugenicist thoughts and beliefs have scarred our culture and society, and continue to influence those in power. In Britain during the pandemic, eugenicist ideas were being openly discussed and flirted with by people at the top of government. It is probably no coincidence that the virus was largely allowed to run rampant through care homes, and COVID patients with learning disability were often given blanket Do Not Resuscitate notices. 

Worrad does not shy away from showing how unpleasant the eugenicist mindset is, and how damaging it is. These views, espoused early in the novel by the Commrach protagonist, highlight how unpleasant Commrach society is, and forms part of the protagonist's character arc throughout the novel. It also highlights a very real bigotry in our world - a bigotry that is more common than we'd like to believe, and one that is often forgotten. Worrad's fictional eugenicists are used to great effect in one particular scene (when the book's gruesome mask slips) to highlight the implicit eugenics of free market capitalism.

Overall I was extremely impressed by this book, and if you get the audiobook, the narrator does a frankly incredible job. I look forward to Worrad's next one.

'Flat Earth News' by Nick Davies; 'Bad News' by Mark Pack

Two books on how awful the news industry is, which I read in parallel. 

I was impressed with 'Flat Earth News' (2008) by Nick Davies, which is about how and why so much falsehood ends up in the news. His titular 'flat earth news' refers to stories which appear true but would quickly be shown to be false if anyone bothered to check. It's a book about fake news and the need for fact-checking way before those topics became so massive in the public consciousness, post-2016.

A lot of mainstream coverage of these topics, by journalists not wanting to attack their own profession and colleagues, has pinned the blame on social media. Davies shows that all that falsehood and distortion is a product of decades-long trends in the news industry. The Internet and social media has accelerated those trends, dialling them up to 11.

He opens the book by explaining that a lot of news industry criticism is done by outsiders who don't actually know how the industry works, so their analyses miss an awful lot and tend to focus on a few basics: the influence of advertisers and owners.

Newspapers want to please their advertisers; owners want their papers to push certain lines. As a result, the news industry presents a version of reality that is acceptable to corporate advertisers and billionaire media moguls. Davies accepts that advertisers and owners do influence editorial decisions, but far less than popular media criticism would have you believe.

Advertisers don't care that much about the political stances of where the adverts show up, as long as people are seeing the adverts. The only time that advertisers properly influence the editorial line is when the story is directly about the advertiser - such as when the Daily Telegraph refused to run stories about HSBC's money laundering, because the bank was one of their big advertisers. 

Historically, a lot of newspaper owners wanted their papers to push their political opinions - they were propaganda outlets first and foremost, a way for the wealthy to push for what they thought was positive social and political change. However, through the 20th century, newspapers were bought up by corporate owners who saw the papers primarily as a business which made a profit. They would still influence the paper's line when doing so would benefit the business, but the motivation was profit and business growth - not the desire for particular social and political change.

In order to increase profits, the new owners cut staffing numbers, and wanted the remaining journalists to write more and cheaper stories, which fuelled the rise of 'churnalism' - writing stories based largely on material already written by someone else - and meant a massive reduction in the time that journalists had to properly check their stories. 

The quality and veracity of the stories didn't matter, so long as the paper was making a profit. Reporters were encouraged to make stories out of anything they could to fill space - especially on the local papers. I thought a lot about Nottinghamshire Live when reading this book.

Churnalists are reliant on others having written the stories, and so the majority of news stories are reproductions or slight rewordings of press releases, PR, and stories from news agencies.

Wire agencies are like the news industry wholesalers - they write stories which are then purchased by news outlets to present to the public, either reproduced word-for-word, or altered and expanded upon depending on the outlet. Different papers and websites have almost exactly the same story in almost exactly the same words because they've all purchased the same story from the same wire agency. 

This is far more obvious to see nowadays with online news, but back when people would read just one newspaper, it would be unlikely that the readers would notice that almost the exact same report appeared in multiple papers.

The wire agencies have also suffered from staffing cuts over the years, and the demand for more and cheaper stories has led to a decline in both the range of topics covered and the quality of the stories for sale.

There's an excellent chapter on the various ways the PR industry manipulates and colludes with journalists, and the various tricks PR companies use to create pseudo-news and pseudo-events, with fake grassroots (astro turf) organizations, and fake experts (who are just PR employees). Reporters desperate for stories will happily run something handed to them ready-written by a PR agency and present it as news. Many journalists are in regular contact with PR agencies, requesting stories from them that fit certain themes. 

PR companies understand the time pressures that journalists are under, and know that they are extremely unlikely to check whether the story they're given is true. And so, too, do politicians, government press officers, and the intelligence agencies. 

There's another excellent chapter on media manipulation by intelligence agencies. If you visit some of the more paranoid far-left places on the Internet, you'll likely encounter people who label everything they disagree with as CIA propaganda, and any media figure (incl. YouTubers) or outlet that is insufficiently left-wing will be accused of being CIA-funded. Davies' exploration of Cold War CIA activity shows there is a bit of grounding to this paranoia. 

After 9/11, the US and UK's strategic communications (propaganda) operations were massively expanded. Davies explores this through a few case studies of misinformation, and by attending a conference on the subject and speaking to a lot of people directly involved (on condition that the quotes are not attributed to a name). 

One of his sources paints a hilarious-yet-terrifying picture of state disinformation campaigns: all these different agencies and teams, are each putting out their own misinformation, but doing so in a chaotic, uncoordinated fashion, so that false information put out by one agency, another agency will pick up and treat as legitimate intelligence. And that's before we even start to think about the chaos caused by the misinformation campaigns of hostile regimes.

Journalistic time pressures; the inability to check stories; manipulation by PR, politicians, press officers, and propagandists. These are major systemic causes of the falsehood, distortion, and trivia in the media, which ultimately presents a version of reality favourable towards the powerful and the wealthy. And then we can add in the influence of advertisers, owners, and the fact that most journalists come from similar middle class and upwards backgrounds (because getting into the industry often involves unpaid internships), and we can start to see why news media is so full of falsehood, why the reality it presents is so detached from the lived reality of ordinary people.

I was pleased with this book, it made me even more disillusioned with the news media industry. 

(The final three chapters are, admittedly, weaker than the rest of the book: they are case studies looking at the decline of particular newspapers - The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail - and Davies unfortunately gets a bit too personal in his attacks on specific journalists.)

'Bad News' by Mark Pack is a guide to spotting distortion and falsehood when you're reading the news. It is quite handy having all this advice in one book, but the chapters are each broken down into smaller sub-chapters which each feel like the length of a blog post. Pack makes reference to his blog multiple times, and this book unfortunately feels like a series of blog posts but together. Each topic is covered briefly, and there is very little sense of a narrative building throughout the book. The short sub-chapters meant the flow of reading was often interrupted. I found it enjoyable to dip into, but not so enjoyable to read for a prolonged period. The footnotes were also annoying, adding further interruption to the flow (in many cases the information in the footnotes could easily have been omitted, or incorporated into the text proper).

'Permanent Record' by Edward Snowden

Had a weird moment towards the end of Edward Snowden's book when he mentions that he had his 30th birthday while in Hong Kong hiding from the press and secret services. I'm currently the same age as Snowden was when he became the most famous whistleblower in the world - my 30th birthday is this coming Thursday - and I cannot imagine myself ever being brave enough to do what he did.

Understanding how he became that whistleblower is, therefore, fascinating.

The most exciting chapters are, of course, towards the end when he actually gets round to the whistleblowing, when it becomes a real life globe-hopping spy thriller as he meets journalists to reveal the NSA's global surveillance system, and goes on the run, eventually ending up exiled in Moscow. 

(The US canceled his passport before he could get a connecting flight, and blocked other countries from allowing him asylum, thus enabling the US to discredit him by suggesting he is was a Russian agent all along. At the airport he is met by the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency, who do, of course, offer him a job, which he refuses. He had hoped to reach Equador.)

The earlier majority of the book is comparatively extremely bland, but this is where we get to know him more as a person, the forces and events that shaped him into becoming the Whistleblower - his origin story. 

He had a comfortable middle class upbringing, where both parents (who divorced in his teens) were patriotic government employees. He talks about his interest in computers and hacking, and reminisces about the Internet of the 90s which he sees as a golden age of freedom compared to the Internet of today.

He became adept at computing from a young age, and wanted to serve his country - he had been imbued with strong patriotic fervour by his parents - so after a failed stint in the army (discharged for medical reasons), he begins his career in the American intelligences agencies, initially at the CIA, eventually at the NSA.

He was very good at his job, was promoted very quickly, and got access to a lot of classified documents, and what he saw shook his faith in the government he was working for.

Ultimately, the mistake the NSA made was to promote him too highly when he still had a lot of idealism about what America should be, what America should represent, so his conscience rebelled against what he was seeing, reading, and doing at work.

In a particularly affective chapter, he describes a time when he was spying on a target via their laptop - the NSA can access any device's camera and microphone extremely easily. Through the laptop's camera, Snowden was watching the man work while the man's toddler son was fidgeting on his lap. The laptop's microphone picked up the toddler's giggling. Suddenly, the toddler looked directly into the laptop camera and stared at it. Snowden felt like the boy was looking directly at him, peering into his soul.

'Adults in the Room' by Yanis Varoufakis

Varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece during the Eurozone crisis. His memoir is a political thriller: he rushes from meeting to meeting trying to avert an impending disaster, while being demonised by the press, plotted against, and openly spied on. In a memorable scene, he tells an American colleague something over the phone, and that colleague immediate gets a call from the US National Security Council asking about about what he's just been told.

His memoir is also a Kafkaesque nightmare: he struggles to deal with the convoluted rules, bureaucracy, tricks, and backstabbing of the Troika. In another memorable scene, he is presented with a copy of an agreement to be signed by him at a Eurogroup meeting later that day; he reads the agreement and is happy with it; and then at the meeting he notices that the agreement presented to him to sign is completely different to the one he had been shown earlier. 

It is also a tragedy, since it ends in failure and betrayal (spoilers for real world events).

While it is definitely the best political memoir I've read so far, I wouldn't say it is a consistently enjoyable read: a light-hearted fun romp, it is not.

It is dense and packed full of policy details and financial jargon, and was therefore often exhausting and hard to concentrate on. Not being super familiar with many of the characters involved, I often got confused about who was who and what their job was. 

Prior to getting involved in Greek politics, Varoufakis was a professor of economics, and fond of protesting. His limited experience of the political arena - off the streets - meant he struggled with the theatre and the game of politics. While he may have had strong arguments, he and his team lacked the political skill and resources to sell those arguments within the machine and win the game against vastly more powerful and experienced adversaries. Varoufakis is often frustrated that while the people he is arguing against often agree with him in private (or at least say they do), in public and in official meetings they have to be against him because of the complex forces and political allegiances at play.

As Varoufakis notes at the end, the Eurozone crisis and the Greek calamity were huge factors in the growth of Euroscepticism and contributed to the Brexit vote. Certainly, the EU does not come across well in this book, and it has certainly made me feel far more negatively about the European institutions as they exist today. Varoufakis is in favour of European unity in principle but hopes the current set up can be massively reformed, or that something better could be built from its ashes when it falls apart.

The complexity of the European issue has made me convinced of two points:

1) The Brexit referendum should not have been held because the question was too complicated to be reduced to the tedious and mendacious binary campaign narratives of Leave and Remain.

2) As shit as Brexit has been, going against the referendum result would have been a disaster given how toxic the issue of democratic sovereignty had become, both in the UK and in the rest of the EU.