Books

GORDON Burn is clearly no friend of new Labour or the hypocrisy of the Blairs and Browns of this world and a number of reviewers have praised his book Born Yesterday to the skies as a sharp commentary on contemporary events and the way the in which media treat them, but this reviewer remains sceptical.

AS the debate on the European Reform Treaty begins in the House of Lords, ex-President of the Institute of Employment Rights Bill Wedderburn QC offers his informed opinion on the Reform Treaty, the draft constitution and whether we need a referendum.

GORDON PARSONS finds a senior CIA veteran demanding a more brutal assault on Islam.

PATRICK COCKBURN'S reputation is well established. He has been reporting from Iraq since 1978 and is one of the few journalists who still travel courageously outside the fortified Green Zone without an armed escort.

DYLAN once sang about A Simple Twist Of Fate and this concept is explored in a novel about how modern history could have been altered by such twists of fate.

DEAR Shameless Death is a wonderful if sometimes rather difficult read that tells the fascinating and occasionally brutal tale of a young girl growing up in modern-day Turkey.

BRIXTON teenager Dennis Huggins's future is bleak, even though his family knows the dangers and looks out for him. His contemporaries are not so lucky and it is inevitable that he is drawn into a racist world of drug dealing, guns, black-on-black violence and murder.

JOHN GREEN is impressed by Monbiot's take on the state of the world.

THE people of Lebanon who live south of the Litani River are used to wars, but they never saw anything like the 34-day war of summer 2006.

FRENCH sociologist Pierre Bourdieu lived through some interesting times.