Communism and leftists; change and alternatives; colonialism and development; spies and terrorists; psychoanalysis and grief; crime and heroes; climate and sustainability; poverty and survival; football and footballers.
2021? I've been putting together a blog post on books I read in 2025. It prompted me to delve into what I read in 2021. So far, this blog only goes back to 2022 on books I've read each year. In 2021, I was finishing writing a book. So, I read less political and academic stuff that year than I usually would, being past the research stage for my book and on to writing about that sort of thing. But I did read some political and academic stuff, and more than I have since retiring in 2024.
Will Grant, Populista! The Rise of Latin America's Strongman
A 2021 book on left-wing leaders in Latin America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Will Grant wrote this more as an expert on Latin America, a journalist working across the region, than as a sympathiser with the left. I've always preferred reading critical books on the left rather than leftist ones that will just reproduce my own perspective. I find it more stimulating and thought-provoking to learn this way, and as a teacher I always tried to teach left-wing perspectives through presenting non-left perspectives and being critical of them as much as through giving people leftist writings for students just to agree with (although I did this too). It's in the tradition of Marx (and others) who worked out his ideas through critique. The leaders covered in this book were (and are) colourful leftists, mostly radical, in many cases very morally questionable in important areas, as well as promoting positive social change, and the book focuses on the populist strongman theme. While the left was in retreat in the late twentieth and early 21st centuries across the rest of the world, it remained strong in Latin America, where politics was often critical of the neoliberalism spreading around the globe and of American power, elsewhere often just accepted. Sometimes the main political choice in some Latin American countries was between the radical left and the more moderate left. A very interesting book about very important politics.
Patrick Magee, Where Grieving Begins: Building Bridges after the Brighton Bomb
A memoir, published in 2021, by the man who planted the bomb that exploded in the Grand Hotel In Brighton, UK, in 1984, the town which became my home from 1987 onwards. The book describes Magee's experience living in Northern Ireland and the circumstances that led him to choose to be an IRA volunteer. It's also about attempts at reconciliation with the daughter of one of his victims (she writes a foreword) and about his and her joint pursuit of conciliation more generally. Imprisoned in 1986 for the bombing, Magee was released early in 1999 under the Good Friday agreement. Although he urges reconciliation as the primary path for conflicts like the one he was involved in, my memory of this book is that he still defends the path he took, even if sorry for its human consequences. I've always thought it odd that people can happily go along with mass killing of tens and hundreds of thousands carried out by state armies yet express vehement condemnation of the violence of people like Magee. People get sucked easily into these double standards (which does not mean I agree with the actions of the IRA).
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
I've read a lot of Freud and used to teach his two books The Ego and the Id and Civilisation and its Discontents at university. These were written later in his life, the former covering key themes of his work and the latter a more sociological book, good for me teaching social science students and as a sociologist. Freud writes beautifully and quite seductively, not least in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and many of his concepts are thought-provoking, influential, and important. I started off when young very negative about Freud and then as time went on became more constructively interested. As the years have passed I've become again more disillusioned; much of his thinking is very speculative and I think much probably just wrong and implemented sometimes in damaging ways in therapy. I decided in 2021 to read more Marx and Freud, two greats in my areas of interest and I read Beyond the Pleasure Principle which I hadn't before. It broadens his understanding of drives from 'eros' as the love/sex drive to greater attention on 'thanatos' death/destructive drives; he discusses the balance between these two in the two books mentioned that I used to teach. One thing that prompted me to pick this Freud book out to read was a Freud Museum podcast in 2021 on it. I also read quite a bit of Karl Marx's work this year, a lot of which I had read before and some not, but bits and pieces and dipping in and out, in too bitty a way to say here I read a whole book of his in 2021.
Simon Kuper, The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies and Exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake
Continuing my obsession with 20th century British spies for the communist Soviet Union; this one is on George Blake, less high profile than some of the others, perhaps best known for his amazing escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison, assisted by peace activists who were not especially motivated by communism and later escaped conviction for their efforts. But all his life is amazing and fascinating. Blake became a communist while a prisoner of war of the Koreans. The book draws on an interview with Blake in later life in the Soviet Union by the author Simon Kuper (a journalist who has written books mostly about football). As I've probably mentioned in another book blog, if I had been an adult in the middle of the 20th century I would probably have been a communist, and a card-carrying one, although leaning towards political activism more than spying. I've always been fascinated by the spies who went to these dangerous lengths for the cause they believed in, having to live lives where they disavowed their actual Communist beliefs to those who knew them, living false political identities, even sometimes to their spouses and closest friends. Most were unrepentant about what they did and defiant to the end.
Dave Eggers The Parade, The Captain and the Glory, Zeitoun
I've read a lot of Dave Eggers' books, starting with the autobiographical A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which is about his life as a young man raising his younger brother after their parents died. I remember my Mum saying Eggers was pretentious (and I think she thought a bit self-absorbed), which I guess he is (at least in this book), depending on how you define pretentious. But I didn't really mind and I say that as someone who is normally also quite averse to pretension. The Captain and the Glory (2019) is a critique of Donald Trump, based on a ship and its captain. I know I liked it and as with all Eggers novels found it interesting and absorbing but 4 years later I don't remember it well. Zeitoun (2009) is a shocking non-fiction book I remember better about the also shocking aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The main (real) character Zeitoun is a Syrian-American owner of a painting and property company who tried to help people after the hurricane. The Parade (2019) is about two contractors sent to build a road in a dangerous and post-conflict country, still in a state of disorder. It's difficult to write about it without giving spoilers and I hate it when so many reviews do that. Quite a few of Eggers' books feature themes of the global south, development, rights, etc, also, unsurprisingly, some about the USA. Eggers books are fantastic, intriguing, absorbing, and original. In fact, these three were probably not among my favourites of his, despite being very good.
Lee Child Blue Moon (2019), Past Tense (2018), and The Sentinel (2020).
I used to be one of those who would pre-order Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels and devour them with great pleasure straight after they arrived. I also like Child's story, a trade union rep who helped people threatened by redundancy (parallels with my life), then made redundant himself. He needed to find something to do with his newfound unwelcome time and bought a pen and paper and started to write. Child then became one of the world's most commercially successful and popular authors (including being popular with many very literary types; I seem to recall Salman Rushdie said he is a fan) and I imagine he is very rich indeed (less parallels with my life). I think I remember reading about his writing process that he just starts writing a first sentence and then takes it from there, writing for 6 months a year, doing promotion tours for 6 months, a book coming out reliably every year (one thing I liked) in the autumn usually I think. I saw one video of a promotional event in which it seemed like he found it quite wearing and boring, and it appeared he was there because he had to be, although he was doing his best. The novelty of his books started to wear out for me about 2018, hence me only catching up with the three 2018, 2019, and 2020 books in 2021. I think this was partly me, partly just the novelty wearing off, but maybe also they weren't as good anymore and I felt he had got weary of it all; perhaps unfair. The Sentinel was the start of the process of gradually handing over to his brother, this one being written by them together and I did not really get into it that much. I once wrote a novel called Night Raid partly inspired by Lee Child's novels, but with the main character more like Luke Martell than Jack Reacher, which would have affected its commercial prospects had I ever tried to get it published.
Tony Cascarino, Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino
I really enjoyed this book. Cascarino is well known for being Ireland's most capped football player only for it to turn out he did not actually qualify to be Irish, something he discovered while playing for them (it later it turning out that he had after all qualified as Irish). When he tried to get someone to help him with his memoirs he was told he was 'not exactly David Beckham', but when he explained he could reveal the Irish scandal in the book he had more success. The book recounts stories and feelings about well-known colleagues in football, including the moment he privately told some friends about his apparent fake Irishness mid-career, asking for advice on how to handle it - just keep quiet and keep playing was the answer, and that's what he did. He has no quibbles about baring his soul and his personal life in this book, flaws, questionable behaviour and all, with very candid disclosures. It's more in the brutally honest style of football autobiography (eg Eamon Dunphy's Only a Game?, but with more personal troubles exposed than in Dunphy's book) than many of the usual glossy commercial memoirs available.
Max Porter, Grief is a Thing with Feathers
I think I saw this reviewed somewhere and recommended (probably in The Guardian - I used to use book reviews in The Guardian as a guide to what to read) and I read it. It was published in 2015 and I think it sat on my shelf for ages before I picked it out and gave it a go. It's about bereavement and grief and features a crow. A short book. I don't remember it that well. Thinking back 4 years later, I suspect it may have gone well over my head. It has very good reviews from others with more literary expertise than me, and confused reviews from people like me with less so.
Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
This book is pretty well known (I think), set in Glasgow, a great city I have been to many times and have various family links with. It's about sexuality, alcoholism, family, poverty, post-industrial urbanism, love, and the search for dignity amongst it all. Astonishingly, it was rejected by over 30 publishers before it was taken on. This seems an amazing lack of judgment of a rejecting-The-Beatles type and it makes you think of all the other authors who must have written great books and then given up after a dozen or so rejections, their unpublished novels lying unseen forever. Fantastic book. In 2025 I read his next novel, Young Mungo, in part on similar themes, perhaps even grimmer.
Boris Frankel, Capitalism versus Democracy? Rethinking Politics in the Age of Environmental Crisis
I liked Frankel's work since I read his Beyond the State and The Post-Industrial Utopians in the 1980s, being interested in many similar political and academic themes as him (environment, socialism, utopianism, role of the state, transnationalism, capitalism, transition, alternatives, etc) and empathising with his perspective. This book (2020) seems to have been sort of self-published with no or limited independent editing. It could have done with the editing for some readers and many will find it too long and laborious to read. But knowing his work and sympathising with it I enjoyed it and found it stimulating, and some interested in the themes and discussion will enjoy the detail and substantiality of it. You can download a copy from his website.
Tim Jackson, Post Growth: Life After Capitalism.
I've read lots of books and articles about post-growth and degrowth and this one was just a bit odd for me, and didn't add to what I had already read or absorbed. Jason Hickel's Less is More that I read in 2023 is very good as is Jackson's earlier Prosperity without Growth. I'm not saying Post Growth is bad, and Jackson's work is important on no growth society but this book just didn't get me and may work better for people other than me. One reviewer suggests an absence in Jackson's book may be the politics of how degrowth would work. The whole area is very important, though, and Jackson an important contributor to it. As long as governments and societies continue to base progress on economic growth, life on earth will be widely wiped out and not in the very distant future either.
Donal Ryan, A Slanting of the Sun
A collection of short stories by Ryan. Another in my unintentional preoccupation with Irish literature. Four years later I don't remember too much about this book but that may say more about me than the book.
Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid: the History of Football Tactics
When I was a kid aged about 8 or so onwards and first going to football matches in the 1970s I spent ages looking down on the field and trying to work out what formation my team were playing. They started out 2-3-5 at the kick-off but, of course, during the match this changed and I never really could fully work it out. There was no internet. I needed a book to understand what was going on. Looking back and recalling the players and team I think they were playing 4-4-2 most of the match, probably more rigidly than teams do nowadays. It was rare to see a centre-half step out of the back line, a full back overlap, or a striker track back (except maybe for corners). Maybe surprisingly, to some, this is a brilliant readable book, if inevitably (given the topic matter) a bit dry and hard at times. Wilson has written many great and interesting books about football, that, like this one, go way beyond the sport to its characters, grand history, sociological and political content etc. The history of changing tactics in football since the 19th century is fascinating - tactics including different formations played etc. I didn't think of this when I read it, but I saw later that some people recommend it for people coaching football, for which I guess it would be useful. But for me, and for most, it's just of compelling interest just for its own sake.
Paul Raekstad and Sofia Saio Gradin, Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today
I've been involved in party politics as an active member (in the past, the UK Labour Party in its more left-wing periods - not many of those, I know - and I recently joined the Green Party, so far inactively). But I have also always been interested in (and involved in) prefigurative politics where people try in the here and now forms of alternatives that can be experimented with in the present yet also pursued more widely as alternative forms of society in the future. But when you advocate state/party politics some of the more anarchist/prefigurative bent are very dismissive. And when you argue for prefigurative politics those radicals of a more state/party approach reject it as ineffective or even reactionary. But you can do both and they can inform on each other. It's beyond me why some are so down on the other side to theirs. Raeksted and Gradin come from the perspective of prefigurative politics and open-mindedly and constructively make the case for this being compatible with state politics, arguing also, in effect, that anarchists and Marxists don't need to be at such opposed poles as they often are. I've often found that young activists don't get caught up in such dogmatic oppositions. They are open to all radical approaches that can work - state and civil society, reformist and revolutionary - and willing to work with and combine them. This is a really good book trying to make the case that Marxism and anarchism are not so opposed as both those approaches like to say they are, as I had often felt as someone sympathetic to both, written from a more anarchist perspective and focusing on the politics of transition.
Kieran Allen, Marx: The Alternative to Capitalism
I had read several books and articles on Marx's concept of communism before writing my book on Alternative Societies. But in the later stages of the writing someone suggested I refer to this and it is a very accessible readable book on the topic. Chapters 9-12 are good on the alternative, the previous chapters on Marx's analysis of capitalism. This is suitable for anyone who wants something relatively easy to understand, for instance students studying the topic or any newcomers or beginners, without betraying the real substance. Allen appears to be associated with the Socialist Workers Party (now the Socialist Workers Network in Ireland) and the book reflects this in some parts.
Andreas Malm, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency
Malm argues that as governments were able to effectively run a wartime state under Covid, then an ecological Leninist strong state should be possible for tackling climate change. Capitalism is the problem and needs to be tackled and options like social democracy or anarchism are too slow or lacking a co-ordinated approach for such a huge and urgent problem. A short, effective, and to-the-point book arguing for an approach appropriate to an urgent crisis that will wipe out most life in the not-too-distant future, in the absence of other alternative approaches which will work. Malm says the radical things that seem obvious but others don't say or shy away from. He does the same in his Pipeline book that I read in 2023 where he argues that in the absence of other political or corporate attempts to stop carbon emissions sabotage has to be an option.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I'd seen the film Apocalypse Now several times, knowing it was based on Heart of Darkness, but never read the novel until this year. It's a critique of European colonialism, yet has also been criticised for being colonialist itself. I thought it was brilliant, yet strangely 4 years later writing these notes about the book I can't remember too much about it, the basic story yes, but not the reading of it, my feelings at the time or after, etc.
Related post: Books I read in 2022