Saloon prepped for Maverick… Nothing like a set full of horses. This was the first T.B.S picture on the roll of 36 pics. I had just got this camera, a Minolta, for Christmas. This happens to …| Phantom of the Backlots
Michael Taylor (2024) How dinosaurs drove the development of the theory of evolution – and a lot more. It's hard to credit that the first dinosaurs were only discovered at the end of the 18th century. They emerged into a world that had little doubt about the literal truth of biblical creation. They helped to shatter that certainty, although not alone and not at once. This is a book that itself shatters several myths. It shows how Victorian scientists were as religious as their fellow citize...| Simon Dobson
Mary Roach (2003) An amusing and informative study of corpses. Not a sentence I ever expected to write. This is a book that digs into both the biology and the sociology of how we treat the dead. This includes the various uses made of cadavers over the year, from modern medical education to potions and "cures" made from mummies. Along the way we also get a discussion of different funeral practices being proposed by generations of free-thinkers and how they do (and don't) get adopted by wider s...| Simon Dobson
Naomi Klein (2023) What does it mean for someone to have a double? That is the broad premise of this book, and its a lot broader than it first appears. Klein's doppelganger is another author, Naomi Wolf. Both began as liberal and feminist darlings, before "Other Naomi" (Wolf) became a proponent of various consipracy theories and hanging out with right-wing influencers. The two Naomis starte being confused with each other within social media, to the estent that Klein almost starts to lose her ...| Simon Dobson
The modern history of a nation that’s been to some extent marginalised by wider geopolitics. It begins with domination by Japan in the late 19th century, which continued until the end of the Second World War – only to be replaced by domination through “trusteeship” by the US and others, which itself was a direct precursor to the partition of the nation, a vicious war, and a long and convoluted evolution of two very different political and economic outcomes.| simondobson.org
