MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
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Crises of Democracy by Adam Przeworski
Dangers of the global democratic deficit investigated
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
New releases from Paul Weller, Wet Leg, and Dino Saluzzi
PAUL DONOVAN relishes the spectacle of a 1950s detective in pursuit of a 500-year-old murder mystery
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
WESTERN democracy came about as a political device preventing the broader population — for the most part illiterate and poor at the time — from having any say in shaping policy and the economy in particular, asserts Adam Przeworski in this book.
He quotes the fourth US president James Madison, Simon Bolivar and Henry Kissinger as believing that “the people” cannot be trusted because they can “err.” That is what upset Kissinger when Chileans “irresponsibly” elected Salvador Allende — or the Grenadians Maurice Bishop, for that matter.
More from this author
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
