WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
A global tourist trap
An exploration of the downside to mass travel is engaging but not wholly satisfying, says MIK SABIERS
THE WRITING’S ON THE WALL: Unrequited Love in Barcelona
[Miltos Gikas/Flickr] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
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
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age
Marco D’Eramo
(Verso, £20)
PREDICATED on the premise that there is nothing more annoying than a tourist blocking that perfect shot of the tower of Pisa or even the Mona Lisa, Marco D’Eramo’s The World in a Selfie is readable, well-researched and well-written. It takes not just tourists but tourism as a whole to task.
Whether touching on Mark Twain’s travel exploits as one of the world’s first globetrotters, admonishing Adam Smith over the “grand tour” or even imaging what aliens from another planet would make of the annual pilgrimage to pastures new, tourism is tackled head on. And it’s found wanting.
D’Eramo proclaims that “tourism is the most important industry of the century” and rolls out facts and figures backing that claim.
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