With the summer holidays looming, here’s a selection of fiction & nonfiction books I’ve been reading recently, with a strong anti-fascism flavour – see if there’s anything that grabs your attention. Have fun, bibliophiles!

NONFICTION Empire of pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. 
A history of the Sackler family, once famed for its philanthropy (I well remember the Sackler lecture theatre at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research) but nowadays reviled as prime instigators of the opioid epidemic in the USA. Keefe shows that although the move into making and releasing OxyContin via their company Purdue Pharma was an inflection point in both the wealth and status of the family, the seeds that enabled it were planted early on. In particular, he does a very good job of showing how patriarch Arthur Sackler’s ethically questionable (and occasionally downright dishonest) pharmaceutical marketing practices established a code of conduct with devastating consequences when coupled to the sale of opiates by his nephew Richard Sackler. Throughout, Keefe demonstrates how the Sackler family has never, ever taken responsibility or shown remorse for the societal effects of their business practices. Some of Purdue Pharma’s decisions are breathtaking in their cynicism and Keefe emphasises again and again that the conduct of the family cannot be separated from the conduct of the company. It’s one of those books that shows how the immoral and avaricious behaviour of a few bad actors can bring an entire industry into disrepute. The FDA doesn’t come out of it looking good either, nor do the various politicians who the Sacklers influence in order to shut down scrutiny of their activities. Read it and be appalled.

FICTION: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. 
An amazing fiction counterpart to “Empire of Pain”, set in the westernmost corner of Virginia in the Appalachian mountains before and during the opioid epidemic. It’s ostensibly a retelling of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield”, but knowledge of the earlier work is by no means necessary for full enjoyment here. It takes a little while to get going but once young Demon lands in foster care the book acquires a righteous energy that never lets up. Strangely, some of that energy seems to go out of it during the full-blown opioid epidemic sections, but perhaps that’s because we’ve already become desensitised to depictions of addiction and rural squalor. Rather, it’s the small details that stand out – a funeral for an 18-year-old that goes by almost unremarked, letting the assumed normality of it shock you…the glimpse of a classmate’s near permanently-dilated pupils…the sense of unrelenting struggle against a system seemingly designed for exclusion. Kingsolver’s prose reaches rare heights in a number of passages and the redemptive ending, neither happy nor tragic, is an appropriately cautious and fitting one. “Empire of Pain” followed by “Demon Copperhead” might just be the best nonfiction-fiction double-header I’ve ever come across.

NONFICTION: The burn list: a memoir of abuse from home to higher education by Julie Cruse. 
It is, as its title says, a memoir of abuse – in childhood, at school, in academia, and in relationships. Cruse’s tale begins with a genuinely horrifying account of growing up in a poverty-stricken, violent, and abusive household, and despite her academic and creative excellence providing an outlet and college seeming to promise an escape, the abuse keeps stalking her like a bogeyman. As her academic career advances, her encounters with faculty politics lead to greater and greater exploitation. She’s blackmailed into signing over the rights to a video she makes about the dance school She loses her virginity in a rape. She becomes enmeshed in an abusive relationship with an older powerbroker. It feels like a numbing repetition of one of those horrible playground lessons – if you become singled out for abuse, bullying, whatever, it is almost impossible to defend yourself on your own. If you stand up for yourself, you attract more violence; if you acquiesce, you lose your mind. “I still wanted, more than anything, to become a dance professor” she says, showing how so many academics end up still seeking crumbs of validation from a system that hurts us. Cruse unsparingly documents the physical and mental cost of chronic abuse, not least the paranoia deriving from the sense of imminent threat in relationships characterised by the mix of aggression and vulnerability that many narcissists and psychopaths project. There’s an extremely useful collection of relevant articles, books and other media at the end for readers wishing to find out more. Struggle is normalised in academia, but this is one of those books that forces you to take a step back and makes you wonder why all of us keep going for so long. Why not just walk away and be happier for it? Cruse’s bravery in speaking up and documenting it all is remarkable.

FICTION Crooked Cross by Sally Carson. 
A genuinely chilling story written in 1934 about a sleepy Bavarian community slowly being transformed by the effects of Nazism. The British author had herself spent time in Bavaria and some scenes have the sickening authenticity of eyewitness reports. It’s a reminder that horrific changes occurred in Germany society long before the outbreak of World War 2 but the story also doesn’t flinch from highlighting how seductive fascism was for a generation of mostly unemployed or poorly paid youngsters. It makes a good companion piece to Sinclair Lewis’ “It couldn’t happen here” but its power is that it focuses intently on a shorter time period. It is truly shocking to think it was written some 5 years before war actually broke out, when a sense of foreboding already permeates the whole narrative. The dramatic climax has more than a touch of Hemingway, with its close focus on a single desperate event. Contemporary Western politics makes its depiction of a society’s slow slide into brutality more relevant than ever.

NONFICTION My parent the peacock by Kathleen Saxton. 
There’s no shortage of material available on narcissists these days, but Saxton’s book focuses instead on the effects that narcissists have on their children, and the impact of being raised by a narcissistic parent. It’s undoubtedly repetitive in parts and could probably have been edited down to a much leaner length, but the author’s undeniable compassion consistently shines through and the lasting – sometimes lifelong – damage that is done to children and young adults by narcissists occupying parental or pastoral roles makes for grim reading. While it’s notionally about the damage done to biological offspring by narcissistic parents, academics who have been the victims of abuse by narcissistic mentors or departmental seniors will find a lot that resonates here. 

FICTION The Machine stops by E.M. Forster. 
An eerie, haunting little book, uncomfortably relevant in today’s post-pandemic, attention economy world. It’s set in an unspecified post-apocalyptic Earth, where humanity has retreated below ground and people lead existences devoid of physical contact but are intensely interactive online. There’s a strong encouragement for individuals to create content, but the content itself is expected to be commentary or secondary appreciation rather than original thoughts or analysis (sound familiar?). Remarkably, the book also seems to anticipate the obsession with shortform content (lectures are described as lasting 10 min) and the subsequent dopamine hits from it. It’s short, bleak, and powerful, and will make you question what you’re doing online.

NONFICTION Fool me twice: fighting the assault on science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto. 
This book is much, much more than its title suggests, and manages to be both polemical, conciliatory, and didactic all at once. It begins by describing the foundational association of science with the USA, and then charts the evolving relationship between science, government, and the body politic over the ensuing 200+ years. It makes the point that US politics has become at best ambivalent towards science (a moderate conclusion that in Trump 2.0 already seems outdated!), and is not shy of pointing fingers at the mindset of the legal profession and (echoing Ben Goldacre) the media in apportioning blame. It then provides a great overview of American politics’ lurch towards this more conservative and anti-science mindset, prefaced again by an inspiring description of the intimate role that the spirit of the scientific revolution played in the formation of the republic itself (Thomas Jefferson looms large). It meticulously links the Declaration of Independence to the Puritan tradition of natural philosophy, positing that the USA may advocate for freedom of religion but actually draws more strongly on science and reason in its founding document. Otto argues, convincingly, that science is inherently political because it uses public money, and inherently anti-authoritarian because it does not offer “all the answers” – this explains why academics are invariably the targets of authoritarian regimes who want to have a monopoly on truth (again, see Trump 2.0). He illustrates the form that anti-science rhetorical arguments invariably take, and concludes with a rallying call for scientists and those interested in living in a non-authoritarian society to stand up and be counted. Lots of stirring slogans and pithy summations give the prose high requote value. Like Philip Ball’s “Serving the Reich: the struggle for the soul of physics under Hitler”, this is essential reading for scientists in the current political climate. 

FICTION The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro. 
The prose here will be a delight for those drowning in the uncanny smoothness and superficiality of AI slop, with long, elliptical sentences that entwine the pages. It’s a truly remarkable feat of writing as what’s being discussed should be impossibly dull to modern readers (it’s about a middle-aged man who’s spent his entire life as an upper class servant pondering what it means to be a great butler), but you’re so completely taken into the character’s head that his obsessions become your own. Ishiguro draws you so effortlessly and completely into his mind that the prose becomes no more effort than attending to your own internal monologue, but over time you begin to get a sense of what he’s not telling you, and even what he’s withholding from himself. Its plot is a drip-fed backstory of well-meaning British aristocrats being manipulated and exploited by Nazi politicians, to their ultimate ruin. 

NONFICTION Night people: how to be a DJ in ‘90s New York City by Mark Ronson. 
An engaging and beguiling autobiographical account of Mark Ronson’s formative years as a DJ in the New York club scene of the 90s. Ronson is disarmingly frank and self-deprecating about his nepo baby status, and his genuine love of music shines through, never more so than when he’s writing about rubbing shoulders with the early legends of rap music. Somehow, the memoir manages to capture – or at least suggest – how culture exists at an interface of music, art, fashion and literature, and although he doesn’t draw explicit attention to it, the slow transformation of NYC nightlife from an accessible and inclusive anarchy to an ultra-exclusive VIP scene makes you feel something got lost along the way. 

FICTION The mirror and the light by Hilary Mantel. 
The third and final book in Thomas Cromwell series (and yes, you should read all three) is a huge, sprawling mess. There’s too many characters, it’s almost impossible to follow if you’re not taking notes, the timeline is so minutely observed that the action of just one year consumes hundreds of pages…and yet. It shares with W. G. Sebold’s “Austerlitz” a truly marvellous evocation of the subjective passage of time, coupled to an underlying sense of danger and adventure in the seamy world of Tudor politics. Cromwell towers over it all as a slightly melancholy but nonetheless implacable British Machiavelli.  Don’t try to follow the sprawling cast of characters and innumerable locations (it’s almost impossible), just dip into its waters when the mood takes you and let yourself be immersed in the intrigues of Henry VIII’s court. The characteristic world-weariness of the series is more prominent here and reaches its obvious conclusion in the execution of its protagonist, but there remains throughout a profound, humane, revealing, and always insightful perspective on human affairs, state politics, and the bloody process of competition. A perfect holiday read.

Acknowledgement: Original artwork by Oliver Hoeller.