We’ve asked friends and contributors of the New Statesman to tell us their favourite books of 2010. You can read the full list here, but we’ll also be publishing selected entries on Cultural Capital over the next few days. To begin with, here is John Pilger’s pick:
In another year distinguished by the silence of fiction writers about rapacious wars and a society at home assaulted by extremists in power in Westminster – a silence exemplified by the Man Booker Prize short-list and its compromise winner – three books are a blessed relief. The first is Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam by the historian Mark Curtis (Serpent’s Tail). Excavating long forgotten official files, Curtis illuminates the darkest corners of Britain’s critical role in the rise of islamicism as a means of blocking Arab nationalism and guarding western “interests”. He explains much about the current colonial adventures. In Newspeak in the 21st Century (Pluto) by David Edwards and David Cromwell, the editors of the website Medialens.org brilliantly decode the propaganda that so often passes for news and give us with an A to Z of how corporate journalism demonises “our” enemies, from Venezuela to Iran. My other choice for finding out how power works is Noam Chomsky’s latest bonfire of the illusions and falsehoods that masquerade as public policy. This is Hope and Prospects (Haymarket Books). All three books provide a moral and intellectual survival kit in these extraordinary times.
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