Some Things I Have Learnt From The Browser Five Books

The amazing thing about working for The Browser and doing the Five Books interviews is how much I’ve learnt from the people I’ve interviewed. In choosing the best Five Books on their area of expertise, the Browsees often encapsulate whole areas of the world (as Sara Wheeler does with The Polar Regions and Michela Wrong does with Africa) or whole conflicts (Philip Gourevich on Rwanda), even whole schools of thought (Jonathan Glover on Philosophy and David Bell on Psychoanalysis).

One of the first interviews I did was with Mary Kaldor of the London School of Economics and she was talking about War. When someone is the world’s leading expert in something they can impart a vast amount of knowledge in a short period of time. It had never occurred to me before that there are ‘theories of war’, although, of course, there must be. She talked about Clausewitz, who fought in the Napoleonic wars, and about his theory that unless you put absolutely everything into a war and are prepared to suffer enormous losses you can never win. She explained that war has changed since the Balkans and that war is now invariably among the people. While once people fought to protect the women and children, it is now the women and children who are often attacked. War is now fought more in the way that drug dealers compete for territory in inner cities. She also said that the Americans eventually started doing the right thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to protect civilians rather than defeat an enemy. This change actually happened under Bush, who finally hired incredibly intelligent generals, though Obama will likely get the credit.

I have learnt the name of one of the main people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda - Theoneste Bagosora. It is astonishing that someone guilty of such huge crimes against humanity is so internationally unknown.

Lord Robert Skidelsky explained that the economists Reagan and Thatcher followed did not believe that people and their lives and choices are unpredictable. They thought of the economy as a pendulum that might swing right or left but that ends up in the middle. This, said Skidelsky, a champion of Keynsian economic theory, does not take people and their viscissitudes into account.

Dr Vivette Glover of Imperial College London, described the findings of her research on human fetuses. She has discovered that stress during pregnancy adversely affects the unborn child more than post-natal stress or depression. Stressed mothers give birth to smaller babies and smaller babies are vastly more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease later in life. Stressed mothers also give birth to children more likely to have ADHD, cognitive delay and anxiety, all factors that can lead to criminal activity in the adult. I was stunned by the facts but perhaps not by the message – supporting pregnant women matters.

I learnt a lot about the psychology of George W Bush from Jacob Weisberg of Slate Magazine. He explained what it must have been like being the son of the golden child of the Bush family, the athlete, the businessman, the President. He detailed the pressures of the dynasty to me and how George W battled against his father and his brother, how jealous and angry he became, how much he wanted his father’s love and approval. I almost ended up feeling sorry for him, but then, hearing about the cruel nicknames he made up for those close to him, my sympathy waned.

Dr Michael Nicholson explained that Solzhenitsyn did not start out with A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and then start writing longer and longer tomes about Russia as he aged. He had worked on lots of the big tomes, including Gulag Archipelago, long before he wrote A Day In The Life. The world has got the chronology wrong. He also said that archives prove the actual Politburo sat around discussing what to do about Solzhenitsyn – being a writer really matters in Russia in a way it just doesn’t in the West.

Guy Walters, who is an expert on the Nazi Hunters and has written a book about them, told me that Simon Weisenthal is a liar who was much less involved in the capture of key Nazis than he pretends.

Sung J Woo told me that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy put together and that the egg roll is now as American as apple pie.

Psychoanalyst David Bell explained that Freud did not discover the unconscious – poets and writers had always known that we could be motivated by ideas that were not consciously known to us. Freud captures the unconscious within an explanatory model that has a theoretical structure. So, the model of the mind shows that not only are parts of the mind unconscious but there are parts of the mind that are held in the unconscious. This is called the dynamic unconscious and means that we actively repress things we don’t want to know about.

From talking to Hippo lover Karen Paolillo, I learnt that hippos only attack when they are afraid.

Susan Quilliam, who updated The Joy of Sex, tells us that sex is for life – it doesn’t stop at menopause.

Jeffrey Archer has sold 250 million books and says what makes a book immortal is a good story, not always literary prowess.

Contrary to popular belief, people who commit suicide do not usually leave a note (Johanna Reiss on Suicide).

Plato and Aristotle were already arguing about political spin, so we can’t blame it all on Alastair Campbell (David Greenberg on Spin).

Yosri Fouda of Al Jazeera, an intrepid reporter and the world’s leading expert on 9/11, told me that America had expected the attacks and had not done enough to prevent them. He thinks the 9/11 Commission Report is a laughable disgrace.

Sara Wheeler recommended a book about a young man from Togo who went native with the Inuit in Greenland in the 1960s – she says it’s the best book ever written on Greenland and it sounds like it.

Of course, there are a lot more amazing things contained in the Browser Five Books interviews. We hope you will go to the Browser website to find out more.