The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger

This is a well researched account of recent research into how plants communicate.  The author is a former staff writer for the Atlantic who covered climate change.  She became fascinated by plants and set off on a journey to explore the work that is taking place on the communication that takes place between them.

This communication that takes place is in many cases quire remarkable to hear about and equally remarkable is the degree to which the processes involved are little or not at all understood.

I found it quite refreshing that the author sets the scene for each chapter with some nice description that draws the reader in; she does not go on to make it all about herself as some nature writers do.

It is overall nicely written although I do have some gripes.  The use of footnotes is excessive and these sections could easily have been incorporated into the main text.  Also the mixing up of some singular and plural terms such as bacterium and bacteria was a bit grating.

There is some very interesting discussion around the concepts of consciousness and intelligence that we understand from a very human or at least mammalian perspecive.  Plants appear to exhibit some of these qualities but without apparently having the structural features that we think of as being necassary to facilitate some of the ways in which they grow..  For instance how does a climbing plant sense the presence of structures that it is about to climb up from some distance away - it almost seems that the plant can see in these instances.

Thinking back, I was also struck by the simplistic nature of schooldays biology lessons that described tropisms, phototropic and so on.  These terms described what plants do but failed to address the question of how they do it.

I suspect that the book may not age well.  It presents a snapshot of current knowledge.  How much will we understand of the processes involved over coming years ?

 

The Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson

Neoliberalism is a term that was, I assume, created to have a benign ring about it in order to disguise its far from benign ethos.  It might better be called ultra-capitalism.  Interestingly those who espouse the ideology no longer attach the term to their movement; it has now gained a disreputable flavour from which its adherents try to distance themselves.

The book has almost a textbook feel to it.  Words are not wasted in providing a comfortable narrative, it is very much a concise account of the history and progress of the movement and how it has influenced all our lives.  Having said that it is concise, it is not particularly well written and I found myself re-reading many sentences in order to extract their meaning.  The main cause of this is the use of long unweildy sentences.  Someone like Monbiot should know better.

The authors describe the effects of the myth of 'trickle down economics' where the enrichment of the wealthy trickles down to the less well off.  The failure of this is well exhibited by the growing inequality in incomes and wealth that have been seen over recent decades.

I was interested to read of the strategy employed by governments of all stripes that was used to effectively bring an end to NHS dentistry.  This process took place under the banner of 'Investing in Dentistry'.  It was well understood by those in the profession but has slipped mainly under the radar of the press, as was clearly intended. 

The book provides a good analysis of Neoliberalism and is well worth a read.