|  A Solar Manifesto
Hermann Scheer
James & James, €25
ISBN 1902916247
A Solar Manifesto is a very serious reflection on the issue of energy, which the author views in terms of politics and society rather than just energy needs and sources. Scheer claims that a wholesale shift to solar energy “has more fundamental importance for humanity than the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution had for the economic and political development of modern times.” Why? Well, for one thing, you cannot imagine there being a successful OPEC-style cartel controlling the sun. From this “radical” energy source flows an equally radical aspiration towards universal human rights and self-determination, for as long as energy is skewed towards fossil fuels and profligate Western consumers, claims Scheer, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a nonsense. Unfortunately, solar panels (as opposed to solar energy itself) will remain a luxury even in affluent countries for some time to come, and it is with this realisation that the book assumes a culturally determined, unmistakably German timbre. We are reminded that Wilhelm Ostwald had already nailed the future energy crisis of the West in his book The Energy Imperative – and that was in 1912. Around the same time, that same generation flirted with Zoroastrianism and solar deities. There’s a connection between that, German naturism in Münich’s English gardens, 19th-century Worpswede art colonies and why Germany currently leads the world in solar energy technology and its subsidy by central government. One imagines the author (today a member of parliament) as a student in the 1970s, hurling the odd missile at the police on May Day in Berlin and otherwise sipping Spaten at the beer garden. As a result this book veers disconcertingly between polemic and deeply gestated über-solutions, as it does between Twilight of the Idols stuff and the view that we might one day wean ourselves off the teat of oil and gas and coal and nuclear. You’re forced to agree when Scheer says that “only a fully solar, global energy economy can preserve the ecosphere.” You have to take him at his word, even if you don’t want to. RL  The War of the World
Niall Ferguson
Penguin Books, €15
ISBN 0141013826
The historian John Keegan argued that World War II could not be understood without a proper understanding of what happened in World War I: indeed, he suggested they were actually the same war, with hostilities separated by just under 21 years of uneasy peace. Niall Ferguson goes one better, arguing that all the major conflicts of the 20th century, which he calls “History’s Age of Hatred”, were in effect the same dreadful, drawn-out war, fuelled by three main causational factors: economic change and dislocation, the collapse of empires, and ethnic conflict. “The century was far more violent in relative and absolute terms than any other… there was not a single year before, between or after the world wars that did not see large-scale organised violence in one part of the world or another,” Ferguson writes. Remarkably, this prolonged orgy of violence was accompanied by a wealth explosion: global per capita GDP increased by more than 50% between 1500 and 1870 but increased 13 times more, in compound growth terms, between 1870 and 1998. For those who warmed to historian JM Roberts’ theme of the Triumph of the West, however, Ferguson has little cheer. The last century, he argues, marked the “descent of the West”, with initial hopes that the collapse of the Berlin Wall would mark the “end of history” dashed by developments already well in train. These included the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which saw the Muslim world’s most important nation adopt a religious and political model entirely antagonistic to ours; the rise of a politically unreformed China as a global economic power poised to overtake the US – in GDP terms – by 2041; and Western cultural values that emphasise materialism leading to a falling birth rate and immigration from non-Western societies to maintain economic growth. Meanwhile, the collapse of Yugoslavia – when the EU fatuously declared its moment had dawned – demonstrated that the country was unable even to keep a lid on events in its own backyard. JK  The Unwritten Laws of Business
W.J. King and James G. Skakoon
Profile Books, €15
ISBN 1846680379
This bestselling book, published more than 60 years ago and made famous by high-profile fans such as Jack Welch and Warren Buffett, has been fully revised for business readers today. The result is a charming and wise read, chock-full of pithy and useful maxims that can apply to everyone at every stage in their career. Sage though it is, however, it probably works better as a graduation present than as an impulse buy by an anxious suit. BF  Europe as an Economic Powerhouse
Jurgen Kluge and Heino Fassbender
Kogan Page, €35
ISBN 0749445564
If you are, say, the new president of France, you might find this in-depth analysis of Europe’s current economic performance helpful. For the rest of us, however – we mere mortals who cannot summon economics and social affairs ministers to act on Messrs Kluge and Fassbender’s findings – this book, though lucid and very readable, often seems as grandiose and pointless as a European constitution. BF  Family Businesses: The Essentials
Peter Leach
Profile Books, €22
ISBN 1861978618
As private equity stalks the land, family businesses are alive and well – according to this book, they account for 76% of total UK businesses and a similarly high proportion elsewhere. This readable and well-written account of what makes a family business tick – and tick differently from other businesses – is well worth a look, particularly if you believe such time-worn clichés as the idea that the oldest son always inherits or that younger siblings will always struggle to define their roles. JK |