Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Ten books that make you boil with rage

Brian Schofield has been a journalist since 1998, and has worked as executive editor on GQ Active magazine, and as editor of the Sunday Times Travel Magazine. His writing has appeared in the New Statesman, The Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, GQ and FHM.

His first book, Selling Your Father's Bones, a work of literary non-fiction on the history and ecology of the American North-West, was published in 2008.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of "furious books that scream at the system." His inspiration, and one book on the list:
I never thought of myself as an angry man. More easy-going, even-handed, with roughly the same temperament as the BBC editorial guidelines. Then I wrote a book and the critics put me straight. The chap from the Times said I was 'quietly furious', while the Seattle Times reviewer called me 'relentlessly and scornfully scolding'. Turns out, I'm a ball of rage. And looking afresh at my bookshelves, they have a point – because I love angry books. I'm surrounded by furious, indignant works, howls against injustice or screams at the system, the type of books you can't read in bed, because you'll be too fired-up to sleep. It's a miracle I'm not typing this with one eyelid, following a crippling, book-induced aneurysm. So here's 10 books that make you boil with rage.

* * *
The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler

An urbane, hilarious rant against the toxic architecture of sprawl and sameness that blights modern America – which our own town planners all appear to have read, but sadly as a guidebook.
Read about the other nine titles on the list.

Visit Brian Schofield's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue