Jake Puddle’s Shelfie
I wish I could take credit for this neatly colour co-ordinated bookshelf, but my fiancée has always had more of an eye than me for interior design! Unintentionally though, the shelf captures a mash-up of influences and cultures in our household: some leftover Diwali garlands from Barasha’s side, who moved to London from India several years ago, and a Whitstable ship nodding to my childhood in coastal Kent.
How Democracies Die – Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
It is hardly the most romantic book, yet this sober analysis of democratic backsliding oddly became the spark of our relationship. Amidst a long Covid-19 lockdown, mulling through dating apps, my fiancée and I were both (a.) hungry for book recommendations and (b.) far too wrapped up in doomscrolling about the rise of populism. Her very first message to me was to recommend Lewitsky and Ziblatt’s work, which I vainly pretended to have read (with the help of a few google reviews) in the hope of making a good first impression.
I have since come clean (and actually read the book)! Seven years on from its publication and it feels unnervingly more relevant than ever. Assessing the initial damage of Trump’s first term and its echoes of other authoritarian regimes, it offers a wake-up call for Western regimes to ditch complacency and “fight like Republicans” for a reinvigorated agenda of freedom, equity and respect.
The Upswing – Robert Putnam
Where Levitsky and Ziblatt diagnose the crises, Robert Putnam’s reflections consider what an antidote to polarisation could look like. His latest book explores the lessons for communitarian life in the USA across the twentieth century, tracking an ‘upswing’ from the American individualism of the early 1900s towards mass participations in trade unions, social clubs, community activism and faith groups. The book sets out to understand how the States went backwards from an ‘us’ society to something more atomised and anxious, but also how we might learn from the past to nurture community connection going ahead.
I found myself disagreeing with Putnam a lot – largely his somewhat rose-tinted analysis of a century that saw plenty of tensions along lines of class, race and partisan divides. Nonetheless I couldn’t put this book down, perhaps because it makes a critical point that a hopeful future will require more spaces and places where people can come together to understand our similarities and differences. Though probably not his intention, it has since nudged me away from my social media feeds and into joining my local running club.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke
While I tend to mostly read non-fic, an occasional detox from the world of politics is needed. A charming tale of the Napoleonic wars, but with wizards, has been just what I needed. It’s hard to do justice in describing this eccentric alt-history of Englishness and the occult. But even for those who might rarely dabble in fantasy, I would highly recommend it for the wonderful, witty interplay between its leading characters: a tale of two egos both using their magical abilities to climb the greasy pole of power in the 19th century.
Jake Puddle
Jake Puddle is Director of Research at the think tank British Future, where he researches themes of community connection, polarisation and belonging. He is the lead author of The State of Us, a national report exploring social cohesion in the wake of far-right riots and exploring the initiatives that can help strengthen common ground.
Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.
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