ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Edifying Korea
MICHAL BONCZA hopes a new book showcasing contemporary architecture of North Korea will help allay some of the more persistent negative perceptions of the country
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Inside North Korea
by Oliver Wainwright
(Taschen £40)
In uncultured or indolent observers North Korea, the West’s favourite bogeyman, induces a negative, Pavlovian knee-jerk response entirely US-manufactured and based on the teachings of Joseph Goebbels.
Just so we are clear, during the 1950-53 bombing campaign of Korea the US air force used high explosive, incendiary and napalm bombs to destroy an estimated 85 per cent of practically all the country's cities and towns — Pyongyang was flattened — civilian deaths totalled one million.
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