Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story.The few minutes it takes to read this newsletter will make you smarter, faster…guaranteed. If you’d rather listen, click on the audio button above for a human, not AI, voiceover. These book suggestions – complete with summary, quotes and a visceral response rating – could point you to your next read or sort out watercooler convo and supper small talk. Please share. Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube.Yours,The Big Story:World leaders are meeting in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which has 193 member-countries.* UNGA’s centrepiece is a new push to achieve the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which aim for a fairer, more eco-friendly world without hunger and poverty.* The goals, adopted in 2015, are meant to be achieved by 2030.* This year marks the half-way point to the deadline.The Backstory:The 17 goals have been widely adopted by national governments, multilateral organisations, local authorities and investors looking to align their funds with ethical values. But halfway to 2030, how is the world doing? It’s a middling report card.Can do better:* More people live in extreme poverty than before the pandemic.* Nearly 1 in 10 of the world's inhabitants suffer from hunger, according to the World Bank.* The goal of gender equality will take nearly 300 years to realise at the current pace. Making progress:* 146 countries are expected to meet the under-five mortality target by 2030.* The number of people using the internet has increased by 65% since 2015.* 800 million more people have access to electricity.This Week, Those Books:Each of this week’s three picks illustrates a global problem, seen up close and personal, thereby offering crucial perspective on why a particular UN goal matters:* A tender collection of short stories from a doctor in New Zealand.* A manifesto for change for Black female students.* A British foreign correspondent looks at homelessness in her own country. * Admissions: Hospital Tales of Life, Love and DeathBy: Mira HarrisonPublisher: Steele RobertsYear: 2018From Otepoti Dunedin, a city on New Zealand’s South Island, comes this collection of linked short stories by Dr Mira Harrison. The eight featured women are doctors, nurses, cooks and cleaners and their lives are dedicated to caring for others. We see a 28-year-old obstetrician having a miscarriage as she delivers other women’s babies. A middle-aged hospital receptionist helps a Syrian refugee, who turns out to be a trauma surgeon. This book hits #8 of the UN’s goals: Decent work, sustainable growth. Choice quote:“Delivering requires stamina from the obstetrician as well as from the labouring woman. It’s hard work all round.”* Taking up Space: By: Chelsea Kwakye, Ore Ogunbiyi Publisher: Merky BooksYear: 2019Heard the one about the British Ghanian and the British Nigerian who go to Cambridge? Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi tell that story and tell it well. All those questions: “where are you from” and the follow-up, “where are you really from”. Racialised language and tropes in school about what Black students can “realistically” achieve when applying to university; “the cultural positioning of Black students as a homogenous group” and a curriculum that suggests “non-white people are only worth studying for the occasions in which they are forced to confront white power”. This hits two UN goals: #4, quality education, and #10, reduced inequality.Choice quote:“The only times you might see someone who looks like you represented in your curriculum will be at the mention of slavery, colonisation, lynching and maybe political corruption in African states – a dehumanising experience.”* The Prince Rupert Hotel for the HomelessBy: Christina LambPublisher: William CollinsYear: 2022A 900-year-old four-star hotel becomes a pandemic shelter for the homeless population in the English city of Shrewsbury. And Christina Lamb, The Times and Sunday Times’ veteran foreign correspondent, is unable to travel overseas and forced to break the habit of 34 years of foreign reporting to examine Britain. She finds a troubling but heartening reality. Many of the problems she had seen in developing countries exist in 21st century Britain as well, not least homelessness. And human frailties are the same everywhere in the world. As one guest at the Prince Rupert Hotel puts it: “I’m homeless because of life.” Lamb, who previously wrote a clutch of books set in far-flung parts – Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria – describes the astonishing care, consideration and respect with which a grand establishment looks after people who were so recently on the streets. It’s a moving story, particularly because it’s true. To my mind, this book hits #1 of the UN’s goals: no poverty. Choice quote:“Outside, everyone treats us like dogs, but even dogs have kennels.”Thanks for reading This Week, Those Books! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Click here for previous posts Get full access to This Week, Those Books at thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story.The few minutes it takes to read this newsletter will make you smarter, faster…guaranteed. If you’d rather listen, click on the audio button above for a human, not AI, voiceover. These book suggestions – complete with summary, quotes and a visceral response rating – could point you to your next read or sort out watercooler convo and supper small talk. Please share. Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.Yours,The Big Story:It’s fashion month. * New York Fashion Week ends September 13.* London starts September 15.* Milan becomes one big catwalk from September 19.* Paris starts September 25, finishing off the sashay into spring/summer 2024. Odd to be thinking of what to wear next spring as the northern hemisphere prepares for winter, but fashion is a world apart – beautiful and brutal; dreams and nightmares. Highlights this season: * Vietnamese-American designer Peter Do is the ‘new Helmut Lang’.* British-Indian Supriya Lele wowed NYC before heading to London.The Backstory:Fashion is big business, literally. * NYC employs 180,000 people in the fashion industry and generates some $11 billion just in wages. * London plays an outsize role in the nearly 30-billion-pound UK fashion industry. * Fashion has been so central to Milan for centuries, its name spawned the English word ‘millaner’, meaning fine clothes and wares, with ‘milliner’ eventually referring to someone who made or sold hats. * Paris? We’ll get to that.The Big Four hold fashion weeks twice a year. It may feel like an ancient ritual but it’s not.* The first fashion week was held in 1943 when New York organised a ‘Press Week’ to give buyers alternatives to French fashion during World War II. * Milan Fashion Week was born in 1958.* Paris had its first organised fashion week in 1973 though showings had been held since the 1700s. * London Fashion Week was first held in 1984.This Week, Those Books:* A gripping exposé of the rarefied universe of high-end fashion. * A tender new novel based on the life of America’s first Black dressmaker to the great and the good, not least Jackie Kennedy. * An academic explains why fashion matters.* The Most Beautiful Job in the World: Lifting the Veil on the Fashion IndustryBy: Giulia MensitieriPublisher: Bloomsbury Academic and Melbourne University PressYear: 2020The author, an anthropologist, wrote this after painstaking fieldwork at the creative end of the fashion industry. Giulia Mensitieri found that the lives of “dream creators” – stylists, photographers, models, make-up artists – intersects with “financial and job instability, exploitation, domination and the quest for power”. Mensitieri’s PhD thesis was originally published in French. It investigates the fantasy world of high fashion rather than factory workers in sweatshops. At a glossy photo shoot in Paris, for instance, the unpaid studio assistant digs into his own pocket to buy the salads ordered by the models because the lunch agreement with the nearby bakery only covered sandwiches and pastries. “Mia”, the anonymised Italian stylist who kicks off the book, wears Chanel and Prada but eats McDonald’s and is forced to rent a bed behind a screen in the kitchen-living room of a shared Paris apartment. She is often paid in vouchers that can only be spent in the boutique of a luxury brand.Choice quote:“The fashion world is the woman who models for Chanel and is paid in lipstick.”* By Her Own Design: A Novel of Ann Lowe, Fashion Designer to the Social RegisterBy: Piper Huguley Publisher: WmMorrowPBYear: 2022Historical fiction by a literature professor, it tells the little known story of Ann Lowe, granddaughter of slaves. Lowe overcame racial prejudice to become dressmaker to high society – the Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelts and Hollywood actresses – from the 1920s to the 1960s. She created Jackie Kennedy’s famous wedding dress in 1953 and is now thought to have set the trend that changed American bridal fashion.This month – the 70th anniversary year of Jackie and future president John F Kennedy’s wedding – the largest exhibition of Lowe’s creations opened in Delaware. ‘Ann Lowe, American Couturier’, which runs till January, has dresses with her signature 3D budding roses, layered lace, appliqué and beading.Choice quote:“I’m gone draw dresses and make ladies look like flowers.”* Why Fashion MattersBy: Frances CornerPublisher: Thames & HudsonYear: 2014Frances Corner, former head of the London College of Fashion, offers 101 “bite-sized reflections” on the multi-billion dollar industry. It has its dark side, she notes, not least “eating disorders, a lack of ethnic representation, water and resource depletion and the exploitation of vulnerable garment workers…(but) fashion has been and always will be a constant part of our existence”. She explains the role of bespoke fashion in France. The Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, a trade organisation with roots in the 19th century, sets strict rules for fashion houses. They must have a Paris workshop, employ at least 15 full-time workers and show two Paris collections a year with at least 35 outfits each!Thanks for reading This Week, Those Books! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Click here for previous posts Get full access to This Week, Those Books at thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/subscribe