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Garments Against Women
Garments Against Women
Nov 19, 2024 11:28 PM

Author:Anne Boyer

Garments Against Women

The multi-award-winning meditation on survival, care and the place of literature in an unequal world

'Around that time my daughter and I had this exchange:

Anne, imagine if the world had nothing in it.

Do you mean nothing at all - just darkness - or a world without objects?

I mean a world without things: no houses, chairs, or cars. A world with only people and trees and dirt.

What do you think would happen?

People would make things. We would make things with trees and dirt.'

When the cold comes, when our needs announce themselves, it is with clothing, with possessions, in literature, through dreams - in all the forms and categories that shape, contain and constrain - that we keep ourselves alive. Yet, in a society in which some are rich and some are poor, who gets to dream, and who invents our forms? This is a book made of money and the lack of money; of writing and of not-writing; of illness and of care; of low-rent apartments, cake-baking mothers, Socratic daughters and bodies that refuse to become information.

Reviews

A wonderful biography... Elegant, deft and restrained

—— Sara Wheeler , Spectator

[An] elegantly written, intimate biography... This is a remarkably candid, minutely detailed and compulsively readable book about a life lived to the full

—— Rebecca Wallersteiner , Lady

So good, so full of naughty detail, evocation and grudging affection that you can enjoy it without ever having to read the works of Sybille Bedford

—— Barry Humphries , Oldie

Selina Hastings's wonderful, gossipy biography is a gem

—— Lucy Atkins , Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

[Bedford's life is] elegantly related by Selina Hastings

—— Brooke Allen , New York Times

An extraordinary story

—— Laura Freeman , The Times

A fantastic read... brings a fundamentally [...] private woman out into the light

—— India Knight , Sunday Times

[A] richly entertaining biography

—— Ysenda Maxtone Graham , Daily Mail, *Book of the Year*

I found myself gripped from the first page to the last, astonished by the pace of revelation

—— Barnaby Rogerson , Oldie

Scrupulous [...] remind[s] us that Bedford had a second string to her writerly bow

—— Kathryn Hughes , Guardian

Comprehensive

—— Cressida Connolly , Literary Review

Beautifully written

—— Week

Rivetingly entertaining... A wonderful chronicle of one life [and] a depiction of a small, vivid, condensed world gone forever

—— Lucy Lethbridge , Tablet

Gracefully written, largely sympathetic, and very gossipy

—— Elissa Altman , Avenue

Hastings is one of our greatest living biographers

—— Simon Heffer , Daily Telegraph

This sobering account of what may prove the most dramatic geo-political shift in history is essential reading for anyone interested in the future.

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

It is Gideon Rachman’s contention that after a generation of false alarms, the Asian century is finally at hand. His calm, lucid and authoritative book makes it clear that it will be as unpredictable, tense and potentially as bloody as any that preceded it.

—— Richard Lloyd Parry , The Times

Brilliant, sad, startling

—— Jon Ronson on 'A Very English Scandal'

A terrific book and brilliantly researched

—— Claire Tomalin on 'A Very English Scandal'

Very funny and endlessly extraordinary

—— Guardian on 'A Very English Scandal'

Preston is a natural storyteller

—— The Times

A White House story with shades of Bridget Jones... Dorey-Stein is perceptive and has made an unusually interesting contribution to the groaning shelves of presidential history.

—— Evening Standard

For five years Beck Dorey-Stein was a stenographer in the White House, giving her a front-row seat as US political history was made.

—— Observer

[This] breezy page turner is essentially Bridget Jones goes to the White House.

—— New York Times

Hilsum is a former colleague, well placed to chart her friend’s life, with an especially brilliant account of her final week, where Colvin’s exposure to peril again went beyond the call of duty

—— Strong Words

Superb and moving

—— Emma Lee-Potter , Independent, **Books of the Year**

[Hilsum’s] tone is admiring but never adulatory, and her book is richly informed by her close knowledge of the events described… [an] excellent book

—— Caroline Moorehead , Times Literary Supplement

Lindsey Hilsum… in this account… [shows] just how brim full of life and heart Colvin was: from the start to the finish of her brilliant career, and of her sassy, rambunctious life

—— Barney Bardsley , On: Yorkshire

[An] excellent biography… I found it inspirational

—— Ann Treneman , The Times

This is a remarkable book, deeply moving, disturbing in its sometime intensity… such is the power of Lindsey Hilsum’s book

—— Tony Jasper , Methodist Recorder

Colvin’s tumultuous life has inspired a number of recent accounts… it is Hilsum’s biography, written by a woman who both knew Colvin and had access to her unpublished reporting notes and private diaries, that seems to most closely capture her spirit.

—— The New Yorker

Hilsum writes with admiration and compassionate understanding of her colleague, and of their collegial friendship that gets close to what we can, without sentiment, call love.

—— The New York Review of Books

A refreshing take on the ecology of modern economics . . . This book serves as a fascinating reminder to business leaders and economists alike to stand back at a distance to examine our modern economics.

—— Best Business Books of 2017 , Forbes

I am loving Kate Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics. It puts inequality in a far broader context, connecting a great many 21st century problems with a single vision. Every business leader and every policy maker should read it.

—— Tim O’Reilly

What if it were possible to live well without trashing the planet? Doughnut Economics succinctly captures this tantalising possibility and takes up its challenge. Brimming with creativity, Raworth reclaims economics from the dust of academia and puts it to the service of a better world.

—— Tim Jackson, author of PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH

Kate Raworth makes a powerful argument to look beyond economic growth alone for a true measure of prosperity and progress . . . The doughnut offers a vision for an equitable and sustainable future.

—— Intelligent HQ

This book gave me faith that there is an alternative story to tell to the neoliberal narrative.

—— Marcus de Sautoy

Finding a healthy alternative to the prevailing growth model that has strained the planet to bursting is the holy grail of environmental economics. And it looks like maybe we’ve found it . . . It’s hard to understate how exciting this revelation is

—— Inhabitat

This is truly the book we've all been waiting for. Kate Raworth provides the antidote to neoliberal economics with her radical and ambitious vision of an economy in service to life. Given the current state of the world, we need Doughnut Economics now more than ever.

—— L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions

I read this book with the excitement that the people of his day must have read John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. It is brilliant, thrilling and revolutionary. Drawing on a deep well of learning, wisdom and deep thinking, Kate Raworth has comprehensively reframed and redrawn economics. It is entirely accessible, even for people with no knowledge of the subject. I believe that Doughnut Economics will change the world.

—— George Monbiot, author and Guardian columnist

Raworth’s groundbreaking book hand-picks the best emergent ideas – ranging from ecological, behavioural and institutional economics to complexity thinking, and Earth-systems science – to reveal the insights of eclectic economic re-thinkers . . . Revolutionary.

—— Judges' Statement, The Transmission Prize 2018

In Doughnut Economics Raworth takes on the enormous task of sketching out a new approach to the economy in 290 pages . . . A dizzying whirl through the 300 years of economic theory, and challenges to their fundamental principles

—— City A.M.

One of last year's most important books on (fixing) economics

—— Best Books on Innovation , Nesta

A good starting point for a much needed debate about economic policy priorities.

—— Reuters BreakingViews

Highly informed and intelligent.

—— Socialist Review

[Raworth’s] business-friendly 2017 book Doughnut Economics advocated meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet.

—— 1000 Most Influential Londoners , Evening Standard

Powerful and radical

—— Building.co.uk

It's an absolute must-read about the circular economy and an economic model beyond capitalism.

—— Sam Galsworthy, co-founder of Sipsmith , The Grocer

Excellent

—— Ben Cooke , The Times

It’s the first book about the future economy that I can’t put down!

—— Frances Morris , ELLE Decoration

A fascinating look at future economic policy

—— U2’s The Edge , Daily Telegraph

Kate is not the first person to try to reconcile economic growth with our world's finite resources . . . but her book makes a complex thesis accessible.

—— George Alagiah , New Statesman

One of the best books I have read in the last year or two was Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, an economist. She puts economics into the framework of society and the environment, rather than at the top. I recommend it to all.

—— Lord Greaves

In Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth's economics serve life - not the endless growth of late capitalism. Compellingly, she invites us to see the economy as an organism rather than a mechanism. By referring to our knowledge of natural systems instead of the machine models of Newtonian mechanics, she offers us a way to reimagine money in order to regenerate rather than degenerate. In this wonderful, readable book, Raworth completely rewrites the textbooks of economic theory in language that is lucid and inspirational: a must read!

—— Antony Gormley , GQ

Raworth radically redraws the system, putting people's needs at its heart . . . with growth bound by an ecological ceiling, the outer edge of the circle, beyond which there is climate change, freshwater stress and biodiversity loss. The doughnut is the safe space where there can be sustainable development.

—— Conde Nast Traveller

An accessible, relatable account that relays academic thinking back to everyday lives and communities.

—— Best Books on Climate Change , Independent
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