Nina Power

Nina Power reviews Brenda Hale and Rowan Williams’s opposing arguments over assisted dying. Hale defends a right to control the timing of death through cases involving terminal or irreversible illness, while Williams argues that legalising assisted dying risks expanding eligibility, endangering disabled and vulnerable people, and treating death as a consumer choice. He instead calls for better palliative care. Although both arguments are found wanting in places, Power gives Williams the edge because he stresses the social, religious and collective meaning of death alongside the dangers of coercion and unintended legal expansion.

Nina Power praises Nigel Biggar’s The New Dark Age as a clear and well-researched defense of classical liberalism, free speech and intellectual pluralism. The book examines culture-war controversies and cases involving academics and writers such as Kathleen Stock and Neil Thin, arguing that universities and other institutions have become dominated by fear, conformity, dogmatism and misrepresentation. Power agrees that these institutions need virtues including restraint, respect, carefulness, patience and humility, but questions whether liberalism alone can overcome the crisis it helped produce. She suggests that more forceful reforms—including dismissing censorious officials, reducing HR overreach, repealing hate-speech laws and auditing third-sector organizations—may be necessary.

Nina Power reviews Samuel Miller McDonald’s critique of progress, which traces the idea to Mesopotamian civilisation and portrays extractive, “parasitic” societies as environmentally destructive. She acknowledges the force of his warnings about ecological collapse and rejects faith in space billionaires, but argues that the book reduces complex civilisations and human achievements to destruction and propaganda. Its proposed alternatives, such as local activism and less damaging ways of living, are seen as vague and troublingly dismissive of humanity’s inherent worth.

Nina Power gives Frédéric Gros’s A Philosophy of Shame four stars, praising its wide-ranging and accessible exploration of shame across philosophy, religion, history, literature and psychoanalysis. Gros distinguishes shame after an event, the shame of asking “why me?”, and shame for the world, arguing that the third form can transform sadness and rage into collective political anger. The review examines tensions between progressive efforts to reject identity-based shame and conservative concerns about the erosion of everyday social restraint. Although Power accepts Gros’s theoretical case, she doubts that converting personal shame into collective anger is the most effective route to social change, arguing instead for the courage to speak freely and defend the truth.

Nina Power gives Fara Dabhoiwala's history of free speech three stars, praising its account of religious censorship, legal systems, printing and misinformation while arguing that it becomes contemporary activism rather than history in places. The review highlights Dabhoiwala's view that speech can cause harm and that collective rules are needed to establish truth, but rejects his claim that offensive speech can be as damaging as physical violence. Power is particularly critical of hate-speech restrictions, cancel culture and state prosecution of words, and argues that the United States' strong First Amendment protections offer lessons for Britain despite their historical limitations. The review concludes that people should not be imprisoned merely for saying things others dislike.

Agnes Callard’s Open Socrates argues that Socrates represents more than open-minded critical thinking: through dialogue, people can confront ignorance, develop ideas and pursue truths that would otherwise remain inaccessible. The review praises this account of shared reasoning and the book’s defense of disagreement, while criticizing Callard’s treatment of Tolstoy, Kantianism, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, as well as her neglect of Kierkegaard and existentialism. Its discussions of politicized conflict, love, polyamory and death extend the Socratic model into contemporary life, though some conclusions are described as potentially self-serving.

Nina Power reviews Peter Singer’s Consider the Turkey, a polemic arguing that turkey farming and meat consumption are morally wrong because animal suffering should matter regardless of species. She describes the book’s graphic account of industrial farming and its case for better animal treatment, but criticizes Singer’s extreme utilitarian implications, attacks on tradition and religion, comparisons between turkeys and dogs, and proposed dinner-table activism as counterproductive. Despite these reservations, she recommends the book as a stocking-filler for committed activists, noting its meat-free recipes.

Nina Power gives Jordan Peterson’s We Who Wrestle with God four stars, describing it as a dense but ultimately rewarding examination of how Old Testament narratives can provide moral guidance in a secular age. Peterson’s unorthodox, partly psychological and evolutionary approach draws on Christianity, Jung, Taoism, mythology, popular culture and personal experience. The book’s central message is that life has an underlying order and that meaning requires responsibility, sacrifice and resistance to tyranny. Power praises Peterson’s ability to animate biblical characters and explore human failure, while criticizing the work’s digressive style and questioning its specific relevance to 2024. The book is published by Allen Lane, with Peterson planning a subsequent volume on the New Testament.

A review of A. C. Grayling’s Who Owns the Moon?, which examines how international law and ethical principles might govern lunar resources and prevent a new tragedy of the commons. The book compares the Moon with Antarctica, the high seas, deep oceans and the colonial scramble for Africa, while assessing the limitations of existing treaties, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The review praises Grayling’s seriousness but criticizes his technocratic faith in treaties and his failure to fully consider non-rational reasons for leaving the Moon untouched. Growing space capabilities in China, Japan, the UAE and other powers, alongside military competition and private-sector ambitions, make stronger collective governance urgent, although Grayling remains pessimistic about humanity’s ability to manage itself responsibly.

Nina Power reviews Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap, which defends philosophical liberalism’s commitment to universal values, equality and neutral rules against an identity-based ideology organized around race, sexuality and gender. She praises Mounk’s research and even-handed proposals for confronting identitarianism through dialogue, but finds his optimism about restoring political reasonableness unconvincing. The review argues that liberalism’s emphasis on individual desire may itself have helped produce collective identity politics, guilt and demands for deference, and suggests that a deeper account of these psychological motives is still needed.

Nina Power argues that Caitlin Moran’s What About Men? approaches masculinity through selective examples and ladette-style humour, reducing sexual equality largely to socialisation while avoiding transgender issues and substantial recent work on men and boys. The book’s strongest contribution is its warning that men are less likely to seek medical care, illustrated by Peter Paphides’s delayed diagnosis of dangerously high blood pressure. Overall, the review finds the book patronising and lazy, despite its potentially valuable message that men should seek medical help.

Nina Power reviews James Ball’s The Other Pandemic, which frames QAnon and related online movements as a kind of digital pandemic whose ideas spread and mutate like biological infections. She finds the book informative on 4chan and QAnon but argues that its virus metaphor risks dehumanising dissenters and legitimising efforts to police or silence people deemed susceptible to misinformation. The review particularly criticises Ball’s confidence in disputed COVID-19 claims and his limited engagement with the public’s reasons for distrusting experts and politicians, concluding that the book’s political and philosophical analysis is weaker than its explanatory account of conspiracy movements.