My Top 5 books of 2022
What a year again! As I did last year, I wanted to dedicate the last post of the year to the top 5 books of 2022 I read. They are not necessarily from 2022, but I read them in 2022. I did some reviews of them this year, but not for all. Where I can, I will link also to the review.
Before I go, let me wish you a great 2023! Keep save! See you next year!
5. Out of the Wreckage
George Monbiot writes in his book “Out of the Wreckage” about our society. How competition and individualism are destroying it and how to replace it with a more natural and positivistic view. Based on new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, he shows how humanity is fundamentally on the wrong track. It was shocking to read how easy it can be and how hard it actually is.
Read my full review here
4. Colonising Egypt
The book is mainly about the Colonisation of Egypt, but not in a physical sense. It rather is meant in a sense of Colonisation of the Egyptian mind. It focuses on the transition of the school-system in a world of Industrial Revolution and the concept of the world as an exhibition. As Europeans were expecting a different Egypt than they encountered, they tried to “fix” this. I think besides other books this publication by Timothy Mitchell takes the concepts of post-colonial studies and puts them to use in a very contained but well-described use-case.
Read my full review next week!
3. Race
This book is one of the best reads I have had in the last years. In four chapters, Denise Eileen McCoskey describes the relationship of race with antiquity and its study. She focuses especially and ancient Greece and Rome as well as how the field of antiquity has formed through race.
Read my full review here
2. Women of Babylon
Women of Babylon is about the construction of the female image in ancient West Asia. Also, the book covers how femininity was perceived and interpreted by European scholars as well as it is also about representations of sexual differences. Recently, I read a lot of books that question our own interpretation of the world and especially the past. I think that Bahranis book is a great contribution to that.
Read my full review here
1. Kulturelle Aneignung
This is the only book in my list, I didn’t do a review on. Why? It is too complicated to put into just a few words, but it is soooo good. Written by Lars Distelhorst, the book Kulturelle Aneignung (Cultural Appropriation) describes how the term is and was defined and analyses three distinct dimensions of Cultural Appropriation: Looting of Cultural Heritage, unsolicitised representation of other cultures and the consumption of culture as a product. It was the best read for me in 2022.
The book can be ordered at the publisher Edition Nautilus
