The paperback non-fiction you need to be reading in February: Who Owns the Moon by A.C.
Who Owns the Moon by A.C. Grayling (Oneworld £10.99, 224pp)
For millennnia humans have looked up at the mysterious sight of the moon waxing and waning in the night sky and wondered what secrets it might hold.
But now rival nations are mounting missions to explore the moon’s rich natural resources, and the more valuable they are, the fiercer the competition for mineral wealth.
In his thought-provoking book, the philosopher A.C Grayling outlines the benefits to humankind from lunar exploration – mining minerals, colonisation and even developing moon bases for exploration of the wider universe.
But he warns that current space treaties are more aspirational than binding, and that without an agreed international framework of law and co-operation, space exploration could quickly become a wild west. “How much better to think ahead, and prepare, before events overtake us,” he warns.
Mad Woman by Bryony Gordon (Headline £10.99, 320pp)
A decade ago Bryony Gordon’s bestselling memoir, Mad Girl, recounted the chaotic combination of OCD, alcoholism, drug-taking and bulimia that bedevilled her 20s.
With her lacerating honesty and irrepressible humour, Gordon became a powerful advocate for mental health, running marathons in her underwear and interviewing the Duke of Sussex.
She tackled her addictions and successfully confronted Jareth the Goblin King – the name she gave her OCD.
Spending New Year’s eve 2020 in Thailand with her husband and daughter, life seemed sweet.
But then came the pandemic – and with it, depression, binge-eating and terrifying episodes of irregular heartbeat.
A hard-won medical diagnosis eventually addressed the peri-menopausal symptoms that began in her early 40s and led to the revelation that she and many other women would be healthier and happier if we learned to practise self-acceptance.
James and John by Chris Bryant (Bloomsbury £10.99, 336pp)
On 17 March 2010 the Labour MP Chris Bryant and his partner, Jared Cranney, became civil partners at the first same-sex union to be celebrated in the Palace of Westminster.
In 1835 at Newgate Prison, a few miles to the east, James Pratt and John Smith became the last people in England to be hanged for homosexuality.
That year, novelist Charles Dickens visited Newgate Prison, where the turnkey told Dickens that James and John were “dead man”. James Pratt’s wife, Elizabeth, stood by him to the very end, and even the magistrate who committed the men for trial wrote to the Home Secretary asking for mercy, but in vain.
Chris Bryant’s finely researched account follows the injustice of the men’s fate from their perfunctory trial to the gallows with compassion and indignation.