George Monbiot has written the most extraordinary review of the book I'm currently reading - Matt Ridley's Rational Optimist. I'm not sure I've ever read such a bilious review of a book before, and certainly few that have been devoted quite so much space to ad hominems. If anything, Monbiot comes over as slightly deranged. Ridley has nevertheless posted a polite and detailed rebuttal here (James Delingpole weighs in here). But despite appearing to be the rantings of a lunatic, Monbiot's is still an interesting piece - mainly for what it leaves out.
I'm at an early stage of the book, but some of the thesis that Ridley puts over in the first few pages is very clever indeed. As I read it, it found myself thinking "lefties are going to hate this". The reason is that Ridley has collated a great deal of scientific evidence to show that what differentiates humans from Neanderthals is, in essence, trade. Neanderthal brains were as big as human ones, they appear likely to have had sophisticated linguistic abilities too. The only thing that seems to have taken happened at the right time to explain mankind's sudden overtaking of his Neanderthal cousins was the ability to exchange things.
In other words, it is free trade that makes us human.
You can see why George Monbiot might not like it, can't you? Which is why I found his review so interesting, because he doesn't mention this part of the book at all.
Funny that.