The summer holidays are upon us and while you may not be going away this year, you may still be able to kick back, enjoy a nice cup of tea (or whatever else suits your fancy) and a good read.
At LGIU we have been reading Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez.
Invisible Women won the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year and was The Royal Society winner of the Science Book Prize in 2019 and promises to be a good read, too.
If nothing else the pandemic has exposed the fact that burdens don’t fall equally and neither do policies designed to relieve burdens. As we plan for recovery (see our Post-Covid Councils) it’s important to keep in mind who is affected, how much and whether we’re even collecting the right kind of data to find out.
Join us for our first-ever book club meeting on 27 August at 2pm. It’s an LGIU members-only event, with limited spaces available to keep the chat friendly and informal. Can’t make book club? We’ll be writing up our review of this book, what it means for local government and key points from the discussion.
What’s next?
We’re suggesting that the next book for book club is Anti-Fragile: Things that gain from disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. While the book has mixed reviews, it’s gaining traction in some policy forming circles and may be influencing both responses to and recovery from Covid-19.
After that, we’re open to suggestions.
Some ideas we’ve come up with are:
- Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum
- 21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari
- Good services: How to Design Services that Work by Lou Downe
- So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Brit-(ish) on Race Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch
- A World Without Work by Daniel Susskind
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
- The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
- Hope in Hell by Jonathon Porritt
But what do you think? Let us know what should be on the reading list by voting here or adding a new suggestion.
