The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett;  Penguin, 2009, 300 pages, $26.95.

If there is one guiding thought behind Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman, a long digressive series of reflections on his life’s work as a social critic, it is the maxim, “making is thinking”. This brings him directly into conflict with his old teacher, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who erected a division between the world of animal needs—unreflecting work for beasts of burden—and the higher world of homo faber, of those who reflect on art and work, and even draw moral conclusions from it. That division started with Plato, who belittled cooking as a “knack”, something done without the full exercise of reason. As a pragmatist, Sennett believes this is a serious philosophical error with important ethical and political consequences. It isn’t only that it demeans those who do manual labour, it also suggests that thinking comes after making: it is a justification for the kind of politics which gives status to expert elites and technocrats (ours), and in which the word benchmark is nothing more than an empty signifier.

Love Vintage, by Nicole Jenkins, with photography by Tira Lewis; Carter’s Publications, 2009, 232 pages, $49.95.

Nicole Jenkins defines vintage clothing as anything designed and made between about the 1920s, that is, after the First World War, and the early 1970s, “when post WWII baby boomers radically changed the way fashion was made and worn”. Antique clothing is seen as more structured and fragile, and may not have survived in wearable condition, and certainly not as fashion, after the First World War. The fashion from the late seventies on is categorised as “retro”, with a keen interest from the teenage daughters of the Baby Boomers.

Nicole Jenkins’s focus is on the desirability and wearability of vintage clothing. While it is easy enough to skim through the clothing racks in op shops, it can be very hard to find quality garments with designer labels which are in good, wearable condition. She makes a distinction between antique clothing, which, because of poor, fragile condition, may perhaps only be suitable for a museum, and the sturdier, simpler styles of between the wars and up to the late sixties. Another important factor she examines is sizing. Antique clothing was made for shorter, slighter women. Not many of us could boast a stature of 1.5 metres with a 48-centimetre waist.

 Hitch 22, by Christopher Hitchens; Allen & Unwin, 2010, 352 pages, $35.

I came late to the strange charms of Christopher Hitchens, being drawn to his performance in the lead-up to the second Iraq War as curmudgeon-in-chief, sourly defending the importance of taking military action. He was learned, persuasive, and revelled in his persona as pantomime villain on mostly late-night television debate. In this role, Hitchens would prove to be, next to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, probably the most persuasive force in support of the conflict, at a time when it appeared far from inevitable.

Hitchens had, of course, by this stage completed his transformation from petition-waving Trotskyite student to neo-conservative warrior of the Right. The story of this evolution is the spine that runs through Hitchens’s autobiography Hitch 22. The book has been keenly awaited, not least because of the raging culture war that has arisen over Hitchens himself. This debate, reminiscent of Australia’s own concerning Malcolm Fraser, is about just who, or what, has changed. Has the Left moved away from Hitchens or has Hitchens moved from the Left? More critically, what is the place of the Left in the post-Cold War world, particularly in the face of the threat posed by radical Islam? Hitchens himself embodies these debates and contradictions and, true to form, clearly revels in being placed at the centre of it all. 

 Nomad: A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali;

HarperCollins, 2010, 304 pages, $35.

Few have experienced a more precipitous learning curve than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Somalia’s most famous (or notorious, depending on your perspective) emigrant has completed a second autobiography, Nomad, at the relatively young age of forty. If her life continues to be as eventful as it has been until now—and her round-the-clock security regime does its job properly—we may see many more memoirs penned by the brave and articulate Hirsi Ali.                 

During her childhood Hirsi Ali found herself living not only in Somalia but also Kenya, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, mostly because her father was a leading political opponent of Somalia’s then dictator, President Barre. The tribal world depicted by Hirsi Ali is tough and brutal. Nomad begins with the difficult lives endured by her closest relations, including her mother, father, brother and half-sister, but unlike her previous memoir, Infidel, we now follow them to the present. Though cut off from her family and the “web of values” that inform them, Hirsi Ali tries to re-establish familial connections. Sadly, the barriers—cultural, religious and geographic—prove insurmountable. Her description of the secret (and heart-wrenching) reunion with her dying father in 2008 says it all.