The harvest of journalistic books is usually abundant around Sant Jordi, and this year is no exception. Let’s start by reviewing the signatures of this newspaper.
Màrius Carol talks at length with the former president of the Spanish Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Crónica de la España que dialogue (Navona). For Carol, the title constitutes “an oxymoron, because dialogue is not fashionable in Spain”, however, in his opinion, for Zapatero dialogue was not so much the means as an end in itself.
After spending twenty years in Madrid covering political events, Enric Juliana publishes a compilation of his chronicles under the title Spain: the noise and the fury (Arpa), where he collects events such as 11-M, the procés, 15-M, the abdication of Juan Carlos I, the pandemic and even the amnesty debate.
Our correspondent in Brussels Beatriz Navarro, who was previously in the United States, publishes Dolly Parton, an American portrait (RBA) about a popular music figure through whose career six decades of life in the United States are explained.
Albert Molins offers in Eating Without Asking Permission (Rosameron) a vindication of the nutritional ritual “with cultural implications that are intertwined with life, death, sex, celebration, the management of the environment and the relationship with our children.”
Francesc Bracero, in Bicycles for the Mind (Península), offers a journey from the first PC to artificial intelligence “designed for people who don’t understand technology.” In the same area of ??concerns, the essayist and former politician José María Lassalle publishes Artificial Civilization (Arpa), where he analyzes and criticizes “the nihilistic drift” of AI.
Albert Lladó reflects in Contra la actualidad) on what he considers “the robotization of the present”, analyzing the current experience of temporality and encouraging the reader to assume an active role on the social level.
Turning to authors from other media, Michael Reid, who was a correspondent for The Economist, gives us Spain (Espasa), an analysis of the political, social and cultural transformation from Franco’s death to the process. Rosa Montero collects in True Tales (Alfaguara) a compilation of her best reports for El País in 1978-1988. Jorge Bustos, deputy director of El Mundo, recounts his coexistence for months with the homeless people of the San Isidro shelter, in Casi: una chronicle of helplessness (Books of the Asteroid). Anna Pacheco, in I was here and I remembered you. A story about tourism, work and class (Anagrama), portrays the working conditions in Barcelona’s luxury hotels.
Josep M. Muñoz Lloret, former director of L’Avenç, recovers in Les pejades de la memoria eleven interviews published in the Catalan magazine with characters such as Vivian Gornick, Miquel Barceló (the historian) or Carmen Claudín. Ismael Nafría analyzes the successful digital transformation of an important Argentine newspaper in updated Clarín (Galaxia Gutenberg).
The twentieth anniversary of 11-M generates extensive bibliography. Let’s highlight: The call. The lie of 11-M, by Jesús Ceberio (Debate). Voices of 11-M. Victims of the lie by Víctor Sampedro (Planeta), and 11-M could be avoided, by Fernando Reinares (Galaxia Gutenberg).
Among the international chronicles, April is a country, by Tereixa Constenla, is especially timely on the 50th anniversary of the carnation revolution (Tusquets). The novelist Sofi Oksanen, one of the great figures of current Scandinavian literature, addresses the sexual violence practiced by Russian troops in war territory, in a double chronological arc: the abuse perpetrated against her great-aunt in Estonia and different dramatic events recent events in Ukraine. The author compares Putin’s imperial expansionism with that of Catherine the Great and Stalin in Twice in the Same River (Salamandra).
Also recommendable works of journalism in the international arena are Life and Death of the Medellín Cartel, by Carlos Lehder (Debate), and the already reference book on The Amazon, by Eliane Brum (Salamandra).
To finish on the level of personal empowerment, Your change is yours, by Sylvia de Béjar, a guide, intended for women, “to enjoy maturity without being accountable” (Planet). The high performance expert Xesco Espar now publishes in Catalan his best seller Jugar amb el cor (Platform), to face life “when excellence is not enough.”
