96 | NORTH & SOUTH | JUNE 2019
Non-fiction
The Age of Surveillance
Capitalism
Shoshana Zubo
(Allen & Unwin, $55)
Technology critic and Har-
vard Business School profes-
sor Shoshana Zubo makes a
persuasive argument that
tech giants such as Google
and Facebook have been hi-
jacking our lives by claiming
human experience and turn-
ing it into behavioural data.
Big business buys our secrets
to predict our behaviour and,
if we are not careful, control
us in insidious ways. The dig-
ital revolution, Zubo argues,
is an unnatural selection
where knowledge will replace
freedom as our “needs” are
exploited. Answerable to no
one and devoid of the most
basic safeguards, Big Tech is
basically dismantling our so-
ciety for profit. In Zuboff’s
view, this is nothing less than
a “coup from above to over-
throw our sovereignty”. And
while she believes it’s not too
late to reclaim our digital fu-
ture, she warns that now is
the time to act. KEN DOWNIE
In the Closet of
the Vatican
Frédéric Martel
(Bloomsbury, $35)
During the four years French
journalist Frédéric Martel
spent investigating the Vati-
can Church, he travelled to
30 countries and interviewed
more than 1000 friars, cardi-
nals, bishops, monsignori
and priests. The result is this
book – a 500-page bombshell
- revealing the intrigues, sex-
ual-abuse cover-ups, homo-
phobia, double lives and ulti-
mately the sheer hypocrisy of
the Catholic clergy. “The
Vatican,” writes Martel, “has
one of the biggest gay com-
munities in the world” – and
he has no trouble with
names, dates, facts and acts.
Surprised? Shocked? Hardly.
Martel also interviewed mi-
grant rent boys who work the
Roma Termini, a hunting-
ground haunt of priests who
miraculously forget the vow
of chastity after dark. Cleri-
cal corruption and power-
struggle plots make this ex-
posé essential reading. Trag-
ic, comical and sickening in
equal measure.
JUDITH BARAGWANATHMaking Evil
Dr Julia Shaw
(Allen & Unwin, $33)In the 1961 trial of Adolf
Eichmann, a key figure be-
hind the Holocaust, the pros-
ecution tried to portray him
as a perverted monster. In
her 1963 book Eichmann in
Jerusalem, political theorist
Hannah Arendt considered
him “terribly and terrify-
ingly normal”. The problem
with Eichmann is there are
so many like him. English
psychological researcher Dr
Julia Shaw tries to under-
stand the deviance that lies
within us all, and asks why we
sometimes act on it. In this
exploration into the darkest
recesses of the human mind,
she uses a combination of
neuroscience and psychology
to contemplate the concept of
“evil” and explore issues such
as how similar a “normal”
brain is to a psychopath’s, and
why someone becomes a ter-
rorist Most of us are capable
of murder, and many fanta-
sise about rape. Making Evil
is a darkly engaging book, but
jump in prepared for an un-
comfortable ride. KEN DOWNIEDr Space Junk
vs the Universe
Alice Gorman (NewSouth, $35)To space archaeologist Alice
Gorman, one person’s junk is
another person’s artefact.
Here, she takes the reader on
a journey through space,
where human contact has leftour solar system far from
empty. But it’s not all junk up
there. Objects and symbols of
the space age and its compet-
ing ideologies quietly live on,
from Luna 2’s smashed debris
on the moon to Voyager 1’s
phonograph record featuring
the sounds of earth: an asser-
tion of our existence and hu-
man aspirations. This is the
cultural material that may be
rediscovered one day by those
far beyond us. Gorman’s his-
tory of the solar system, from
rocket parks to lunar modules
with the occasional space-age
cocktail thrown in, concludes
that by studying space, we end
up discovering a little more
about ourselves along the way.
KEN DOWNIEBiographyServing the Servant
Danny Goldberg
(Hachette, $38)Twenty-five years after Kurt
Cobain’s suicide, Danny
Goldberg recounts manag-
ing Nirvana’s meteoric rise
to stardom after the album
Nevermind turned the Seattle
grunge band into a world-
wide phenomenon. He had
a lot on his plate. Cobain was
not only a depressive junk-
ie but the band’s creative
genius. “I was predisposed
to see all things Nirvana
through rose-coloured
glasses,” admits Goldberg,
as any good manager would.
Enter then Courtney Love,
lead singer of a punk band
with the alluring name of
Hole. Cobain and Love were
made for each other: both
had chips on their shoulders
and fiendish drug habits.
And although Goldberg did
his best as chief wrangler, fa-
ther figure, fixer and friend,
he couldn’t prevent Cobain’s
inevitable self-destruction.
The singer was dead at 27.
A reasonable rock’n’roll read
on the tragic pitfalls of fame.
JUDITH BARAGWANATH