The Dead Hand and Delusions of Gender paperback arrive at Icon HQ

Posted on 2011/01/11 , tagged as

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Two key books from Icon, both published at the start of February, have arrived at the Icon ranch this morning.

The Dead Hand is David Hoffman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative history of the last decade of the Cold War, focusing particularly on the two men – Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev – whose Herculean efforts, alongside many others, helped to bring the era of mutually assured destruction to a close. It’s been hugely feted in the US, with John le Carré, no less, describing it as a ‘stunning feat of research and narrative.’

Cordelia Fine’s brilliant Delusions of Gender is published in paperback in February. This book has opened up a huge debate about how far the traits we associate with being male or female are inbuilt or, as Fine argues, cultural. She reserves particular vitriol for what she calls ‘neurosexism’, the ideas that are helping to perpetuate old-fashioned gender stereotypes under the guise of shoddy science.