Teach Secondary Issue 14.2

Off the Shelves Brilliant titles for you and your students to explore Howtothink likeapoet (Dai George,Bloomsbury,£16.99) Abook containing 23 considerations of a wide variety of poets.Alongside the usual suspects, likeMilton and Chaucer,we also find the classical Greek poet Sappho and the late 17th centuryJapanese poet,Matsuo Bashō,with each chapter amix of biography and quotations. George puts something of amodern spin on the poets’works,making themmore accessible.The author reimagines Sappho, for example, as amodern day big sister, anxiously checking her phone for a text fromher brother,who went out the previous night and has yet to return home. The author’s interpretations are highly engaging and readable, though a full bibliographywould have been welcome, rather than the list of permissions we get. Otherwise,warmly recommended. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman (see bit.ly/Eclecticismformoredetails ) TheArtofUncertainty (DavidSpiegelhalter,Pelican,£22) This tome goes far beyondwhat students actually need to learn about probability at KS3-4, but its strength for secondary teachers is the sheer wealth of easily relatable examples it provides. It could also find use as a resource for other subject areas outsidemaths. Your computing department will likely find the section on facial recognition interesting, for instance – Spiegelhalter observes that even if such systems can boast of high accuracy,most of their identifications will still be wrong.There’s also a good chapter on attempts at taking a scientific approach to uncertainty. It might not be ideal bedtime reading, but the book’s prose is easy to follow, with handy bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter, and it’s comprehensive in scope, complete with an excellent index and glossary of terms. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman TheNewsmongers:AHistoryof TabloidJournalism (TerryKirby,Reaktion,£20) Aside from journalismbeing included in the KS4 English programme of study and GCSE media studies, there’s another good reason for reading The Newsmongers – because perhaps themost fascinating aspect of this highly detailed account is the extent to which the news, and how it’s reported, depends so much on the personal predilections of publishers and editors.Yes,wemight instinctively know that already – but seeing somany examples of it in practice, presented in one place, is quite something. The timespan covered by the book is extraordinary, running fromtheMiddleAges up to the present day. Politics, history, culture, ‘churnalism’, fake news – it’s all here,making this bookwell worth reading for both curricular considerations and for personal research purposes. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman 36 teachwire.net/secondary