And I don't mean that as the damning criticism that he'd presumably take it to be.Yoga For People Who Can't be Bothered to do it by Geoff Dyer (ABACUS £7.99) Wet and bedraggled, tripping on magic mushrooms and with trousers inside out, Geoff Dyer is sitting in an Amsterdam caf?ne day during "the twilight" of his psychedelic years (his early forties), when he realises that he's happy to be where he is. It's therefore a managing strategy, a component of what White's favourite Marxist philospher Theodor Adorno called our "administered society".White zealously and skilfully attacks the Middle Mind as he sees it in the media, academia and politics, although the specific cultural artefacts he targets will often be unfamiliar to British readers. The Middle Mind provides entertainment and product in the guise of an authentic culture, impoverishes our imagination, deadens the creative impulse and distracts us from the fact of capitalism's con-trick. It would support the arts and go to see Shakespeare and symphonies: "it's well intended, but it is also deeply deluded." Perhaps it doesn't sound so bad, but as White's subtitle has it, it's the reason "Why Americans Don't Think For Themselves" (and we British don't have anything to be smug about either). The Middle Mind by Curtis White (ALLEN LANE £12.99) The Middle Mind is Curtis White's new name for the dominant cultural paradigm.

I was charmed; I could almost see the author running a finger over his old sealskin boots as he told the tale of his Arctic youth once again, to enraptured grandchildren. If you anthropomorphised it, the Middle Mind would be pragmatic, populist, spiritual and liberal. The author died last year; this book will live on beyond the circle of his family, and deserves to.. The Middle Mind is Curtis White's new name for the dominant cultural paradigm. But an extra analytical layer would diminish the book's greatest asset, which is some kind of purity. Here you'll find none of the naked ambition that drives adventurers back and back again for ever-greater sporting feats, nor the high literary stance of writers aspiring to capture the essence of the cold desert - Barry Lopez and his Arctic Dreams comes to mind This is something lesser and greater. "The stories that follow have filled many happy times together," is the collective dedication by his family, and the book asks nothing more than that we share them.This I found myself more than happy to do.

Maurice recalls this faraway time without recourse to judgment of the alien world that embraced him, and no doubt his ease with, and openness to, the world were qualities that the Inuit were quick to discern in him as a young man some 70 years ago.Sometimes I did wish for more context and perspective - the intellectual rigour of Hugh Brody's The Other Side of Eden, though perhaps reduced to footnotes. Re-supplied only once a year, and with no immediate communication with the outside world, life for the boy was tough even by Arctic fur trader standards. The Inuit, though, gradually took him under their wing, and he began to master dog teams, the "dos" and "don'ts" of igloo-building, and even how to outwit the crafty polar bear. In time he saw the far north as a "harsh but quiet and honest place", and, equipped with a knowledge of Inuit language, practice and myth, was sent to his own, even more isolated, outpost.