What does it mean to be cool? Where did it come from? And who is the coolest person who ever lived?
These and other mysteries are revealed in this suave compendium of all things super-cool. After explaining how the quality arose in the 1930s as a value system to rival those of money and morality, it takes the reader on a light-touch tour of the people and practices that have defined it, from Byron and tattoos to Björk and base jumping.
The book “excels” in its final section, where Hodgkinson deploys his “wry humour”, as he “lists his own 25 coolest things on the planet, including his wife, Mark Rylance and Socrates”.
Ammar Kalia, TLS
