Beach Reads: The battle for semiconductors, workplace equality and self-confidence

This week’s beach reads include a varied selection of fiction and non-fiction, from the history of the one of the world’s most important technological innovations, an irreverent survey of the state of maternity law and the hurdles women face maintaining their career when having children, plus a modern fiction classic.

Chip Wars by Chris Miller

This tiny piece of tech powers most electronic devices, from household appliances, to the newest smartphones and deadliest, most precise weaponry. Unsurprisingly given their ubiquity, semiconductors are also a conduit to understanding twentieth-century history, their scientific and commercial development offering a window into geopolitical relations during the Cold War and beyond.

Miller suggests that the Soviet Union’s inability to foster the kind of collaborative yet competitive environment needed to support technological innovation, let alone provide the capital required, was central to its demise. Having a nuclear arsenal on a par with the US is all well and good, but if those weapons can’t reach the US without falling foul of an advanced detection system, powered by chips? Game over.

It’s not just the past that the book sheds light on. Today, chip manufacture and innovation is still the site of much wrangling for international superiority, as China invests heavily in semiconductors to supersede the US’ technological dominance. The US response to this threat – export controls and tariffs – offers plenty for trade buffs to pore over.

In that vein, it’s also worth noting Miller positions chips as the original supply chain disruptor, spawning a web of international design centres, factories and fabrication plants decades before the term ‘globalisation’ passed into common usage. Despite its longevity, the precarity of the semiconductor supply chain is remarkable, with so few firms at each stage, Miller describes it as a “series of choke points… no other facet of the economy is so dependent on so few firms”.

Chip Wars makes for an entertaining beach read. Described by the New York Times as a “non-fiction thriller”, the book is comprised of short, pacy chapters, that move quickly through the dying days of World War II to the present day.

The Motherhood Penalty by Joeli Brearley

From a triumph of modern capitalism to one of its greatest failings, Joeli Brearley, founder of charity Pregnant then Screwed, chronicles the discrimination expectant and recent mothers encounter at work.

Following her own contract termination, she helped expose the appalling number of women who have faced dismissal or demotion while pregnant, on maternity leave or returning to work post-partum. Brearley probes the culture that allows this kind of flagrant discrimination to continue relatively unchecked, also outlining the lack of effective legal recourse available for women determined to hold employers to account.

Especially enlightening nuggets include the little-known fact that maternity pay is actually derived from national insurance contributions, with firms claiming back what they pay to new mothers from the government. Small businesses actually claim back 103% of this total.

Legal costs almost always outweigh any kind of compensation, which serves as an especially effective deterrent for many women who are also grappling with new motherhood.

Brearley brings a light and irreverent touch to a difficult topic, recounting her own experiences and highlighting a number of injustices with impressive humour.

Helpfully, each chapter is structured to end with practical tips on how women can best address or prepare for any ill-treatment they may face. Useful insights, although equally depressing and infuriating in equal measure, include that “the only real way to reduce the impact on your career is grit your teeth during those early years and go back to work”.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Writers get progressively less enamoured with capitalism as we move down my list, and an enclave of ‘uncommitted communists’ populate this final read – no, it’s not another Cold War thriller, but Sally Rooney’s Conversation with Friends.

Centred on the kind of protagonist for which her novels have become synonymous – a neurotic, clever, left-wing student, too insecure to confront her feelings – the novel follows aspiring writer Frances through an emotionally draining half-year, in which she embarks on an ill-advised affair with married, depressive actor Nick, while trying to decipher her feelings for charismatic best friend – and ex – Bobbi.

As I get older and more removed a) from the age of her characters and b) from Rooney’s age when writing, the contrast between the incisive social observations, the deft ways she captures miscommunication and all that goes unsaid between her characters, and those characters’ naivete and emotional illiteracy becomes more entertaining, and more skilful.

This all sounds very heavy, but the novel is ripe with wry laugh-out-loud lines, plus one scathing character assassination, delivered aptly enough via an email, that required me to pause laughing before I could continue.

It’s also a perfect pick for the beach, beginning with a stifling summer sulking through the streets of Dublin, before we join our not-so plucky heroine on her own beach trip as she journeys to France to continue her affair with the holiday host’s husband.