Unlike New York, New York, so good they named it twice, this a review of a review – so bad it’s made me angry. Really angry.

Like all authors, I get book reviews that upset me. But I have to tolerate those where it’s simply a difference of opinion. That’s life. But this review is bad because it is sloppy and unprofessional – and that’s unacceptable.

We’re not talking a blog or a passing comment on Amazon. This is a review by a (once) respected writer in a newsstand magazine. I’m not going to name either here, but the review is of my book The Global Warming Survival Kit

There are two things that have really wound me up here. One is that there is good evidence that the writer of the review didn’t read the book. I review lots of books professionally, and I wouldn’t take the money if I hadn’t time to read the book cover to cover. But this appears to be a skim job. There are several pointers to this, but the clearest is that it says at one point Clegg offers tips on how to prepare a worm sandwich. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the text about worm sandwiches. There is a section with a heading Worm sandwiches – and that seems to be as far as he has read.

My other issue with this ‘review’ is that almost all the points are either factually incorrect, or taken out of context in a way that makes them misleading. Here are few examples:

I looked in vain for a section on… reducing your impact on the planet – This totally misses the point of the book. There are dozens of books on the shelves on cutting your carbon footprint etc. This book isn’t about what we can do to reduce impact, it’s about coping with the problems caused by climate change.

advises all manner of hoarding and selfishness, while warning against displaying “conspicuous consumption” – the whole point of the book is advice on being prepared, for example for water shortages. So it tells you how to store water. The same with food. That’s simple practicality. But the bit about not displaying “conspicuous consumption” is about surviving in a riot or on city streets when tensions are high. If the author wants to go about flashing a Macbook Air in a dangerous district, that’s his affair, but it seems a perfectly reasonable warning and is totally out of context in the way it’s phrased here.

I looked in vain for a section on sharing what you have – Leaving aside the observation that this is facile, and is a matter of personal choice, I have a section on using personal networks to help each other, over half a chapter on helping other people with first aid, and a whole chapter on not losing your humanity. It seems his flick through was very brief.

What it comes down to in the end is that I am rather offended to be called hysterical, and to be described as if I am championing “conspicuous consumption” by someone hypocritical enough to preach about reducing our impact on the planet while admitting to spending much of his life jetting around the world. For the record, I’ve flown once in the last 15 years.

This is a lazy, unprofessional review and if I was rating it on the Popular Science Website I would give it one star, on a scale that goes from two to five.