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Connected World: From Automated Work to Virtual Wars: The Future, By Those Who Are Shaping It
Par Father Philip Larrey. 2017
The world as we know it is changing. Driverless cars, drone deliveries and autonomous weapon systems are no longer the…
stuff of science fiction.But what's next for technology and business, and how will it impact our society?In Connected World, Philip Larrey of the Pontifical Lateran University explores the consequences of the new digital age in conversation with leaders including Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, and Maurice Lévy, CEO of Publicis Groupe.Ranging from the death of privacy to the rise of artificial intelligence, Connected World asks the existential questions which will come to define our age.Confessions of an Air Ambulance Doctor
Par Dr Tony Bleetman. 2013
Note to customers: This book is also available under the title "You Can't Park There!: The Highs and Lows of…
an Air Ambulance Doctor". 'People get into this work for "the juice", meaning the adrenaline rush, but they don't tell you about the other juices - the mud, blood, snot and grot.' Confessions of an Air Ambulance Doctor is the first ever behind-the-scenes account of life onboard an air ambulance. The first of its kind to carry doctors and surgeons who can take the hospital to the patient. Drug addicts, lorry crashes, open-heart surgery, stab wounds, headless chickens, mating llamas, and strip routines – it’s all in a day’s work for emergency doctor Tony Bleetman and his team. Whether they are landing in the middle of the M1 or at a maximum security jail, Tony and his crew Helimed 999 are the first on the scene in the most critical of emergencies. This gripping read will make you laugh, cry and marvel at the wonders of life (and death) in equal measure.Competition is Killing Us: How Big Business is Harming Our Society and Planet - and What To Do About It
Par Michelle Meagher. 2020
We live in the age of big companies where rising levels of power are concentrated in the hands of a…
few. Yet no government or organisation has the power to regulate these titans and hold them to account. We need big companies to share their power and we, the people of the world, need to reclaim it. In Competition is Killing Us, top business and competition lawyer Michelle Meagher establishes a new framework to control capitalism from the inside in order to make it work for the many and not just the few. Meagher has spent years campaigning against these multi-billion and trillion dollar mammoths that dominate the market and prioritise shareholder profits over all else; leading to extreme wealth inequality, inhumane conditions for workers and relentless pressure on the environment.In this revolutionary book, she introduces her wholly-achievable alternative; a fair and comprehensive competition law that limits unfair mergers, enforces accountability and redistributes power through stakeholder governance.A Community of Mortals
Par Alexandra Zelman-Doring. 2014
What is it like to have someone die in your arms? Can we return from the dead? And why has…
nobody heard of therapeutic hypothermia? Forced to come to terms with doctors pronouncing her husband ‘clinically dead’, Alexandra Zelman-Doring embarks on an exploration of what death means to us and how we might face it. Initally she is overwhelmed by the difficulty of accepting the loss of a loved one, and the anger, sadness and sense of isolation that it brings. But her suffering pushes her towards a life-store of reading, and here she finds words with which to contemplate death; from Turgenev on death as an ‘unanswerable reproach’ to Norbert Elias on the extraordinary collective will to endure it.Equally inspiring are the true stories of unlikely survivors: from a species of frog whose organs stop, frozen, throughout the winter, only to stir back to life in the spring, to Anna Bagenholm whose iced brain and body held out against all odds after a fatal accident. These incidents inform a development in medical science where cardiac arrest is treated with ‘therapeutic hypothermia’, in some cases allowing the body to last without oxygen just long enough for doctors to return the near-dead to life.Christopher Lloyd: His Life at Great Dixter
Par Stephen Anderton. 2010
Christopher Lloyd (Christo) was one of the greatest English gardeners of the twentieth century, perhaps the finest plantsman of them…
all. His creation is the garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex, and it is a tribute to his vision and achievement that, after his death in 2006, the Heritage Lottery Fund made a grant of £4 million to help preserve it for the nation. This enjoyable and revealing book - the first biography of Christo - is also the story of Dixter from 1910 to 2006, a unique unbroken history of one English house and one English garden spanning a century. It was Christo's father, Nathaniel, who bought the medieval manor at Dixter and called in the fashionable Edwardian architect, Lutyens, to rebuild the house and lay out the garden. And it was his mother, Daisy, who made the first wild garden in the meadows there. Christo was born at Dixter in 1921. Apart from boarding school, war service and a period at horticultural college, he spent his whole life there, constantly re-planting and enriching the garden, while turning out landmark books and exhaustive journalism. Opinionated, argumentative and gloriously eccentric, he changed the face of English gardening through his passions for meadow gardening, dazzling colours and thorough husbandry. As the baby of a family of six - five boys and a girl - Christo was stifled by his adoring mother. Music-loving and sports-hating, he knew the Latin names of plants before he was eight. This fascinating book reveals what made Christo tick by examining his relationships with his generous but scheming mother, his like-minded friends (such as gardeners Anna Pavord and Beth Chatto) and his colleagues (including his head gardener, Fergus Garrett, a plantsman in Christo's own mould).'An inspirational manifesto for change' Caroline Lucas, former leader of The Green Party 'A remarkable and important book' Steve Backshall,…
Naturalist, Broadcaster, and Author'Astute, erudite and crystalline, Bella writes with visionary clarity and passion [...] It's a wonderful book' Dara McAnulty, award-winning author of Diary of a Young Naturalist____________________________Across the planet, the futures of young people hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis. Isn't it time we made their voices heard?The Children of the Anthropocene, by conservationist and activist Bella Lack, chronicles the lives of the diverse young people on the frontlines of the environmental crisis around the world, amplifying the voices of those living at the heart of the crisis.Advocating for the protection of both people and the planet, Bella restores the beating heart to global environmental issues, from air pollution to deforestation and overconsumption, by telling the stories of those most directly affected. Transporting us from the humming bounty of Ecuador's Choco Rainforest and the graceful arcs of the Himalayan Mountains, to the windswept plains and vibrant vistas of life in Altiplano, Bella speaks to young activists from around the world including Dara McAnulty, Afroz Shah and Artemisa Xakriabá, and brings the crisis vividly to life.It's time we passed the mic and listened to different perspectives. Bella's manifestos for change will inspire and mobilize you to rediscover the wonders and wilds of nature and, ultimately, change the way you think about our planet in crisis. This is your chance to hear the urgent stories of an endangered species too often overlooked: the children of the Anthropocene. ____________________________'Extraordinarily moving, wild and engaging - the book of the moment' Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and author of Climate Justice'A visionary statement for the future [...] Pragmatic, positive & beautifully written' Ben Macdonald, Award-Winning Conservation Writer, Wildlife TV Producer and NaturalistCall Me Red: A shepherd’s journey
Par Hannah Jackson. 2021
Sunday Times bestsellerLessons to live by, without getting up with the lark Hannah Jackson (aka The Red Shepherdess) grew up…
in the Wirral, and hadn't set foot on a farm until she was 20-years-old. But she'd always loved animals and on a visit to the Lake District, she saw a lamb being born and had a light bulb moment - a burning desire to succeed as a farmer - and never looked back.In Tales of a Shepherdess, Hannah gives us a unique insight into farm life and the values it has taught her that we can use in our everyday lives to change ourselves and our world for the better - from connection, communication and community, to leadership, patience and resilience. Hannah will show us how becoming a lambing and farming contractor in a male-dominated and traditional world taught her grit and determination; how training her loyal sheepdog Fraser taught her to trust; and how sometimes failure can teach us more about ourselves than success. Hannah's journey also teaches us how we should find what sets our hearts on fire and throw everything into it.Hannah's simple and universal wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement will inspire you to achieve your goals, follow your dreams and focus on what's really important in life.The C-Word
Par Lisa Lynch. 2010
Updated with new material, The C Word is the incredibly moving, darkly humorous account of one woman's fight against breast…
cancer. Now a BBC Drama starring Sheridan Smith. The last thing Lisa Lynch had expected to put on her 'things to do before you're 30' list was beating breast cancer, but them's the breaks. So with her life on hold, and her mind stuffed with unspoken fears, questions and emotions, she turned to her computer and started blogging about the frustrating, life-altering, sheer pain-in-the-arse inconvenience of getting breast cancer at the age of 28.The C-Word is an unflinchingly honest and darkly humorous account of Lisa's battle with The Bullshit, as she came to call it. From the good days when she could almost pretend it wasn't happening, to the bad days, when she couldn't bear to wake up, Lisa's story is emotional, heartbreaking and often hilarious. The C-Word will make you laugh and cry, and ultimately reaffirm your faith in life.Books do Furnish a Life: An electrifying celebration of science writing
Par Richard Dawkins. 2021
'A rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep…
knowledge.' Matt Ridley'Enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth.' - Mark Cocker, Spectator'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday TimesIncluding conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator.Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work.Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. - Areo MagazineThe Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures with the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals
Par Merlin Tuttle. 2015
Stories and science surrounding the beloved bat, from an ecologist who has dedicated his life to the curious creature.Few people…
realize how sophisticated and intelligent bats are. Merlin Tuttle knows, and he has stopped at nothing to find and protect them on every continent they inhabit. Sharing highlights from a lifetime of adventure and discovery, Tuttle takes us to the frontiers of bat research to show that frog-eating bats can identify frogs by their calls, that some bats have social sophistication similar to that of higher primates, and that bats have remarkable memories. Bats also provide enormous benefits by eating crop pests, pollinating plants, and carrying seeds needed for reforestation. They save farmers billions of dollars annually and are essential to a healthy planet. Tuttle&’s account forever changes the way we see these poorly understood yet fascinating creatures. &“Grips and doesn't let go.&”—Wall Street Journal&“It&’s a terrific read.&”—Huffington Post &“A whirlwind adventure story and a top-shelf natural history page-turner.&”—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus&“One of the best, most interesting books I&’ve ever read.&”—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of DogsGrown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy
Par Sharon Malone. 2024
&“A must-read for anyone who cares about their quality of life . . . Dr. Sharon Malone is the first person I…
turn to for a whole host of issues, especially my health.&”—MICHELLE OBAMAA practical guide to aging and health for women who have felt ignored or marginalized by the medical profession, from a leading OB/GYN and expert on menopausal and post-reproductive healthThere&’s not enough talk around women&’s health, and what little there is rarely helps. Women are routinely warned, lectured, or threatened about their health. Or they are ignored, dismissed, or shamed. But they are rarely empowered. And empowerment, more than anything, is what women—and women of color, in particular—need.Grown Woman Talk is for every woman who has felt marginalized or overwhelmed by a healthcare system that has become more impersonal, complex, and difficult to navigate than ever. It&’s also for any woman who is simply standing at the intersection of aging and health, anxious and wanting solutions.Part medical handbook, part memoir, and part sister-girl cheerleader, this book is filled with useful resources and real-life stories of victory and defeat. It not only highlights the current data around women&’s health issues, but it also places that data in a helpful context.In a tone that is lively and intimate but unflinchingly direct, Dr. Sharon Malone details how to live better, age better, and get better medical treatment, especially when it&’s most needed. This is not a medical activism book designed to fight the power. This is a book designed to show women that they already have the power—they need only to increase their capacity and willingness to use it.Most important, Grown Woman Talk seeks to eradicate the silence that surrounds women&’s health by facilitating discussion between women of all ages and encouraging more accurate and productive medical insights. It is Dr. Sharon&’s belief that giving women more agency can, literally, give them life.Matron in Charge
Par Evelyn Prentis. 1982
'She should never have kept the business going after her husband died. Running a betting shop is no job for…
a woman. Especially when she's got bad legs.'After a short stay at hospital herself, Evelyn Prentis wondered what was in store for her when she returned to work. From the door-slamming Miss Cromwell to Mrs Silver's shoplifting and Mrs May coming over all queer, being Matron in charge of the Lodge was rarely straightforward.So when her ladies became unusually united in their grumbling about newest resident Ivy, the woman who'd kept the betting shop on the High Street, Evelyn was ready for all hell to break loose.But instead, with openness and kindness, Ivy won people over and even started bringing them together. Suddenly, being in charge of the Lodge was no trouble at all ...The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history
Par Richard Girling. 2016
Frank Buckland was an extraordinary man – surgeon, natural historian, popular lecturer, bestselling writer, museum curator, and a conservationist before…
the concept even existed. Eccentric, revolutionary, prolific, he was one of the nineteenth century’s most improbable geniuses. His lifelong passion was to discover new ways to feed the hungry. Rhinoceros, crocodile, puppy-dog, giraffe, kangaroo, bear and panther all had their chance to impress, but what finally - and, eventually, fatally - obsessed him was fish. Forgotten now, he was one of the most original, far-sighted and influential natural scientists of his time, held as high in public esteem as his great philosophical enemy, Charles Darwin.Make: Maverick Scientist
Par Forrest M. Mims. 2024
Maverick Scientist is the memoir of Forrest Mims, who forged a distinguished scientific career despite having no academic training in…
science. Named one of the "50 Best Brains in Science" by Discover magazine, Forrest shares what sparked his childhood curiosity and relates a lifetime of improbable, dramatic, and occasionally outright dangerous experiences in the world of science.At thirteen he invented a new method of rocket control. At seventeen he designed and built an analog computer that could translate Russian into English and that the Smithsonian collected as an example of an early hobby computer. While majoring in government at Texas A&M University, Forrest created a hand-held, radar-like device to help guide the blind. And during his military service, he had to be given special clearance to do top secret laser research at the Air Force Weapons Lab. Why? Because while he lacked the required engineering degree, they wanted his outside-the-box thinking on the project.He went on to co-found MITS, Inc., producer of the first commercially successful personal computer, wrote a series of electronics books for Radio Shack that sold more than seven million copies, and designed the music synthesizer circuit that became known as the infamous Atari Punk Console. All this came before he started consulting for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and NOAA's famous Mauna Loa Observatory, and earning the prestigious Rolex Award.This intimate portrait of a self-made scientist shares a revelatory look inside the scientific community, and tells the story of a lifelong learner who stood by his convictions even when pressured by the establishment to get in line with conventional wisdom. With dozens of personal photos and illustrations, Maverick Scientist serves as proof that to be a scientist, you simply need to do science.Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
Par Suzanne Scanlon. 2024
A raw and masterful memoir about becoming a woman and going mad—and doing both at once. When Suzanne Scanlon…
was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. After nearly three years and countless experimental treatments, Suzanne left the ward on shaky legs. In the decades it took her to recover from the experience, Suzanne came to understand her suffering as part of something larger: a long tradition of women whose complicated and compromised stories of self-actualization are reduced to &“crazy chick&” and &“madwoman&” narratives. It was a thrilling discovery, and she searched for more books, more woman writers, as the journey of her life converged with her journey through the literature that shaped her. Transporting, honest, and graceful, Committed is a story of discovery and recovery, reclaiming the idea of the madwoman as a template for insight and transcendence through the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Janet Frame, Audre Lorde, Shulamith Firestone, and others.Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science
Par Erin Zimmerman. 2023
"Evolutionary botanist Zimmerman discusses her passion for plants and inveighs against sexism in the sciences in her marvelous debut memoir...Throughout,…
Zimmerman&’s enthusiasm and expertise make the science accessible even to those without a background in the subject. The results are as edifying as they are galvanizing." - Publishers Weekly STARRED Review"Erin Zimmerman has exposed a rooted gender failure in science. Her book is important not for this alone. Her work is essential for understanding the future resilience of all flora on this planet." -Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of To Speak for the TreesAn exploration of science, motherhood, and academia, and a stirring account of a woman at a personal and professional crossroads . . .Growing up in rural Ontario, Erin Zimmerman became fascinated with plants—an obsession that led to a life in academia as a professional botanist. But as her career choices narrowed in the face of failing institutions and subtle, but ubiquitous, sexism, Zimmerman began to doubt herself.Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science is a scientist&’s memoir, a glimpse into the ordinary life of someone in a fascinating field. This is a memoir about plants, about looking at the world with wonder, and about what it means to be a woman in academia—an environment that pushes out mothers and those with any outside responsibilities. Zimmerman delves into her experiences as a new mom, her decision to leave her position in post-graduate research, and how she found a new way to stay in the field she loves.She also explores botany as a &“dying science&” worth fighting for. While still an undergrad, Zimmerman&’s university started the process of closing the Botany Department, a sign of waning funding for her beloved science. Still, she argues for its continuation, not only because we have at least 100,000 plant species yet to be discovered, but because an understanding of botany is crucial in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.Zimmerman is also a botanical illustrator and will provide 8 original illustrations for the book.For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time—A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics
Par Walter Lewin, Warren Goldstein. 2011
“YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE” is a common refrain in the emails Walter Lewin receives daily from fans who have…
been enthralled by his world-famous video lectures about the wonders of physics. “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes,” wrote one such fan. When Lewin’s lectures were made available online, he became an instant YouTube celebrity, and The New York Times declared, “Walter Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits.” For more than thirty years as a beloved professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lewin honed his singular craft of making physics not only accessible but truly fun, whether putting his head in the path of a wrecking ball, supercharging himself with three hundred thousand volts of electricity, or demonstrating why the sky is blue and why clouds are white. Now, as Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Lewin takes readers on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. “I introduce people to their own world,” writes Lewin, “the world they live in and are familiar with but don’t approach like a physicist—yet.” Could it be true that we are shorter standing up than lying down? Why can we snorkel no deeper than about one foot below the surface? Why are the colors of a rainbow always in the same order, and would it be possible to put our hand out and touch one? Whether introducing why the air smells so fresh after a lightning storm, why we briefly lose (and gain) weight when we ride in an elevator, or what the big bang would have sounded like had anyone existed to hear it, Lewin never ceases to surprise and delight with the extraordinary ability of physics to answer even the most elusive questions. Recounting his own exciting discoveries as a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy—arriving at MIT right at the start of an astonishing revolution in astronomy—he also brings to life the power of physics to reach into the vastness of space and unveil exotic uncharted territories, from the marvels of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud to the unseeable depths of black holes. “For me,” Lewin writes, “physics is a way of seeing—the spectacular and the mundane, the immense and the minute—as a beautiful, thrillingly interwoven whole.” His wonderfully inventive and vivid ways of introducing us to the revelations of physics impart to us a new appreciation of the remarkable beauty and intricate harmonies of the forces that govern our lives.A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing
Par Reynolds Price. 2003
Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels,…
stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In A Whole New Life, however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination.In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord ("The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward"). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life.Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer's much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means all) doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the "now appalling, now astonishing grace of God."A Whole New Life offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.In this &“riveting read, meshing memoir with scientific explication&” (Nature), a world-renowned neuroscientist reveals how he learned to communicate with…
patients in vegetative or &“gray zone&” states and, more importantly, he explains what those interactions tell us about the working of our own brains.&“Vivid, emotional, and thought-provoking&” (Publishers Weekly), Into the Gray Zone takes readers to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the so-called &“gray zone&” between full consciousness and brain death. People in this middle place have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer&’s and Parkinson&’s. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors believe they are incapable of thought. But a sizeable number—as many as twenty percent—are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift deep within damaged brains and bodies. An expert in the field, Adrian Owen led a team that, in 2006, discovered this lost population and made medical history. Scientists, physicians, and philosophers have only just begun to grapple with the implications. Following Owen&’s journey of exciting medical discovery, Intothe Gray Zone asks some tough and terrifying questions, such as: What is life like for these patients? What can their families and friends do to help them? What are the ethical implications for religious organizations, politicians, the Right to Die movement, and even insurers? And perhaps most intriguing of all: in defining what a life worth living is, are we too concerned with the physical and not giving enough emphasis to the power of thought? What, truly, defines a satisfying life? &“Strangely uplifting…the testimonies of people who have returned from the gray zone evoke the mysteries of consciousness and identity with tremendous power&” (The New Yorker). This book is about the difference between a brain and a mind, a body and a person. Into the Gray Zone is &“a fascinating memoir…reads like a thriller&” (Mail on Sunday).The Private Life Of Islam: An Algerian Diary
Par Dr Ian Young. 1974
Ian Young spent a summer as a medical student in a provincial maternity unit in Algeria. This book is taken…
from the diary he began on arrival, when he found himself the privileged witness of the insides not just of Kabyl women, but also some much-trumpeted ideology. The immediate villains are a couple of expatriate Bulgarian gynaecologists. Dr Vasilev, at the closing stages of a career of fathomless incompetence, forms a bond of affection with the author and they spend many hours in the office over an old route map of Bulgaria, discussing mileages and motorcycles as Maternity drifts beneath them like an abandoned ship. Dr Kostov packs a powerful bedside punch and saves his humanitarian feelings for the health of the Deutschmark. The two form a macabre comic team as they take the reader through a series of medical nightmares. But their lot is scarcely more enviable than that of their female victims: the foreign doctors are the unhappy executors, working in blood, excrement and death, of the most respected attitudes in Algeria. The Private Life of Islam is a ruthlessly clear-sighted view of a particular place at a particular time. It is also a classic in the art of story-telling.'A real achievement, personal as well as literary.' David Pryce-Jones, The Times'A parable of the reality behind a vast amount of modern social and political fantasy, even in the most developed of countries.' David Holden, Sunday Times