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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Jay Rayner

I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted fly-blown carrion out in the bush. 
 
They claim otherwise, of course. Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the room to an S &amp; M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy. 
 
Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands?

My Dining Hell

Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Benjamin Britten single-handedly transformed the reputation of British classical music. The enormous popular appeal of his great works, such as Peter Grimes (1945) and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), make him the most successful opera composer of any born in the twentieth century. But his success was not without controversy and pain: he was accused of fleeing Britain to avoid military service, he was widely known to be sexually obsessed with boys and he suffered an astonishing array of illnesses. 
 
This short book combines a colourful overview of his life with pithy descriptions of all of his major musical works, providing an intimate portrait of this highly unusual man and the perfect introduction to a towering figure of British culture.

Benjamin Britten

Nick Hornby

Books, Movies, Rhythm, Blues is the companion volume to Fan Mail, Nick Hornby's collection of writings on football. This second collection brings together the best of his other non-fiction pieces, on film and tv, writers and painters and music, and including one exceptional fragment of autobiography. With subject matter ranging from the Sundance Festival to Abbey Road Studios, from P.G. Wodehouse to The West Wing, these are pieces that 'were written for fun, or because I felt I had things to say and time to say them, or because the commissions were unusual and imaginative, or because ... I was being asked to go somewhere I had never been before.'

Books, Movies, Rhythm, Blues

Twenty Years of Writing about Film, Music and Books

Professor Dame Sally Davies

Jonathan Grant

Mike Catchpole

This is a story that affects us all: our friends, our family and our children. Antibiotics add, on average, 20 years to everyone's lives. Since the manufacture of penicillin in 1943, for over 70 years we have survived extraordinary operations and life-threatening infections. We are so familiar with these wonder drugs that we take them for granted. The truth is that we have been abusing them: as patients; as doctors; as travellers; in our food. 
 
No new class of antibiotic has been discovered for 26 years and the bugs are fighting back. If we do not take action now, in a few decades we may start dying from the most commonplace of ailments that can today be treated easily. This book is vital in raising awareness for the future health of our children and our grandchildren.

The Drugs Don't Work

A Global Threat

After the phenomenal success of Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby tried to avoid writing about football, for fear that he'd be writing about it forever. But occasionally over the years he's found it impossible to turn down a particularly enticing assignment or, in the case of the 2012-13 Premier League, just unable to resist writing about that most spectacular of seasons. 
 
Fortunately for those who love great writing about football, all these fugitive pieces are collected in Fan Mail. You can follow the fortunes, as Hornby did, of a hopelessly out-of-their-depth Cambridge United in the old Second Division, discover why Perry Groves was an unlikely hero among Arsenal fans, enjoy Hornby trying to explain the World Cup to Americans, and share with him the pain of watching our national team.

Fan Mail

Twenty Years of Writing about Football

Paul French

The Badlands, a warren of narrow hutongs in the eastern district of pre-communist Peking, had its heyday in the 1930s. Home to the city's drifters, misfits and the odd bohemian, it was a place of opium dens, divebars, brothels, flophouses and cabarets, and was infamous for its ability to satisfy every human desire from the exotically entertaining to the criminally depraved.   These vignettes of eight non-Chinese residents of the precinct  White Russians, Americans and Europeans  bring the Badlands vividly back to life, providing a short but potent account of a place and a way of life until now largely forgotten, but here rendered unforgettable.

The Badlands

Decadent Playground of Old Peking

Alastair Sooke

Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein - architect of Pop art, connoisseur of the comic strip, master of irony and prophet of popular culture. From exhilarating images of ice-cool jet pilots in dog fights, to blue-haired Barbie dolls drowning in scenes of domestic heartache, Lichtenstein's instantly recognisable paintings, with their Ben-Day dots and witty one-liners, defined the art of a generation. But how did a jobbing, unassuming painter of the Fifties become a world-famous Pop artist whose work today sells for millions? What do his paintings really tell us? And what is his legacy? 
 
This book, which can be read in two hours or less, is a perfect introduction to the artist and his work. Spanning Lichtenstein's career, and explaining his unique style, it is a journey through the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.

Roy Lichtenstein

How Modern Art Was Saved by Donald Duck

John Garnaut

When news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai's wife reached Western attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story. Now, as the Party's 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, and installs the Bo family's long-time rival Xi Jinping as president, China's rulers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their poisonous internal divisions behind closed doors. 
 
Bo Xilai's breathtaking fall from grace is an extraordinary tale of excess, murder, defection, political purges and ideological clashes going back to Mao himself, as the princeling sons of the revolutionary heroes ascend to control of the Party. China watcher John Garnaut examines how Bo's stellar rise through the ranks troubled his more reformist peers, as he revived anti-'capitalist roader' sentiment, even while his family and associates enjoyed the more open economy's opportunities. Amid fears his imminent elevation to the powerful Standing Committee was leading China towards another destructive Cultural Revolution, have his opponents seized their chance to destroy Bo and what he stood for? The trigger was his wife Gu Kailai's apparently paranoid murder of an English family friend, which exposed the corruption and brutality of Bo's outwardly successful administration of the massive city of Chongqing. It also led to the one of the highest-level attempted defections in Communist China's history when Bo's right-hand man, police chief Wang Lijun, tried to escape the ruins of his sponsor's reputation. 
 
Garnaut explains how this incredible glimpse into the very personal power struggles within the CCP exposes the myth of the unified one-party state. With China approaching super-power status, today's leadership shuffle may set the tone for international relations for decades. Here, Garnaut reveals a particularly Chinese spin on the old adage that the personal is political.

The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo

How A Murder Exposed The Cracks In China’s Leadership

Alex McBride

Nineteen year-old Madeleine Smith may have been charged in 1857 with poisoning her lover, Emile L'Angelier, but her real sin was having sex - a lot of sex - out of wedlock. Her mistake was to write him frank and passionate letters, described by the trial judge as 'without any sense of decency', which L'Angelier threatened to send to her father when she cooled on the idea of marriage, having secretly engaged herself to someone else. 
 
Some fifty years later, the trial of Robert Wood, a respectable, hard-working illustrator by day, who frolicked with prostitutes by night, including the unfortunate Emily Dimmock, also hinged on a dangerous correspondence. Dimmock's murderer had evidently ransacked her rooms for a postcard written by Wood. Was there something he was desperate to hide? The author of his trial is certain he was guilty. 
 
But both escaped conviction - in Wood's case, thanks to the defence of the best defence barrister in the land. In Madeleine Smith's, the three judges ruled two-to-one to exclude from evidence L'Angelier's pocket book, which recorded her meetings with him on the day of the murder. These two salacious and controversial trials demonstrate how the dramatic difference between 'guilty' and 'not guilty' can sometimes be decided by a mere scrap of paper.

Famous Trials: Lucky Escapes

Thomas Cream, erstwhile Sunday school teacher and serial poisoner, has an unsettling air and wonky eye. He also happens to be a doctor, which provides him with ample means and an ideal cover for his murderous activities. His victims are vulnerable young women, whose trust he gains with drinks and trips to the music hall, before offering them pills or swigs from a medicine bottle. A few hours later, they are dying in agony. 
 
The Honourable Thomas Ley, meanwhile, has an even better disguise: he's the former Justice Minister for New South Wales and a successful businessman, albeit with a shady past. Rumours abound when a political opponent disappears without trace and a business partner winds up at the bottom of a cliff. 
 
Neither killer can help themselves - and this, in the end, leads to their downfall - and both defy our comprehension. Brilliantly reconstructed here, their trials, in 1892 and 1947, reveal a deeply sinister conundrum: by the time you've discovered the secrets in their heart, it's inevitably much too late.

Famous Trials: Thrill-Killers

A respectable solicitor in the town of Hay-on-Wye, harried by his troubled wife, slowly and carefully poisons her to death. Pleased with the results, he sees an opportunity for another quick-fix solution and turns his murderous attentions to his business rival... 
 
Trapped in a marriage of convenience to an aging man almost thirty years her senior, thirty-eight year-old Alma falls in love with seventeen year-old George, when he answers her advertisement for a 'willing lad' to do the housework. It's the perfect set up - a well-disposed husband and a passionate lover - until George destroys it all by trying to get the husband out of the way... 
 
These two classic cases of spousal murder - one chillingly domestic, the other bizarre and touching - took place in 1922 and 1935. In these brilliant reconstructions, they continue to confound our expectations of how murderers are meant to proceed.

Famous Trials: Unwanted Spouses

Brian Cathcart

Hugh Grant

When most of the British press conspired to cover up the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, what did that tell us? That it wasn't just the News of the World that had something to hide. And when the Leveson Inquiry lifted the lid on their activities we saw what it was: illegal practices, dishonesty, a disregard for the rights of ordinary people and an arrogant assumption of unaccountability. Now the battle is on to decide whether anything will change and the editors and proprietors, with their vast propaganda power, are determined to ensure nothing will. This book, by a long-time journalist who is a founder of the Hacked Off campaign, paints a damning picture of press corruption and makes a passionate case for journalism that doesn't bully and lie - journalism that is truly answerable to the public while remaining free from government interference. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get this right, and we must not allow powerful media corporations to snatch that chance from us.

Everybody's Hacked Off

Why We Don't Have the Press we Deserve and What to Do About It

Andrew Lees

Britain like the rest of the developed world is in the grip of a silent plague. Its thousands of victims can no longer make sense of the world and are contained for their own safety in fading Victorian piles and nondescript redbrick detention centres around the country. For them the present is a foreign country and the past a lost continent. 
There are now more people in the UK with Alzheimer's than the population of Liverpool, and four million Americans are reported to have the disease. Longevity is a major factor in the increasing incidence of the disease, with the number of over 65s in the UK having trebled in the last 100 years, and forecast to double again in the next 25 years. 
With such an alarming background, the race to find the causes - and therefore potentially a cure - for Alzheimer's is urgent. In this Penguin Special, Dr Andrew Lees, a world expert on the neurodegenerative diseases, explains what we know, and don't know, about Alzheimer's and its amelioration. The drugs that are currently available do not do enough to help, and the various physical and mental exercises we are encouraged to undertake are unproven. Yet it's not entirely a black picture: scientific endeavour has greatly increased our knowledge of the disease's spread and rate of deterioration, and the composition of the starchy plaques and the mechanism of the bindweed tangles in the brain which are core to the illness are much better understood. 
Alzheimer's is tough even to contemplate. But it represents one of the greatest medical mysteries of our age, and Andrew Lees's book provides a fascinating account of our knowledge of this terrible disease to this point.

Alzheimer's

An Essential Guide to the Disease and Other Forms of Dementia

Niall Brady

In the summer of 2011, investors with Custom House Capital - some of whom had all their pension savings tied up with the investment house - faced a nightmare: the possibility that their money was gone, and that they wouldn't be getting it back. 
 
Finance journalist Niall Brady takes us behind the scenes for the first in-depth account of a disaster that has cost investors millions. He shows how clients' funds were mis-allocated to cover losses, how the Financial Regulator, though aware of irregularities at CHC for years, failed to forestall the crisis, and how it remains unclear, over a year after the scandal was uncovered, whether people will get their money back. His account of the strange culture and practices of CHC makes House of Cards a must-read for fans of Too Big to Fail and The Big Short.

House of Cards

The Inside Story of the Fall of Custom House Capital

Rory Crean

Every year sixth year students are bombarded with ideas on how to handle the leaving cert. Where How to Exceed Your Expectations in the Leaving Cert is different is that these ideas have been taken, tested, and refined through the eyes of someone who sat his exams just one year ago and got straight As. 
 
In How to Exceed Your Expectations in the Leaving Cert Rory Crean shares his detailed, structured and fail-safe blueprint to help students at every level get through that final crucial year of school and to come out the other end having reached their full potential. He does not come up with a rigid formula but instead a detailed set of guidelines that will allow each student to develop his or her customized approach. 
 
There is no getting away from it: the leaving cert is a challenge and Rory Crean makes it clear that to do their best students need to focus right from the start of sixth year. But he also shows that if they do so they will be rewarded with peace of mind, exam results that will exceed their current expectations, and indeed self-management skills that will be invaluable for the rest of their lives.

How to Exceed Your Expectations in the Leaving Cert

'That is why there is NOTHING better than sport' Kevin Pietersen 
 
The 2011-12 Premier League season finished on an afternoon so extraordinary that it prompted Kevin Pietersen's tweet. Yet this was just the climax of an incredible season. By May fans of most clubs had been enthralled, appalled, depressed, elated, shocked and enraged. Along the way football had somehow managed to encompass politics, high finance, the law and matters of life and death. 
 
In Pray Nick Hornby, author of the classic Fever Pitch, offers an entertaining and typically insightful account of this most extraordinary of seasons. Beginning with the weekend of 28 August when the Man Utd demolition of Arsenal 8-2 and the Man City demolition of Spurs 5-1 showed what was to come, he concentrates on a number of games whose significance went beyond the immediate result: the October games with alleged rascist incidents, the fairy-tale return of Thierry Henry, the collapse of Fabrice Muamba, the Carling Cup Final where Liverpool's victory only served to point up the club's problems, the unusual (but increasingly more common) 4-4 draw between Man Utd and Everton... 
 
It was a season of tumultuous incident and enormous entertainment, a season more glorious than most. Read all about it, and relive it, here.

Pray

Notes on the 2011/2012 Football Season

The Economist Publications (PUK Rights)

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Retail banking is heading for a revival. With the financial crisis still hanging over Western economies, banks have rejuvenated the retail arm of the business. They are now seen as more stable sources of profit than the risky traders. 
 
Technology is both a help and a hindrance. On one hand, online banking is revolutionizing money management. But will this lead to the close of the high street bank? How can banks outstrip the developing tech companies who are offering rival services? 
 
This report will assess the challenges and opportunities that banks face in the rich world and the emerging markets. Sections include: 
 
Retail renaissance 
 
Withering away 
 
Dispatches from the hothouse 
 
Crunching the numbers 
 
A wealth of wallets 
 
Over the sea and far away 
 
Private pursuits 
 
World, here we come

The Economist: International Banking

Retail Renaissance

Mary Mount

This is Sam Frears' story. 
 
This is also the story of an actor, a rock-climber and a man born with an extremely rare genetic disorder only affecting Ashkenazi Jews. Sam was supposed to live to the age of 5. In February, he celebrated his 40th birthday. 
 
Challenged by blindness and a body under great stress, Sam Frears is trying to live an ordinary life under extraordinary circumstances His struggles and triumphs offer an illuminating look at the differences - and similarities - that make us human.

Being Sam Frears

A Life Less Ordinary

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Raúl Castro is changing Cuba. Recognising the limits that the Soviet style economy places upon the Cuban people, he is allowing the market greater freedoms. A new, private sector is emerging and is expected to employ around 25% of the labour force by 2015. 
 
What will these changes mean for foreign business and for Cuba's position on the global stage? 
 
As there doesn't seem to be a Castro successor and the party is pressured by the younger generation and the digital world, where will Cuba be in ten years time? 
 
This report will reflect on the likelihood and impact of political and economic change on the island - essential reading for anyone involved in the region. 
 
Sections include: 
 
Revolution in retreat 
 
The deal's off - growing inequalities 
 
Hasta la vista, baby - a disappearing population 
 
Edging towards capitalism - slow reform 
 
Grandmother's footsteps - political change 
 
The Miami mirror - Cuba and Miami 
 
The biological factor - what next for the Castro dynasty?

The Economist: Cuba

Revolution in Retreat

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
As Western liberalist capitalism flounders in the wake of global recession, state backed companies are slowly taking over. 
 
The melding of the power of the state and the power of capitalism is on the rise. Prevalent in the emerging economies of China, Russia and Brazil, some of the world's most powerful companies are state owned. 
 
The 13 biggest oil firms are government controlled. China Mobile has over 600million customers and the Emirates airlines is growing at 20% a year. 
 
However, despite the numerous successes, Adrian Wooldridge urges caution. He asks whether it could easily survive if confronted with difficulty, criticises the embedded corruption and cronyism and asks whether a fair trading system is possible to maintain with government favoured business. 
 
Slowly but surely, the invisible hand of the market is being usurped by the visible, often authoritarian, hand of state capitalism. 
 
Sections include: 
 
The visible hand 
 
Something old, something new - a brief history of state capitalism 
 
New masters of the universe - how state enterprise is spreading 
 
Theme and variations - state capitalism is not all the same 
 
Mixed bag - infrastructure and innovation 
 
The world in their hands - state capitalism looks outward and inward 
 
And the winner is - fatal flaws

The Economist: State Capitalism

The Visible Hand

James Pettifer

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. 
 
The financial and social crisis in Greece has deep roots in the country's society and history. In this new Penguin Short, the leading Balkan commentator and Oxford University historian James Pettifer explores the reasons for Greece's current situation, tracing the deep fissures caused by unresolved issues dating back to the Second World War, Greece's often difficult relationships with Turkey and the Balkan neighbours to the north, and its problematic position in the European Union. In 1981, Greece became the tenth member of what was then the European Economic Community, and for a time seemed to be making good progress in democratisation and economic development. Now that achievement is at serious risk. 
 
The author has extensive experience in Greece dating back to the time of the Colonels dictatorship in the early 1970s and its bitter aftermath. The Making of the Greek Crisis sets the scene for the country's intractable financial crisis and associated conflict with the European Union institutions in Brussels, and explains the practical, difficult choices facing the Greek people at this important turning point in their history.

The Making of the Greek Crisis

New Revised Edition: 2015

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Is financial innovation good or bad? 
Did it cause the financial crisis of 2007/2008? 
Are the current financial systems working for a stable global economy? 
 
Andrew Palmer answers these questions in his special report, but urges that it's more that just a debate on whether financial innovation does or doesn't work. In fact, he claims, it is almost impossible to draw these distinctions. 
 
Using a variety of examples - from social bonds to securitisations risks - he highlights the weaknesses in innovative strategies, revealing how some innovation is doomed to failure. 
 
The consequences of innovation are now so crucial and so scrutinised - it is essential reading for anyone in the business world. 
 
Sections include: 
Playing with fire 
The ferment of finance 
The little guy 
From vanilla to rocky road 
The fast and furious 
Of plumbing and promises 
On the side of the angels 
Safety first

The Economist: Financial Innovation

Playing with Fire

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Pakistan is in a tricky situation. It is under constant scrutiny by the world media but is more often than not described in terms of its problems. 
 
There are indeed difficulties - bordering the unsettled nations of Afghanistan and Iran puts it in a precarious position. A poor and badly educated population for the most part is not helping the country's growth. 
 
There is hope. 
 
The wealth of natural resources, a growing, urban population and a more democratic government all point to a positive future. 
 
But with the NATO withdrawal from its troubled neighbours nearing, Pakistan's survival hangs in the balance. 
 
Simon Long's special report includes the following sections: 
 
Perilous Journey 
Too close for comfort 
State of vulnerability 
Captain's innings 
In the shadow of the mosque 
Lights off 
A taste of Hunny 
Always with us 
Dripping with blood 
Going with the flow

The Economist: Pakistan

Perilous Journey

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
'The line up for next year's change of leadership does not give cause for optimism' says James Miles, the Economist's China correspondent. 
 
With a heavily state owned banking system, waning numbers of workers in a labour intensive industrial economy and lack of development in new business, China's current boom may be set to bust. 
 
In the following sections, James Miles examines the restrictive nature of government in China, and what it will mean for the country and the rest of the world. 
 
Urbanisation: Where do you live? 
 
Rising power, anxious state 
 
China's new leaders: The princelings are coming 
 
Growth prospects: Beware the middle-income trap 
 
Deng &amp; Co 
 
Government's role in industry: The long arm of the state 
 
Demography: Getting on 
 
Ideological battles: Universalists v exceptionalists

The Economist: China

Rising Power, Anxious State

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Twenty years ago one gigabyte of memory cost $200,000. Now, a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) costs a mere $100. 
 
Technology permeates our everyday lives and never more so than with our portable, personal devices. Businesses are struggling to keep up with their employees' technological abilities and demands. 
 
In Personal Technology, Martin Giles unpicks the changing landscape of technology, examining apps, new devices and their effect on world trade. In the following sections, he explains how technology and the economy are becoming inextricably linked and how this has resulted in the birth of the new, digital age. 
 
Beyond the PC 
 
Consumerisation: The power of many 
 
Apps on tap 
 
Personal technology at work: IT's Arab spring 
 
Adapting personal IT for business: The consumer-industrial complex 
 
Droid wars 
 
Ubiquitous computing: Up close 
 
Technology and society: Here comes anyware

The Economist: Personal Technology

Beyond the PC

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
Globalisation and technology are changing the structure of the labour market. Now, companies have the choice to recruit from further afield and without the need for traditional office workers. Matthew Bishop explores how companies can, and will, recruit employees in the future and how individuals can get ahead in this era of change. 
Sections include: 
 
The great mismatch 
 
Labour-market trends: Winners and losers 
 
Bottom of the pyramid 
 
Self-help: My big fat career 
 
Free-for-all 
 
Companies' concerns: Got talent? 
 
The role of government: Lending a hand 
 
A better balance: More feast, less famine

The Economist: The Future of Jobs

The Great Mismatch

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
In the US, the average age of a gamer is 37 and 42% are female. Last year the industry earned $56billion worldwide. 
 
Tim Cross analyses the proliferation of the video games in this Economist special report, and how its successes are set to grow. 
Sections in the report include: 
 
All the world's a game 
 
As you like it 
 
The business of gaming: Thinking out of the box 
 
Paying for pixels 
 
E-sports: Gentlemen, start your computers 
 
Violence and addiction: No killer app 
 
Alternative uses: The play's the thing 
 
The importance of fun: Homo ludens

The Economist: Video Games

All the World's a Game

The Penguin Economist Special reports delve into the most pressing economic issues of the day: from national and global economies, to the impact of trade, industry and jobs. Written to be read on a long commute or in your lunch hour - be better informed in under an hour. 
 
When students graduate from university they are employed in equal numbers. Move up the ladder a few rungs and the number of women in high powered positions has fallen dramatically. 
 
Women make up just 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs and still generally get paid less than their male counterparts. 
 
Barbara Becks ask why this is and what can be done about it. She covers: 
 
Closing the gap 
 
Female labour markets: The cashier and the carpenter 
 
A world of bluestockings 
 
Work and family: Baby blues 
 
Top jobs: Too many suits 
 
Women in China: The sky's the limit 
 
Looking ahead: Here's to the next half-century

The Economist: Women and Work

Closing the Gap

Alan Beattie

As we watch wave after wave of volatility threaten the global economy, it is tempting to ask, who is in charge here? The answer, journalist and economist Alan Beattie explains, is all too often no one. 
 
The crisis that began with mortgages in American suburbia has now spread around the world from banks to businesses to governments, threatening to bring decades of economic progress to a juddering halt. Globalization's strengths - its speed, breadth, and complexity - have also proved to be weaknesses as the crisis has traveled more rapidly and widely around the globe than the boom, and faster than governments have usually been able to react. 
 
The United States, which has led the global economy since the second world war, has been weakened by political division at home. Like ancient Rome, it has been challenged by an array of upstarts - emerging markets like China, India and Brazil. But just like the tribes that brought down the Roman Empire, the rising powers are strong enough to block American leadership yet not united enough to provide direction of their own. 
 
In Europe, as country after country has slid towards trouble, it has become evident that the eurozone's slow and unwieldy policy frameworks are woefully unfit for dealing with financial crises. As Beattie writes: "It [is] like watching a gang of irascible, quarrelsome architects trying to redesign a house in the middle of a raging fire." 
 
With the penetrating wit for which he is known, Alan Beattie explains how international economic institutions like the IMF can work - and how they often don't. He calls out the more spectacular failures of judgment and leadership, as well as the less frequent bright spots, in handling the crisis, showing how governments scrambled to respond as the ground started to give way.

Who's in Charge Here?

How Governments are Failing the World Economy

Will Self

'Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.' 
 
In this selection from his hilarious New Statesman Real Meals column, Will Self reviews the chains where most of us go to eat (KFC, Greggs, Yo! Sushi, Pizza Express and their like), delves into the ubiquitous Thai meal and chicken tikka masala, and experiences hotel breakfasts, frozen tv dinners and airline food on our behalf. These are restaurant reviews of the kind you've never read before.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker

A Selection of Real Meals

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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