Enough small talk. Let's get right to it: Why can't we talk to each other anymore? What makes good communication? And how do we restore the lost art of conversation?

In contemporary society, much of our communication exists in a new dimension, the online space, and it's changing how we regard each other and how we converse. In the digital realm, we can be anonymous, we can make false and hurtful comments yet evade consequences in a hurried scroll of clicks and swipes. But a good conversation takes time and patience, courage, even. We need to realize that one-half of our conversations is, in fact, listening. And aren't the best conversationalists--like the best musicians--good listeners?

With What I Mean to Say, award-winning novelist and poet Ian Williams seeks to ignite a conversation about conversation, to confront the deterioration of civic and civil discourse, and to reconsider the act of conversing as the sincere, open exchange of thoughts and feelings. Alternately serious and playful, Williams nimbly leaps between topics of discussion and, along the way, is discursive, digressive, and endlessly generous--like any great conversationalist.

This is a timely and important read... Through several deeply reported chapters, he outlines how Beijing wields its influence on business: from regulatory coercion and boardroom intimidation, through even to the mysterious disappearance of entrepreneurs. -- Financial Times, Best New Books on Economics

This is the terrifying story of China's vampire economy.

State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world's most populous nation - nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom.

Rules and agreements mean little. Markets are distorted, statistics fabricated, foreign industrial secrets and technology systematically stolen. Companies and entrepreneurs, at home and abroad, are bullied - often with the collusion of the victims themselves. The Party is in every boardroom and lab, with businesses thriving or dying at its will.

All this is part of realising President Xi Jinping's ambition of China becoming the world's pre-eminent economic, technological and military power.

One of the Financial Times' Best New Books on Economics in 2024

Rum arguably shaped the modern world. It was to the eighteenth century what oil is to the present, but its significance has been diminished by a misguided sense of old-fashioned morality dating back to Prohibition. In fact, Rum shows that even the Puritans took a shot now and then. Rum, too, was one of the major engines of the American Revolution, a fact often missing from histories of the era. Ian Williams's book -- as biting and multilayered as the drink itself -- triumphantly restores rum's rightful place in history, taking us across space and time, from the slave plantations of seventeenth-century Barbados (the undisputed birthplace of rum) through Puritan and revolutionary New England, to voodoo rites in modern Haiti, where to mix rum with Coke risks invoking the wrath of the gods. He also depicts the showdown between the Bacardi family and Fidel Castro over the control of the lucrative rights to the Havana Club label. Telling photographs are also featured in this barnstorming history of the real Spirit of 1776.

Meet Dr. Iwan James: cyclist, doctor, would-be lover, former heavy metal fan, and, above all, human being. Weighed down by his responsibilities--from diagnosing personality disorders to deciding who can hold a gun license--he doubts his ability to make decisions about the lives of others when he may need more than a little help himself. Cartoonist and doctor Ian Williams introduces us to Iwan's troubled life as all humanity, it seems, passes through his surgery doors.

Really, really good, a fascinating book to read. So if you are thinking of buying something for someone at Christmas, I suggest you find out more about China. Some of it is pretty scary stuff -- The Stand with Eamon Dunphy

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize

As seen in The Times, Sunday Times, Spectator, and on Tonight with Andrew Marr (LBC)

Under President Xi Jinping, China's global ambitions have taken a dangerous new turn. Bullying and intimidation have replaced diplomacy. Trade and investment, even big-spending tourists and students, have been weaponised. Beijing has strengthened its alliance with Vladimir Putin, supporting Russia's aggression in Ukraine, and brooks no criticism of its own flagrant human rights violations against the Uyghur population in western China.

Leaders in the West say they don't want a cold war with China, but it's a little late for that. Beijing is already waging a more complex, broader and more dangerous cold war than the old one with the Soviet Union. And it is intensifying.

This thought-provoking and alarming book examines this new cold war's many fronts - from Taiwan and the South China Sea to the Indian frontier, the Arctic and cyberspace. In doing so it proclaims the clear and sobering message that we must open our eyes to the reality of China's rise and its ruthless bid for global dominance.

From Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, winner of the Giller Prize and a June 2020 Indie Next Great Read

Frustrated by how tough the issues of our time are to solve - racial inequality, our pernicious depression, the troubled relationships we have with other people - Ian Williams revisits the seemingly simple questions of grade school for inspiration: if Billy has five nickels and Jane has three dimes, how many Black men will be murdered by police? He finds no satisfaction, realizing that maybe there are no easy answers to ineffable questions.

Williams uses his characteristic inventiveness to find not just new answers but new questions, reconsidering what poetry can be, using math and grammar lessons to shape poems that invite us to participate. Two long poems cut through the text like vibrating basenotes, curiosities circle endlessly, and microaggressions spin into lyric. And all done with a light touch and a joyful sense of humour.

Lois Pritchard, a general practitioner at the Welsh Llangandida Health Centre and part-time staff at her local Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinic, is a forty-year-old, divorced, sarcastic smoker who by her own admission is not very good with relationships. But when her estranged mother makes a dramatic reappearance demanding a liver transplant, Lois has to examine her loyalties and confront some hard decisions both in and out of the surgery room.

This hilarious, warts-and-all follow-up to Ian Williams's graphic novel The Bad Doctor is an entertainingly realistic look at rural medicine and the unique personalities it attracts, from patients with genital tattoos of cartoon characters to doctors who find creative ways to color on either side of the ethical lines. Via a cast of relatable and sometimes shocking characters, Williams explores the politics and pitfalls of a small-town practice, the frustration of dealing with demanding and misguided patients, the double standards facing female medical practitioners, and current medical issues such as clinic privatization and hardening government attitudes towards drugs and addiction, all with his wonderfully sly sense of humor.

The Lady Doctor shows that life and work in the medical field can be anything but clinical, and that even the most talented of professionals have wildly unexpected bad days. Fans of Graphic Medicine will cheer this new saga from a trailblazer of the genre, as will medical professionals and comics readers of all stripes.

A BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK OF 2021

Bestselling Scotiabank Giller Award-winning writer Ian Williams brings a fresh point of view and new insights to the urgent conversation on race and racism in these illuminating essays born from his own experience as a Black man in the world.

With that one eloquent word, disorientation, Ian Williams captures the impact of racial encounters on racialized people--the whiplash of race that occurs while minding one's own business. Sometimes the consequences are only irritating, but sometimes they are deadly. Spurred by the police killings and street protests of 2020, Williams offers a perspective that is distinct from that of U.S. writers addressing similar themes. Williams has lived in Trinidad (where he was never the only Black person in the room), in Canada (where he often was), and in the United States (where as a Black man from the Caribbean, he was a different kind of only). He brings these formative experiences fruitfully to bear on his theme in Disorientation.

Inspired by the essays of James Baldwin, in which the personal becomes the gateway to larger ideas, Williams explores such matters as the unmistakable moment when a child realizes they are Black; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; how friendship forms a bulwark against being a target of racism; the meaning and uses of a Black person's smile; and blame culture--or how do we make meaningful change when no one feels responsible for the systemic structures of the past.

Disorientation is a book for all readers who believe that civil conversation on even the most charged subjects is possible. Employing his vast and astonishing gift for language, Ian Williams gives readers an open, honest, and personal perspective on an undeniably important subject.

Disorientation is so honest, vulnerable, courageous and funny that it left me dying to sit down over a long coffee with Ian Williams. Make that two lattes, and I'm buying!--Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes

Where the past meets the present in an age-old tale of a struggle between good and evil, compassion, love and ultimate sacrifice.

Ian Williams is an extraordinary example of the pure power of imagination and a rare ability to connect that imagination to a really wide range of ways of expressing it. Welcome to his world!

Fred Silver

Editor of The Skye Magazine

In The Way of the Sun, Junior, a precocious seven-year-old with a caring heart, looks toward the sun as a reminder of the goodness inside. Junior's acts of kindness, patience, and honesty are encouraged by the sun to become the best version of himself. Read this book to learn how Junior makes good decisions to become the best version of himself to inspire readers to be the best version of themselves.

Inspired by the most meaningful aspect of his life- family- Ian Williams is the author of The Way of the Sun.

Williams is also the Co-founder and President of Reconcile Consulting. He lives in Southern, Indiana, with his wife and business partner, Airlea Lea Williams, and their two young children, Ian Jr., and Idris. This is his first children's book.

one of the year's most exciting releases' - The Herald

China is building the world's first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and ubiquitous surveillance cameras employ the latest facial recognition technology.

Through flagrant cyber espionage, it has plundered Western technology on a massive scale, bullied Western tech companies and academics (though many have been willing accomplices) and intimidated critics worldwide. In doing so, it has become a model for aspiring dictators everywhere.

Ian Williams examines the extraordinary rise of the Chinese surveillance state, showing how it has been driven by the enigmatic Xi Jinping, now effectively president for life, and how it impacts the daily lives of Chinese citizens, particularly dissidents and those from ethnic minorities. Supporting interviews and first-hand accounts from those whose lives have been turned upside down or worse highlight the chilling and ruthless efficiency with which the government can now act.

The book also considers the wider implications for the rest of the world. How to deal with an increasingly strident, aggressive Beijing is one of the biggest challenges facing the West in what has become a technological Cold War.

Fast electric model power boats have long outclassed other boat types in terms of speed, and racing them is becoming an ever-more popular pastime. Success in this exciting hobby relies not just on the skill of the boat's handler, but on the design and build of the boat as well. Illustrated with numerous photographs and diagrams showing technical details, this book looks at all aspects of building a model electric power boat, including How to choose a model and spot design flaws, especially in moulded hulls, and how to repair many of those faults, Brushed and brushless motors, and their speed controllers, drive systems and propellers, Guidance on rechargeable cells and the correct chargers, and safety tips for lithium polymer cells, Tips on construction and how to set up a boat for racing, Detailed instructions for building a wooden three-point outrigger hydroplane and Radio systems, wiring and connectors. While the emphasis of this book is on performance for competition use, beginners and recreational boaters are well catered for as many of the chapters start from first principles, rather than assuming a high level of initial competence. It covers all aspects of fast electric boating, from hull design right through to racing at world championships and setting speed records. Therefore, whether you are looking to compete or operate fast electric power boats as a hobby, it is a must-have addition to your library.

(6 x 9 inches paperback) This book draws on the author's long career as an elite Japanese rugby player to give an insight into the leadership and management of Japanese companies, and other organizations in the wider society. For many years he was employed by Kobe Steel and played as an amateur for that company and the Japan national team. He also captained both teams. His perspective and knowledge is uniquely valuable to students of management, organization and leadership theory. He discusses and compares companies such as Sony, Nintendo, Kyocera and Apple.

About the author
Toshiyuki 'Maru' Hayashi was born in Tokushima prefecture in 1960. He began playing rugby at the age of 13, and was selected at the age of 17 to tour Australia with a Japan high schools team. He played for Doshisha University, then Kobe Steel (now Kobelco Kobe Steelers) and was part of the team which won seven consecutive All-Japan championships (1989-95). He represented Japan for 13 years at lock starting in his third year at university, and at the first and second Rugby World Cups in 1987 and 1991. From 1989 he studied at Oxford University and played for Oxford in the 1990 Varsity Match against Cambridge. He is a member of the Barbarians. He is the founder and president of the HEROES NPO which promotes rugby for Japanese schoolchildren and organizes the nationwide annual HEROES CUP. He gives lectures at universities and motivational seminars for company employees.

The introduction is by Ian Williams, a former Wallaby and teammate of Maru at Kobe Steel, with help from other foreigners who have played for the team and/or know Maru.

The English translation is by Ian Ruxton, a long-term Japan resident who has done several other book translations. He says that he wanted to translate this book for the insight it offers into the Japanese 'sports mentality' and leadership style as they relate to rugby, companies and other organizations in the wider society. He adds: The many examples drawn by the author from his deep knowledge and experience of Japanese culture (the business world, religion, philosophy, history etc.) should be of interest and enlightening to many readers.

Publication is timed to coincide with Rugby World Cup 2023 beginning in September. Available in Kindle, paperback and hardcover versions.

Russia's missile campaign against Ukraine has severely underperformed expectations. In the invasion's early days, Russia underestimated the necessary scale and effort of its missile campaign. Since then, Russia has changed course multiple times, most recently moving to target Ukrainian electrical grid and civilian infrastructure during the winter months. Russia's haphazard missile campaign reflects both internal strategic failures and Ukraine's critical forward thinking in the days prior to the invasion. Early Russian failures also gave time for Ukraine to develop its air defense strategy and capabilities which have only grown in effectiveness, thanks in large part to Western aid. This CSIS report provides an in-depth review of these and related missile war dynamics.

The highly anticipated annual anthology of the best Canadian and international poetry, edited by Ian Williams, Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Griffin Poetry Prize finalist.

Each year, the best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most prestigious and richest literary awards. Since 2001 this annual prize has tremendously spurred interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidable talent of poets writing in English and works in translation. Each year, the Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology features the work of the extraordinary poets shortlisted for the awards and introduces us to some of the finest poems in their collections.

With its unique aroma and heady buzz--the perfect accompaniment to even the spiciest tacos--tequila has won its way into drinkers' hearts worldwide. There are few places on earth besides Mexico that have the climate and terrain to evolve the agave plant that makes tequila--and there are even fewer people who have the patience to wait the seven years or more that it takes the tree of marvels to grow. In this book, Ian Williams presents a lively history of this potent and popular drink. Beginning with pulque, the drink fermented by the Mayans, Olmecs, and Aztecs and reserved for pregnant women and priests--and their sacrifices--he traces how the Mexicans distilled tequila and mezcal (mescal) and began its heady surge into global popularity. From twenty-year a ejos to giggle-inducing margaritas to the bravado--and regret--of that round of shots, he offers a history as gripping as the drink itself.

Williams visits countless tequila producers, distributors, and connoisseurs to tell the story of how tequila started in the agave lands of Mexico, became an icon of youthful inebriation, and developed, today, into a truly artisanal product drawing the most discerning drinkers. Peppered throughout are illustrations that capture tequila's Mexican heritage and commercial image. Including recipes for tequila-based cocktails, as well as advice on the buying, storing, tasting, and serving of tequila, this history will delight any beverage aficionado or anyone interested in the history of Mexico and its culinary riches.

Drawing on personal experience with the UN, this combination of informative text and whimsical cartoons describes how the organization is supposed to work, how it actually behaves, and why there is a difference. UNtold lets readers in on the quirks and mysteries of international diplomacy and global decision-making. Delightfully irreverent, the message is that this vital body really can represent We the peoples of the world. The book has something to offer everyone, from high school and college students involved in model UNs to secretaries of state and senior diplomats.

WINNER OF THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE AND CBC'S BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, this best-selling debut novel is an energetically told, funny, and moving book about how strangers become family.

Reproduction tells a crooked love story in which love takes strange, winding paths and grows in a context shaped by community, family, longstanding friendships, and fleeting interactions that leave their mark on us forever.

Felicia, a nineteen-year-old student from a West Indian family, and Edgar, the lazy-minded and impetuous heir of a wealthy German family, meet by chance when their ailing mothers are assigned the same hospital room. After the death of Felicia's mother and the recovery of Edgar's, Felicia drops out of high-school and takes a job as caregiver to Edgar's mother. The odd-couple relationship between Edgar and Felicia, ripe with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and reprisals for perceived and real offenses, has some unexpected results.

Years later, Felicia's son Armistice--Army for short--is a teenager fixated on a variety of get-rich-quick schemes that are as comic as they are indicative of the immigrant son's fear of falling through the cracks. When Edgar re-enters Felicia's life at a typically (for him) inopportune moment, the book's exhilarating final act is set in the motion and the full import of its title is revealed.

This gorgeous novel vibrates with life...Stylistically inventive and narratively compelling, Reproduction is stunning.--Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love

A JUNE 2020 INDIE NEXT GREAT READ

Advances in Physical Organic Chemistry, Volume 54, presents the latest reviews of recent work in physical organic chemistry. The book provides a valuable source of information that is ideal not only for physical organic chemists applying their expertise to both novel and traditional problems, but also for non-specialists across diverse areas who identify a physical organic component in their approach to research. Its hallmark is a quantitative, molecular level understanding of phenomena across a diverse range of disciplines.

Advances in Physical Organic Chemistry, Volume 55, presents the latest reviews of recent work in physical organic chemistry. The book provides a valuable source of information that is ideal not only for physical organic chemists applying their expertise to both novel and traditional problems, but also for non-specialists across diverse areas who identify a physical organic component in their approach to research. The book's hallmark is its quantitative, molecular level understanding of phenomena across a diverse range of disciplines.