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'If you want to know anything about how music surfaces today, how to find it, or how to create it, you will find what you need right here.' - Joseph Menn, Washington Post writer
'One of the best music books of the year' - Neil McCormick, Telegraph
For the first time in history, almost every song ever recorded is available instantly. Everywhere.
This book charts what music's dazzling digital revolution really means for fans and artists. As a former data guru at the world's biggest streaming service Spotify, Glenn McDonald reveals:
Having analysed the streams of 500 million people, McDonald explores what the data tells us about music and about ourselves, from the secrets of russelåter in Norway to Christmas in the Philippines.
This book will take you on a voyage of discovery through music's fast-flowing new waters. Includes 10 bonus playlists.
About the Author
Glenn McDonald obsessively collected CDs as a teenager, but he soon realised the revolutionary power of digital media to make songs globally accessible. He started working at a US startup and soon became a data guru at Spotify. His website Every Noise at Once is a computational map of the world's music genres.
An ideal book for anyone who wants to know how Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, YouTube Music and other music platforms work, whether as a fan, musician or music business insider.
Buy the book and start reading
WHY POLITICIANS LIE ABOUT TRADE explains how international trade in goods and services actually works - and the compromises and concessions nations must make to take part in this $32 trillion-a-year jamboree: the greatest commercial show on earth.
Daily we can see the fruits of international trade on display on the shelves of shops, from American Oranges to Chinese mobile phones to Kenyan coffee. But hidden from view is the geopolitical wiring that allows global cross-border trade to happen at all: a network of treaties, tariffs, taxes and disputes that is remote and unintelligible to most people. Until now.
With clear, often humorous writing and case studies, former trade negotiator Dmitry Grozoubinski takes readers through the intricacies and surprises of global commerce. He reveals the underlying political and geographical forces that shape trade policy and our everyday lives. He spells out the impact of trade treaties on topics such as food, jobs, gender, conflict and climate. And he reveals what politicians cover up about the system - and why it matters.
A companion to books such as How to Lie With Statistics, WHY POLITICIANS LIE ABOUT TRADE illuminates a much misunderstood and underestimated network that is vital to our modern interconnected world. With the US-China trade war, Brexit, and other disputes regularly hitting the headlines (and sometimes our nerves), grasping how trade actually works has never been more important.
Reviews
'I laughed more than I do in most comedies. I learned more than I do from the news. An absolute masterclass in how to communicate complex information simply and compellingly. You will come out of it far more knowledgeable than you went in, and shielded from some of the more egregious deceit politicians want to inflict on you. You'll also laugh out loud. - Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works
'Enraging & enlightening in equal measure. And the measure is absolutely enormous.' - James O'Brien, author of How They Broke Britain
'Written by a former trade negotiator who has trained many British diplomats, this book is authoritative, yet - and here's the strange part - actually fun to read. Dmitry Grozoubinski has a rare knack for explaining complex information in an accessible and light-hearted way. 'This book should be read by everyone who needs a shield from opportunistic politicians relying on the density of the subject matter to peddle easy answers, simple narratives, and misleading twaddle.' - Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics
'An underground hit' - Best Politics Books, Financial Times
'Jon has one of the few big ideas that's easily applied' - Sam Conniff, Be More Pirate
'A wonderful guide to how to be human in the 21st Century' - Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
Description
Citizens opens up a new way of understanding ourselves and shows us what we must do to survive and thrive as individuals, organisations, and nations.
Over the past decade, Jon Alexander's consultancy, the New Citizenship Project, has helped revitalise some of Britain's biggest organisations including the Co-op, the Guardian and the National Trust. Here, with the New York Timesbestselling writer Ariane Conrad, he shows how history is about to enter the age of the Citizen.
Because when our institutions treat people as creative, empowered creatures rather than consumers, everything changes.
Unleashing the power of everyone equips us to face the challenges of economic insecurity, climate crisis, public health threats, and polarisation.
Citizens is an upbeat handbook, full of insights, clear examples to follow, and inspiring case studies, from the slums of Kenya to the backstreets of Birmingham - and a foreword by Brian Eno.
It is the perfect pick-me-up for leaders, founders, elected officials - and citizens everywhere. Organise and seize the future!
Buy the book and start reading
Artificial intelligence will shake up life in the 2020s as dramatically as the internet did in the 2000s. This accessible, up-to-date book charts AI's rise from its origins in Cold War America to its imminent and far-reaching impact on us today.
Tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker (author of TikTok Boom and YouTubers) goes into the laboratories of the Silicon Valley innovators making rapid advances in 'large language models' of machine learning. He meets the insiders at Google and OpenAI who built Bard and ChatGPT and reveals the extraordinary plans they have for them.
And he explores the dark side of AI by talking to workers who have lost their jobs to chatbots and engages with futurologists worried that we are creating a dangerous super-intelligence that could threaten humankind.
Along the way, he answers critical questions about the AI revolution, such as what, if anything, humanity is jeopardising; the professions that will win and lose; and whether the existential threat Elon Musk and Sam Altman warn about is realistic - or a smokescreen to divert attention away from their growing power. How AI Ate the World is a 'start here' guide for anyone who wants to know more about the next big tech wave. It's vital reading.
Perfect for any parkrunner, or wannabe parkrunner, this concise and joyful book reveals how a Saturday 5km run in the park has become a worldwide phenomenon.
The Ultimate Guide to parkrun (always with a lower case p!) covers how parkrun started, how it is staged every week, how to get involved as a runner, walker, or volunteer - and even how to start your own run.
Written by a running writer and qualified athletics coach, this celebratory book goes behind the scenes to tell the heartwarming human stories behind parkrun. But it also brims with practical information, with training plans for different types of runners so that you can (if you wish to) improve your own finishing time.
Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the founding of the mass participation event in Autumn 2024, the book delves into parkrun's origins as the brainchild of Paul Sinton-Hewitt, an unemployed man in London. Just 13 runners competed in the first Bushy Park Time Trial on 2 October 2004.
Now parkrun has more than 9 million runners at more than 2,200 parks in 23 countries, with the most popular countries being the UK, Australia, and South Africa.
The book features all aspects of parkrun, including how public-spirited volunteers put on the event, sustainably and for free, every week, and fun boxes such as the most interesting courses around the world, from Poland to the Falkland Islands.
About the author
Lucy Waterlow is a journalist, ghostwriter and author who has contributed to national newspapers and specialist publications such as Runner's World and Women's Running.
She is a keen amateur runner, and a qualified England Athletics coach in running fitness. She is the co-author of Nell McAndrew's Guide To Running and Run Mummy Run: Inspiring Women to be Fit, Healthy and Happy.
DISEASE X sets out a game-changing plan for how the world can learn from Covid-19 and be ready for the next pandemic. - Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister
DISEASE X is a fast-paced, almost real-time account of how international scientists and global public health leaders are preparing the world to be able to contain outbreaks of new and re-emerging infectious diseases before they become global contagions.
Disease X is the codename given by the World Health Organisation to a pathogen currently unknown to science with the potential to cause havoc to humankind. Emerging infections - such as the recent outbreaks of new variants of H5N1 bird flu and mpox - are sending us multiple warnings that another Disease X is looming.
New pathogens are occurring at an increasing cadence: we had SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2004, H1N1 'swine flu' in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015, Covid-19 in 2019, and now mpox in Africa and a new H5N1 avian flu that has infected livestock.
Written by a long-standing ex-Reuters global health and science correspondent, DISEASE X uses privileged access to the body leading international efforts to control viral outbreaks, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and its CEO, Dr Richard Hatchett. CEPI seed-funded three successful COVID vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Moderna shots.
Weaving in insights from the likes of Bill Gates, Erna Solberg, Jeremy Farrar and Seth Berkley, the book explores the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the deadly crisis it caused. It analyses the responses of global health organisations and experts, including the WHO; national governments in Britain, China and the USA; COVAX, the global vaccine allocation facility; pharmaceutical companies; and leading research scientists.
Ultimately, DISEASE X tells how, throughout the devastation of Covid, science and human ingenuity have shown that the world can devise intricate new weapons at a breathtaking pace against new deadly diseases.
It tells how the world's public health scientists are embarking on a 100 Days Mission to embed that scientific progress into a pandemic-busting plan to defuse future threats from as-yet-unknown pathogens in a little over three months. This is the 100 Days Mission - backed by the G7 and G20 - that will see a newly prepared world move at speed to snuff out future threats before they become deadly pandemics.
Foreword by the former UK PM Tony Blair.
Reviews
An engaging, accessible and ultimately optimistic account of how nations, institutions and the scientific community responded to Covid and how they could work together in future. - Fergus Walsh, BBC Medical Editor
As Kelland argues cogently, fear of the next outbreak should not paralyse us but instead galvanise us into making sure the terrible toll of Covid-19 is not repeated. DISEASE X is a valuable policy roadmap in a world custom-built for pandemics. - Anjana Ahuja, co-author of Spike: The Virus Vs The People
With access to key players on the frontlines, DISEASE X takes us inside the effort to prevent future outbreaks from exploding into global disasters... this important book outlines why it will be vital to keep pandemic threats at the top of our priority list for decades to come. - James Paton, former Health Correspondent for Bloomberg News
What if there was a simple idea that could transform the lives of workers, employers, the economy, our society and our environment?
There is. More and more employers across the world are switching to a 4 Day Week - leaving workers happier and economies healthier.
Written by the director of the UK's 4 Day Week campaign, this official handbook shows why businesses, charities, councils and other entities should implement more efficient working hours (with no loss of pay) - and how.
Because the five-day working week is no longer working for employers or employees. In the UK, we work some of the longest hours in Europe, while having one of the least productive economies.
Stressed out and tired out, workers stagger home on a Friday evening and take some of the weekend to recover.
Working hours have been transformed before. At the turn of the 20th Century, six-day weeks were the norm before the Ford Motor Company invented the weekend. And we are long overdue an update to working hours.
Using real-life case studies from the UK, the Official 4 Day Week shows the positive impact that comes from everyone working one day less a week.
Organisations who tried the idea found major benefits for the health and welfare of their staff - with major benefits for those organisations. The likelihood that workers would resign plummeted by 57%, improving job retention. Sick days fell by 65%, improving productivity.
Companies' revenue stayed broadly the same, rising by 1.4% on average.
This book delves into some of the practical benefits that flow from innovating with employment contracts and working conditions. Governments, businesses, charities, and councils could all benefit from a 4 Day Week.
'An underground hit' - Best Politics Books, Financial Times
'Jon has one of the few big ideas that's easily applied' - Sam Conniff, Be More Pirate
'A wonderful guide to how to be human in the 21st Century' - Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
Description
Citizens opens up a new way of understanding ourselves and shows us what we must do to survive and thrive as individuals, organisations, and nations.
Over the past decade, Jon Alexander's consultancy, the New Citizenship Project, has helped revitalise some of Britain's biggest organisations including the Co-op, the Guardian and the National Trust. Here, with the New York Timesbestselling writer Ariane Conrad, he shows how history is about to enter the age of the Citizen.
Because when our institutions treat people as creative, empowered creatures rather than consumers, everything changes.
Unleashing the power of everyone equips us to face the challenges of economic insecurity, climate crisis, public health threats, and polarisation.
Citizens is an upbeat handbook, full of insights, clear examples to follow, and inspiring case studies, from the slums of Kenya to the backstreets of Birmingham - and a foreword by Brian Eno.
It is the perfect pick-me-up for leaders, founders, elected officials - and citizens everywhere. Organise and seize the future!
Buy the book and start reading
Beautifully-illustrated and written, this lively, engaging book celebrates the lives of talented individuals who came to the UK and built a sparkling new life here.
From Hans Holbein to Marie Tussaud, Mary Seacole to Mo Farah, find out the real stories of people recognizable to children and adults alike, and other quieter individuals, who have shaped our lives from business to food to medicine.
Discover how:
- Refugee Michael Marks founded Marks & Spencer
- Banker Charles Yerkes built the London Underground
- Scientist Ernst Chain developed life-saving penicillin
- Activist Claudia Jones launched the Notting Hill Carnival
Each individual is celebrated with an original illustration and a short biography. Many showed grit to make their mark on Britain after fleeing persecution or war abroad. All achieved their success through talent and hard work.
100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great is a stirring gift for any teenager curious about how modern Britain came into being.
This book is an ideal accompaniment to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, 100 Great Black Britons and Amazing Muslims Who Changed the World.
The introduction is by Bonnie Greer, the Chicago-born playwright and cultural commentator.
Buy the book to see what she says about the contribution of immigrants to the UK
Imagine if you could always get what you want - just by speaking properly
For decades academics have been slowly cracking the secret codes of spoken language used by successful speakers to get what they want.
Now in this practical and eye-opening guide, Jonathan Clifton, a linguistics expert who has been decoding language for decades, identifies these tactics, explaining how and why they work.
And he sets out 100 ways you can apply these secret codes of spoken language yourself, and achieve your goals in life, love and work. Debate, small talk, negotiation, advertising, apologies, presentations, and news interviews, all are covered by this practical and often amusing guide.
Dr Clifton, an associate professor at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, France, has been teaching communication to students at universities in Europe and India for the past 25 years.
He has come to realise that academics are often writing only for each other and their work is often obscure and inaccessible to a wider public. To spread the practical benefits of linguistics, he is presenting the insights of his research to a popular audience in a clear and jargon-free manner.
His message is that if you want to improve your communication skills, you must study how other people use language as they go about their daily business. Then you'll be able to crack the codes of conversation for yourself - and talk your way to success.
Imagine what a difference that could make to your life! Just by using the right words.
Reviews
Drawing from years of research and university teaching, Jonathan Clifton masterfully guides the reader through the secret codes of conversation - without the academic jargon. Through easy-to-follow examples taken from contemporary scenarios, this book encourages you to notice the subtlest of cues in language, and it equips you with concrete communication strategies, one hundred of them to be specific. From celebrity interviews to police negotiations, from adverts to everyday chatter - if you ever wondered how people really communicate and how they achieve their goals, you won't be able to put this book down!
- Erika Darics, language consultant and Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Jonathan Clifton is an outstanding scholar, as his many academic publications attest. Yet, what makes him truly stand out from the 'academic crowd' is his ability to translate complex analyses into plain language. Combine this with an excellent nose for captivating cases, and you have a recipe for success, as this book shows! Because seriously, who wouldn't want to know how to crack the language codes as used by the likes of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Meghan and Harry?!
- Dorien Van De Mieroop, Professor of Linguistics, Leuven University, Belgium
This wise book resonates with academics and professionals by showing how communication shapes reality. TALKING FOR SUCCESS: The Secret Codes of Conversation and How to Master Them is a one-of-a-kind guide to communication strategy that is both specific and actionable. These very valuable insights are also rooted in strong research but shared in an engaging and conversational tone. To boot, the candid, and sometimes humorous delivery, is a fun read. I highly recommend it!
- Jacqueline Mayfield, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Management, Texas A & M International University. Co-Editor, the International Journal of Business Communication
'You don't have to read too many pages of this sizzling personal account of day-to-day life as a university lecturer to appreciate why the author has chosen to remain anonymous...' - Dennis Sherwood, Author, Missing the Mark
Oddball students, racist colleagues and inept administrators.
Rising business influence and crumbling academic freedom.
Absurdly wasteful corporate schemes and broken toilets.
Low student welfare, an unwillingness to fail anyone and an A+ explosion in cheating...
For a decade, students and academics have been painfully aware of the deteriorating state of UK universities. But the public has only been able to glean anecdotal accounts about poor value for money, underwhelming lecturers, falling standards and creaking facilities.
Now, after a decade of frozen tuition fees, an anonymous academic presents a no-holds-barred account of life on campus.
Unsparing in their remarks, the Secret Lecturer takes you into the seminar room (a repurposed store cupboard, as it happens), the cranky staff meetings, the botched disciplinary meetings and a complicated town vs gown relationship.
If you've ever wondered what it's like to study or work at many British universities in the 2020s, The Secret Lecturer will have you rattling through a book faster than a panicked undergraduate on an essay deadline.
Whether you are filling in your UCAS form, moving into a university hall of residence, or just want to know what life is like in a modern college, this book has the low-down.
The Secret Lecturer does for higher education in the UK what The Secret Barrister did for the law courts: reveal the unedifying, sometimes strange truth about a system we think we all know.
The Guardian top 5 best books on the UK housing crisis
'The housing crisis is just getting started, ' warns Timperley in this important book.'
- MARTIN CHILTON, THE INDEPENDENT
'An essential read about a broken housing market.'
- PETER APPS, INSIDE HOUSING
'A lively account of arguably the country's biggest social and economic problem.'
- MARTIN WOLF, FINANCIAL TIMES
For millions of Britons renting a home privately is the only option. By 2025, more people are expected to rent than own their own homes. Even members of Generation Rent with good jobs and skills have been priced out of the property market.
In this razor-sharp account of how a nation of homeowners gave way to a generation of insecure renters haemorrhaging cash, Chloe Timperley tackles the myths and mysteries belying so many attempts to 'fix' Britain's broken housing market.
She reveals who's being shafted, who's cashing in -- and the radical steps we must take to give everyone a good home, whether rented or owned.
A fast-paced jaunt around both buying and renting in Britain, Generation Rent is the essential guide to the UK's ruinously expensive property market.
Revealing how the UK came to have runaway house prices, Chloe Timperley dispels the notion held by some older people that the current generation of young people can't buy homes because they are feckless and squander their money on avocado toast.
First, she charts the rise and fall of council housing. From the early 20th Century onwards, high-quality public sector homes provided plentiful affordable homes that mixed social groups well. Then Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy sold off local authority housing and the number of council homes for rent crashed. Some council estates became known as 'sink estates', killing the municipal dream of post-war planners.
As a result, from the 1980s onwards, more renters in Britain have come to rely on the private rental sector. Backed by generous incentives from successive governments, renting has become a lucrative form of investment and credit has boomed. Buy to Let pensioners and private equity companies have moved into the market, buying up and renting out houses and flats. Most would-be first-time buyers have been outcompeted and priced out.
For those who can afford to buy, Generation Rent reveals that 'entering the kingdom of home ownership' may not be everything they expected, as a result of small properties and huge mortgages. In this concise book, Chloe Timperley tackles the surprising truth about housebuilding, including land agents, housebuilders' profits, and the leasehold trap.
She delves deeply into the world of private rented accommodation. Like Tenants by Vicky Spratt, Generation Rent charts the real problems faced by ordinary tenants, from extortionate rents for fleapits to no-fault evictions. We hear from tenants on the end of harassment from landlords and landladies and who struggle to afford booming rents.
And we get to know those who are about to lose their home through eviction and the causes and extent of homelessness.
But we also hear about housing from the other side - from the small investors who have retreated into renting property amid successive pension scandals. To research the book, the author goes undercover at a Buy to Let conference and landlord seminars.
Generation Rent is for anyone who wants to understand the reality of private renting and the practice and pitfalls of home buying. It's for anyone who wants to know why they can't afford to get on the 'housing ladder' and why rent eats up half t
'A tour de force.' - THE SECRET BARRISTER
'Clear-eyed and hard-headed. His defence of liberalism is political writing at its most urgent and engaging.' - NICK COHEN, OBSERVER COLUMNIST
'Dunt's gift for making complicated issues comprehensible is second to none. Courageous.' - JAMES O'BRIEN, LBC
Nationalism has marched across the world. Wherever it goes, it seeks to destroy the liberal values that underpin Western civilisation.
In this epic new book, political journalist Ian Dunt tells the forgotten story of the advance of liberalism and the events which led to its current retreat. His sweeping narrative takes in the Levellers, the American and French Revolutions, John Stuart Mill, the great economic clashes between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, and the works of George Orwell. He then traces how the financial crash, identity politics and post-truth have wreaked havoc on liberal values in some of the world's biggest countries.
Weaving together history, philosophy and polemic, How To Be A Liberal stretches from the dawn of the age of science to the latest developments in politics and everyday life. This wide-ranging and powerful account will answer all the questions you have about what's happening to our society and how we create a better world.
'Most books on persuasion teach the few how to sway the many. With wit and vim, Guy has given us something else: an X-ray into the tactics of those trying to change our minds and behaviour.' Stephen Krupin, former speechwriter for Barack Obama
When Winston Churchill spoke in Parliament, he convinced an empire to go to war. When Martin Luther King spoke in Washington, he convinced millions to open their hearts to change. When Oprah Winfrey said: 'Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do, ' she also used rhetoric. As we have here, by deploying the rule of three to stress a point.
Rhetoric - the art of persuasive speaking and writing - often gets a bad rap. In this dazzling, fast-paced guide, speechwriter Guy Doza rescues rhetoric from the shadows and showcases its immense power to change lives, for good and bad.
Highlighting punchy sayings from Ancient Rome to modern marketing, he shows how leaders, businesses and even our own friends use rhetorical techniques every day to make convincing arguments.
What's more, this guide to rhetoric will show you how to learn to use this persuasive language in your own life:
How to convince an investor to back your venture
What to say to a potential lover in a bar
And, the six rules of apology you should use if you ever accidentally run over the next-door neighbour's cat...
How to Apologise for Killing a Cat is a quick read, humorous and highly practicable. It decodes the tricks and techniques of rhetoric for everyday readers.
It's the only book you need to make a convincing marketing pitch.
It's the only book you need to give a rousing speech.
It's the only book you need to write persuasively.
It's the best book to explain the technique we've just used here.
After reading this book, you will start to see the trick of rhetoric used everywhere.
After reading this book, you will never see the world the same way again!
Extract
Have you ever had that unpleasant anxiety of taking your car to the mechanic and feeling like you're being swindled? Most of you will probably know exactly what I am talking about. We don't know how cars work, we don't know what the parts are called and we don't know how to fix them ourselves. This lack of knowledge makes us vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation, and we know it. So does the mechanic.
Now, most mechanics are honest individuals, not rogues, but can we say the same of people who run countries and big companies? When it comes to ordinary life away from the car engine or central heating boiler, most of us don't even realise just how vulnerable we are. People can use persuasive language to swindle us, cheat us, and exploit us to the hilt. And the worst part is that we are not even aware that it is happening.
Welcome to rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Rhetoric is a superpower. It can alter the way we think, the way we behave and sometimes even the way we live our lives. And its most explosive charge lies in its subtlety.
Buy the book to carry on reading
DISEASE X sets out a game-changing plan for how the world can learn from Covid-19 and be ready for the next pandemic. - Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister
DISEASE X is a fast-paced, almost real-time account of how international scientists and global public health leaders are preparing the world to be able to contain outbreaks of new and re-emerging infectious diseases before they become global contagions.
Disease X is the codename given by the World Health Organisation to a pathogen currently unknown to science with the potential to cause havoc to humankind. Emerging infections - such as the recent outbreaks of new variants of H5N1 bird flu and mpox - are sending us multiple warnings that another Disease X is looming.
New pathogens are occurring at an increasing cadence: we had SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2004, H1N1 'swine flu' in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015, Covid-19 in 2019, and now mpox in Africa and a new H5N1 avian flu that has infected livestock.
Written by a long-standing ex-Reuters global health and science correspondent, DISEASE X uses privileged access to the body leading international efforts to control viral outbreaks, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and its CEO, Dr Richard Hatchett. CEPI seed-funded three successful COVID vaccines, including the AstraZeneca and Moderna shots.
Weaving in insights from the likes of Bill Gates, Erna Solberg, Jeremy Farrar and Seth Berkley, the book explores the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the deadly crisis it caused. It analyses the responses of global health organisations and experts, including the WHO; national governments in Britain, China and the USA; COVAX, the global vaccine allocation facility; pharmaceutical companies; and leading research scientists.
Ultimately, DISEASE X tells how, throughout the devastation of Covid, science and human ingenuity have shown that the world can devise intricate new weapons at a breathtaking pace against new deadly diseases.
It tells how the world's public health scientists are embarking on a 100 Days Mission to embed that scientific progress into a pandemic-busting plan to defuse future threats from as-yet-unknown pathogens in a little over three months. This is the 100 Days Mission - backed by the G7 and G20 - that will see a newly prepared world move at speed to snuff out future threats before they become deadly pandemics.
Foreword by the former UK PM Tony Blair.
Reviews
An engaging, accessible and ultimately optimistic account of how nations, institutions and the scientific community responded to Covid and how they could work together in future. - Fergus Walsh, BBC Medical Editor
As Kelland argues cogently, fear of the next outbreak should not paralyse us but instead galvanise us into making sure the terrible toll of Covid-19 is not repeated. DISEASE X is a valuable policy roadmap in a world custom-built for pandemics. - Anjana Ahuja, co-author of Spike: The Virus Vs The People
With access to key players on the frontlines, DISEASE X takes us inside the effort to prevent future outbreaks from exploding into global disasters... this important book outlines why it will be vital to keep pandemic threats at the top of our priority list for decades to come. - James Paton, former Health Correspondent for Bloomberg News
A searingly honest tale of love, life and death - Sarah Wootton, Dignity in Dying
Die Smiling is a rare and intimate account of one man's journey to Dignitas in Zurich and his ultimate triumph over suffering and disease.
Told with wit and candour, Julie Casson traces her husband Nigel's extraordinary journey from diagnosis of motor neurone disease to his death.
Successful businessman and father of three, Nigel battles the degenerative disease with boundless courage and gritty good humour, until, faced with the unimaginable torture of a slow, living death - his spirit crushed, his body a tomb - he takes control. He decides to go to Dignitas to end his life, while he is still able to die smiling.
The family prepares for this enormous logistical and emotional challenge: the gruelling Dignitas process and the eight-hundred-mile road trip to Switzerland. They complete it with pragmatism and humour. Denying the disease its victory and choosing his own cure, Nigel dies happily, in the arms of his wife and children.
This is a thought-provoking and deeply moving book, where love, family, dignity and choice conquer adversity. It sits in the heart of the debate on assisted dying and raises questions about the right to put an end to suffering and the right to choose how life should end.
'Julie Casson lays bare the devastating human impact of the UK's ban on assisted dying, capturing precisely why true choice at the end of life is a movement whose time has come for this country. By turns uplifting and heart-wrenching, Die Smiling is a searingly honest tale of love, life and death, and a powerful contribution to a historic debate.' - Sarah Wootton, CEO Dignity in Dying
Engrossing and frankly deeply troubling - The Bookseller
I cannot recommend this book highly enough - Monocle
One of the most engaging and original analyses I've read of events of the last quarter century - Shakespeare & Co
Buy this book - John Sweeney, journalist
Turmoil in the 2020s.
Instead of being a global force for good and actively preventing some of these problems, Britain has all too often fostered instability and division. In fact, the UK's careless 'humanitarian' interventions, grandiosity and greed have helped to fracture the global order built after World War II, argues former British diplomat Arthur Snell in this coruscating book.
Why is the world so dangerous now?
How Britain Broke the World critically assesses UK foreign policy over the past 25 years, from Kosovo in 1998 to Afghanistan in 2021, while also scrutinising British policy towards the powerhouses of the USA, Russia, India, and China.
Far from being unimportant, Britain has often played a pivotal role in world affairs, for instance, by supplying the false intelligence that justified the Allied invasion of Iraq and by plugging Russia's corrupt elite into Western economies.
Then come the bungled humanitarian interventions in foreign states.
Without the UK's marginal but key role, the author argues, wars may not have blighted the Balkans, Iraq, and Libya, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved, and the world would be a safer place in the 2020s.
Taking in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Snell charts the key political, economic and geographic factors that drive the behaviour of the most powerful and populous countries.
Like a diplomatic version of Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, How Britain Broke the World reveals the reality of UK foreign policy and the true state of world affairs. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Britain's role on the world stage.
Review
'In this engrossing and frankly deeply troubling book, former senior British diplomat Snell explains how Britain's often incompetent, inconsistent and sometimes downright greedy foreign policy has played a pivotal role in rendering the world a more dangerous place. Not only in regard to Russia, where successive British governments have helped to plug Putin's oligarchy into the Western economic system, but also when it comes to the wars in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and more' --The Bookseller's Caroline Sanderson, awarding an 'Editor's Choice' for Non-fiction
Diplomats are masters of urbane double-talk, so it is refreshing to find a former Foreign Office mandarin issuing a trenchant indictment of Britain's deplorable geopolitical performance over the last twenty-five years. - Literary Review
This is the story of the 'real' Bill Gates. A famous footballer, a successful millionaire and a global philanthropist. This is the story of an incredible man and his remarkable wife, who in his final years made a commitment to use his brain to save the next generation of football players.
Bill was Britain's first 50 a week teenage superstar who played 333 games for Middlesbrough, where he was the PFA representative. He was the first entrepreneur/businessman to make sports shops the centre of high-street fashion. He was a philanthropist who travelled the world using football to change the lives of millions of children in over 100 countries.
But in 2017 his life changed when he was diagnosed with football's best-kept secret, probable Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, caused by repetitive head impacts including headers, a brain disease with no cure.
Author Mike Amos perfectly captures the incredible life of Bill and Judith, from a coal mining village in Ferryhill in the 1950s, a brilliant 13-year professional career in the 60s and 70s, a chain of sports shops in the 80s, to a millionaire's lifestyle on 7 mile beach on Grand Cayman in the 90s, to their most difficult journey together to ensure the future of the beautiful game. He shares Judith's work, designing the Billion Pound Game of Football that captured the attention of media around the globe and highlighted the need for changes in sport.
Their ground-breaking Head Safe Football charity has led to research and education, and supported families of players with CTE. Designed to protect the future of the game, Head Safe Football educates players, coaches, sports scientists, and parents to recognise that CTE begins in young footballers and can be prevented with common sense Head Safe Football policies and training.
No-Brainer explains how one man and his family have galvanised the football world around facts and science to impact player care and child safeguarding policies for both males and females.
If you have ever headed a football, if your child or grandchild are heading footballs, then this is the one book that you need to read.
A searingly honest tale of love, life and death - Sarah Wootton, Dignity in Dying
Die Smiling is a rare and intimate account of one man's journey to Dignitas in Zurich and his ultimate triumph over suffering and disease.
Told with wit and candour, Julie Casson traces her husband Nigel's extraordinary journey from diagnosis of motor neurone disease to his death.
Successful businessman and father of three, Nigel battles the degenerative disease with boundless courage and gritty good humour, until, faced with the unimaginable torture of a slow, living death - his spirit crushed, his body a tomb - he takes control. He decides to go to Dignitas to end his life, while he is still able to die smiling.
The family prepares for this enormous logistical and emotional challenge: the gruelling Dignitas process and the eight-hundred-mile road trip to Switzerland. They complete it with pragmatism and humour. Denying the disease its victory and choosing his own cure, Nigel dies happily, in the arms of his wife and children.
This is a thought-provoking and deeply moving book, where love, family, dignity and choice conquer adversity. It sits in the heart of the debate on assisted dying and raises questions about the right to put an end to suffering and the right to choose how life should end.
'Julie Casson lays bare the devastating human impact of the UK's ban on assisted dying, capturing precisely why true choice at the end of life is a movement whose time has come for this country. By turns uplifting and heart-wrenching, Die Smiling is a searingly honest tale of love, life and death, and a powerful contribution to a historic debate.' - Sarah Wootton, CEO Dignity in Dying
Zelensky is the first major biography of Ukraine's leader written for a Western audience.Told with flair and authority, it is the gripping story of one of the most admired and inspirational leaders in the world.
Millions who have admired Volodymyr Zelensky's defiance during Russia's invasion of Ukraine will learn much from this up-to-date biography of the Ukrainian President.
Zelensky's life to date has been packed with drama and action.
By the age of 20, the Jewish boy from the provincial town of Kryvyi Rih had become a star of the stage.
- At 30, he headed a multimillion-dollar TV company.
- At 40, he took on Ukraine's corrupt political and business elite in a TV drama where he played a history teacher who becomes President.
- Then he launched a real-life political party named after the TV show, won a landslide victory and became Ukraine's real President.
- When Russian troops flooded across the border, Zelensky refused Western offers to leave Kyiv. He has marshalled Ukraine's resistance and successfully obtained Western missile systems and anti-tank weapons.
Zelensky said: 'If I am elected, they will first sling mud at me. Then they will learn to respect me. And finally cry when I leave.'
Covering Zelensky's background and bustling TV career through to his first, controversial years in office to Russia's full-scale blitzkrieg, Zelensky is written by a long-standing Russia and Ukraine reporter and a Russian- and Ukrainian speaking researcher.
It's a pithy biography of Zelensky for anyone who wants to understand Ukraine's charismatic head of state, his complex country, and its vexed relationship with Russia.
Covering Zelensky's life from his childhood to the Ukrainian presidency, Zelensky deals with: his background in a Russian-speaking region of Ukraine; his early career in TV taking part in KVN talent competitions; his rise through the Ukrainian and Russian television industry; and his breakthrough moment in the TV series Servant of the People playing a teacher, Vasyl Holoborodko, who dreams of reforming Ukraine and ending its corruption.
The show becomes a reality and Zelensky and his party, called Servant of the People, take power.
Zelensky's presidency is dogged by controversy concerning his attempts to curry favor with the US President Donald Trump and the offshoring of tens of millions of dollars.
Zelensky battles political rivals and takes on powerful vested interests in Europe's second-largest country - before fighting a superpower in a fight most assume Ukraine will quickly lose (but has not).