Simon Kuznets, who standardised the measurement of growth, warned: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.” Economic growth, he pointed out, measured only annual flow, rather than stocks of wealth and their distribution. In Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Kate Raworth of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute reminds us that economic growth was not, at first, intended to signify wellbeing. This is what the most inspiring book published so far this year has done. We cannot use the models that caused our crises to solve them. We cannot hope to address our predicament without a new worldview. If this destroys our prosperity and the wonders that surround us, who cares? You can see the effects in a leaked memo from the UK’s Foreign Office: “Trade and growth are now priorities for all posts … work like climate change and illegal wildlife trade will be scaled down.” All that counts is the rate at which we turn natural wealth into cash.
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Grasp the fact that the field is different for each book, and you have the measure of this scholar. Yet each one simultaneously earns its place as a major professional contribution to its own field. What a consummate intellectual this man is! Every one of his books is a bracing river of fluent readability to delight the non-specialist. Which is another way of saying it’s bloody marvelous. “Just another run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road Pinker volume. It's no small achievement to make formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and relevance." - Nick Romeo, The Washington Post, 08 October, 2021 His characteristic brew of Yiddish jokes, brainy comics and incisive argumentation is a pleasure to read, even when the subjects are technical and mathematical. "As with all of his books, this one is erudite, lucid, funny and dense with fascinating material. Even realizing that, you can still appreciate – even love – some of the books, but it’s a lot easier to recognize a stinker when you see one from them, too. They’re the same novel, just with different locations, bad guy names, etc. Then, you realize that he is just like all those other writers that churn out novels as a ridiculous pace. James Rollins is one of those writers who is absolutely awesome for the first 3-to-4 books you read from him. And it will forever alter a world that’s already racing toward its own destruction. There devastating secrets await him-and a power an ancient civilization could not contain has been cast out into modern day. on the narrow brink of a nuclear apocalypse, Kirkland must pilot his oceangoing exploration ship, Deep Fathom, on a desperate mission miles below the ocean’s surface. Air Force One has vanished from the skies with America’s president on board. Solar flares have triggered a series of gargantuan natural disasters. Ex-Navy SEAL Jack Kirkland surfaces from an aborted underwater salvage mission to find the Earth burning. But when each needs a place to escape to, a house exchange seems the ideal solution.Īlong with the borrowed houses come neighbours and friends, gossip and speculation as Ria and Marilyn swap lives for the summer. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that. Ria and Marilyn have never met - they live thousands of miles apart, separated by the Atlantic Ocean: one in a big, warm, Victorian house in Tara Road, Dublin, the other in a modern, open-plan house in. Two more unlikely friends would be hard to find: Ria's life revolves around her family and friends, while Marilyn's reserve is born of grief. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. A house swap leads to an unlikely and touching friendship, as secrets are unveiled and lives changed. Ria and Marilyn have never met - they live thousands of miles apart, separated by the Atlantic Ocean: one in a big, warm, Victorian house in Tara Road, Dublin, the other in a modern, open-plan house in New England. He makes Avery feel stronger, braver, and freer than he’s ever been.īut Avery's father won't just sit back and let them have their happily ever after. Rory brings Avery’s desires into the light and loves not just the exterior Avery shows to the world but his true self underneath. Except, Avery doesn't anticipate just how much he's missed his ex or how deeply he still wants him. Rory Fisher-a spirited activist who's not afraid of a fight-is perfect for the role of fake fiancé. Out of fear, he's buried his craving for pretty clothes, makeup, and anything else deemed too femme.īut when his father takes it too far-supporting a senate bill that undermines everything Avery stands for-he's ready to call his bluff. For his father, he has remained in the closet as a gay man. Can a fake engagement help Avery embrace his true desires?Īvery Kinkaid has been repressing his deepest urges for as long as he can remember. Sadly, that is far from the case, and diabetes can produce complications But that story of the success of modern medicine has tended to dominate public perception, so that diabetes is regarded as a relatively minor illness. The development of insulin in theĮarly 1920s dramatically changed things for these younger patients. But the general perception of diabetes is quite different.Īt the beginning of the 20th century, diabetes sufferers mostly tended to be middle-aged and overweight, and could live tolerably well with the disease for a couple of decades, but when it occasionally struck younger people, it could be fatal within a few months. It is one of the most serious and widespread diseases According to the World Health Authority, it now affects 4.6% of adults over 20, reaching 30% in the over 35s in some populations. Diabetes is a disease with a fascinating history and one that has been growing dramatically with urbanization. Watrous has written a book of great genuine warmth, startling honesty, and remarkable power.” (Thisbe Nissen, author of Osprey Island) “ If You Follow Me is the kind of book you finish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling everyone you know that they have to read it. I would follow her anywhere.” (Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House) Malena Watrous’s writing is sharp-edged and generous, tragic and true. “In this beautiful novel, what is most “foreign” to Marina turns out to be her complex relationships with those she thought she knew best. “Graceful, smart, and filled with wonder, If You Follow Me is a heartfelt delight from beginning to end.” (Michelle Richmond, bestselling author of The Year of Fog) “ deft, funny, and emotionally acute first novel.Watrous’s book crackles with atmospheric detail and sharp dialogue, and tells a vivid story of an American confronting grief and self-knowledge in an unfamiliar place.” (Boston Globe) It’s fearlessly honest, occasionally heartbreaking, and extremely funny, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.” (Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of PREP and AMERICAN WIFE) The adventures leading to these disasters all had a common purpose: to get to Slumberland, where he had been summoned by King Morpheus, to be the "playmate" of his daughter, the Princess. In the earliest strips, the dream event that woke him up would always be some mishap or disaster that seemed about to lead to serious injury or death, such as being crushed by giant mushrooms, being turned into a monkey, falling from a bridge being held up by " slaves", or gaining 90 years in age. The last panel in each strip was always one of Nemo waking up, usually in or near his bed, and often being scolded (or comforted) by one of the grownups of the household after crying out in his sleep and waking them. The strip related the dreams of a little boy: Nemo (meaning "nobody" in Latin), the hero. Although a comic strip, it was far from a simple children's fantasy it was often dark, surreal, threatening, and even violent. “It was a time of coming out of black power movements, black cultural identity movements. Harris allows that her work-or Iron Pots specifically-is in some ways a product of its era. "I read Marco Polo's diaries.”) They’re for cooking, for scholarship, and for entertainment all at once. (“Rather than go immediately to recipe, I went to research," she says. Her cookbooks are marked by a global perspective, a chatty tone, and a rigorous methodology. Four years later, Harris published the seminal Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking. While working as a teacher, Harris moonlighted as a journalist-she wrote about books, reviewed the theater, and maintained a travel column at Essence, which gave rise to her first work about food, Hot Stuff: A Cookbook in Praise of the Piquant. But prominence can be a particular trap: Do you wear being exceptional as point of pride or bear it as a kind of punishment? And she is most certainly a star in certain circles, having long enjoyed that prominence, having long been that one of a handful. Now near seventy, Harris has silvered hair, a stentorian voice, an understated laugh. Who made the first omelet? Who the hell knows? Noodles, pasta-is it China, is it Italy? Life is for living, she realises–but it always helps if there’s an angel watching over you. With some help from her friends, and her noisy and loving family, Holly finds herself laughing, crying, singing, dancing–and being braver than ever before. The man who knows her better than anyone sets out to teach her that life goes on. As the notes are gradually opened, and as the year unfolds, Holly is both cheered up and challenged. He’s left her a bundle of notes, one for each of the months after his death, gently guiding Holly into her new life without him, each note signed ‘PS, I Love You’. But as her 30th birthday looms, Gerry comes back to her. No one could imagine Holly and Gerry without each other. Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other’s sentences and even when they fought, they laughed. Everyone needs a guardian angel! Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. |