When McKinsey Comes To Town, Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe ( paperback 2023)
£10.99
A TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022**
An explosive expose of a firm whose work has made your world more unequal, more corrupt and more dangerous. McKinsey & Company have earned billions consulting for almost every major corporation in the world - and countless governments, including yours. Shielded by NDAs, their practices have remained hidden - until now.
In this propulsive investigation, prize-winning journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe reveal the disturbing reality. McKinsey's work includes ruthless cuts to the NHS, troubleshooting for Big Oil, incentivising the prescription of opioids, executing Trump's immigration policies (the ones that put children in cages) as well as advising some of the world's most unsavoury despots. 'A story of secrecy, delusion and untold harm' OBSERVER'Makes you so angry...the evidence the authors winkle out is astonishing' SUNDAY TIMES 'Panoramic, meticulously reported and ultimately devastating' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE'
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Inheritocracy : Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad, Eliza Filby (paperback July2025)
£10.99
Many of us grew up believing in a meritocracy, where hardwork brings rewards. Go to university, get a job, put in the hours and thingswill be OK. That’s what we were told – but the reality is that life chances andopportunities are no longer shaped by what we learn or earn but by whether wehave access to the Bank of Mum and Dad.
We’re living in an inheritocracy, whereparental support is what matters most – whether that’s covering the cost ofuniversity, stumping up for a house deposit or helping with childcare. Andlet’s be honest, this isn’t something we like to talk about with our friends,families or as a society. It’s a modern taboo.
In these pages, generational expert Eliza Filby explores the emergence of this inheritocracy through her own life story, revealing how her family’s financial circumstances shaped everything from her education toher dating life, from her career to her class identity. Inheritocracy is a thought-provoking and candid blend of memoir and cultural commentary, told through Eliza’s humorous and insightful voice. With trillions of pounds set to be passed down thegenerations over the next two decades, a significant divide is emerging between those who can rely on family wealth and those who can’t.
Inheritocracy offers a fresh, captivating and honest look at our recent past and a future that will be shaped – for better or worse – by family fortunes.
Paperback 9780753561904 to be published 17 July 2025
The Trading Game, Gary Stevenson ( paperback 30 Jan 2025)
£10.99
An unforgettable story of greed, financial madness and moral decay' Rory Stewart
'Hilarious, shocking and deeply sad — often in the same sentence' Sunday Times
An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the trading game and then blew it all wide open'If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: 'The Trading Game'.
The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family.
Where soon you're the bank's most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all.
But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?
Permacrisis : A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, Gordon Brown and others ( paperback April 2024)
£10.99
Do you feel like we're in a permacrisis? Chances are you feel some anxiety about the state of the world. Gordon Brown, Mohamed A. El-Erian and Michael Spence certainly did.Three of the most internationally respected and experienced thinkers of our time, these friends found their pandemic Zooms increasingly focused on a cascade of crises: sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, increasing nationalism and a decline in global co-operation. They shared their fears and frustrations. And the more they talked, the more they realised that while past mistakes had set the world on this bumpy course, a better path leading to a brighter future exists.
Informed by their different perspectives, they sought a common goal: achievable solutions to fix our fractured world. This book is the product of that thinking. At the heart of today's permacrisis are broken approaches to growth, economic management, and governance.
While these approaches are broken, they are not beyond repair. An explanation of where we've gone wrong, and a provocative, inspiring plan to do nothing less than change the world,
Chaos Kings : how Wall Street traders make billions in the new age of crisis, Scott Patterson ( hardback August 2023)
£16.99
For fans of The Black Swan and written by a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter, this is a fascinating deep dive into the world of billion-dollar traders and high-stakes crisis predictors who strive to turn extreme events into financial windfalls. There's no doubt that our world has gotten more extreme. Pandemics, climate change, superpower rivalries, technological disruption, political radicalisation, religious fundamentalism - all threaten chaos that put trillions in assets at risk.But around the world, across a wide variety of disciplines, would-be super-forecasters are trying to take the guesswork out of what formerly seemed like random chance. Some put their faith in 'black swans' - unpredictable, catastrophic events that can't be foreseen but send exotic financial instruments screaming in high-profit directions. Most famous among this group of big-bet traders are those who run the Universa fund, who, on days of extreme upheaval, have made as much as $1 billion.
Author Scott Patterson gained exclusive access to Universa strategists and met with savvy seers in a variety of fields, from earthquake prediction to counterterrorism to climatology, to see if it's actually possible to bet on disaster - and win. Riveting, relevant, and revelatory, this is a must-read for anyone curious about how some of today's investors alchemise catastrophe into profit.
