Tag: history

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Insight into the formation and evolution of a politician

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Leo Varadkar reveals his fascinating experience as Irish prime minister at a time of much change and turbulence. Leo Varadkar was an unlikely Taoiseach- the youngest on taking office in 2017, the first Taoiseach to be gay and the first person of colour to be Taoiseach. Equally unlikely was his decision to bow out of politics in his mid-forties. Now, liberated from the constraints of office, he tells his fascinating story with characteristic courage and candour, and provides a unique insight into the formation and evolution of a senior politician. In Speaking My Mind, Leo Varadkar shares his pride in … Continue reading Insight into the formation and evolution of a politician

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Vanishing skills and traditions

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Craft Land Britain was once a craft land and for generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Historian and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, James Fox travels the length of Britain to seek out the country’s last great craftspeople in Craftland and chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and Coopers, thatchers, bellfounders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet … Continue reading Vanishing skills and traditions

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Westerners

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“We cannot rebuild western civilisation” vice-president JD Vance warned in March shortly after entering the office. The west people are so worried about has a familiar story behind it: It originates in the ancient world in the conjoining of classical Greek philosophy and the Hebrew Bible and then weaves its way through medieval Christendom or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first … Continue reading Westerners

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World of Organised Crime

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A bandit becomes a monarch, a gang becomes a government and organised crime at the heart of every modern state. Homo Criminalis shows the emergence of modern society through the evolution of the underworld and its crimes. From Chinese banditry and eighteenth-century English tea smuggling to today’s cocaine submarines and the high-tech crimes of tomorrow, showing how the world’s dark underbelly shapes us, no matter how we try to outpace it. Mark Galeotti, a prolific author specialising in Russia and organised crime, shows “our dynamic interconnected globalised networked cross-cultural world is so permeated by organised crime. It is very hard … Continue reading World of Organised Crime

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World of Organised Crime

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A bandit becomes a monarch, a gang becomes a government and organised crime at the heart of every modern state. Homo Criminalis shows the emergence of modern society through the evolution of the underworld and its crimes. From Chinese banditry and eighteenth-century English tea smuggling to today’s cocaine submarines and the high-tech crimes of tomorrow, showing how the world’s dark underbelly shapes us, no matter how we try to outpace it. Mark Galeotti, a prolific author specialising in Russia and organised crime, shows “our dynamic interconnected globalised networked cross-cultural world is so permeated by organised crime. It is very hard … Continue reading World of Organised Crime

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Engineering towards mega projects

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Chinese-Canadian, Technology analyst, Dan Wang, from Stanford University, has been living through China’s astonishing messy progress. China’s towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. Rapid changes also meant pain throughout the Chinese society, controlled by political repression ending in astonishing growth, a feature of China’s engineering mindset. In Breakneck, Wang, reveals a provocative new framework for understanding China – one that helps us see America more clearly. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything good and … Continue reading Engineering towards mega projects

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Capitalism’s permanent revolution

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We are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, Capitalism and its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological and artificial intelligence. British-American staff writer and economic journalist at the New Yorker, John Cassidy author of Dot.con, which examined the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, and How Markets Fail, which illuminates the origins of the great financial crisis of 2007-08. Cassidy starts with the colonial monopoly capitalism of the East India Company, as seen through the critical eyes of William Bolts, a disgruntled … Continue reading Capitalism’s permanent revolution

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Boeing accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety 

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The Aircraft Accident investigation Bureau in India is focusing on engine thrust. Investigators have discovered in the preliminary investigation into the Air India Flight 171 crash which killed 260 people on 12th June 2025. Just seconds after take-off both of the 12-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s fuel-control switches abruptly moved to the “cut -off” position, starving the engines of vital fuel and triggering total power loss. Switching to “Cut-off” is a move typically done only after landing. The Cockpit voice recording captures one pilot asking the other why he “did the cut-off”, to which the other pilot replies that he didn’t. The … Continue reading Boeing accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety 

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Britain’s flagging corporate economy

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The CEOs of Britain’s largest companies wield immense power, but we know very little about them. How did they get to the top? Why do they have so much power? Are they really worth that exorbitant salary?  Two academics from Queen’s Business school, Belfast, Michael Aldous and John Turner lift the veil on Britain’s corporate elite and provide the answers by telling the story of the British CEO over the past century. From gentleman amateurs to professional managers, entrepreneurs, frauds, and fat cats, they reveal the characters who have made it to the top of the corporate ladder, how they got … Continue reading Britain’s flagging corporate economy

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Pursuit of hidden source of nuclear power

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One afternoon in 1942, in a squash court beneath the stands of University of Chicago’s football stadium, a group of scientists watched as Enrico Fermi coaxed the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction from a pile of dusty carbon bricks, unlocking the enormous energetic possibilities of the atom’s nucleus, completing Manhattan Project’s mission the construction of a war winning atom bomb. There’s no satisfactory answer to the risks of nuclear conflict, those consequences that gave physicist Eugene Wigner an eerie feeling. Destroyer of the Worlds is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began … Continue reading Pursuit of hidden source of nuclear power