All Consuming: How Shopping Got Us Into This Mess And How We Can Find Our Way Out
When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, there were 129 shoplifters in prison; now there are 1,400. This dark side of our consumer culture is hardly ever discussed. Prison is an easy way to deal with the symptom, but few want to look at the causes of empty lives and...
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
"You know what's funny," I say, "the thing I was most worried about when I was down there, in the South Side, driving around and talking into the tape recorder? I was worried that after I was shot near the lake, that the murderer, who really only wanted the car, would...
Cry, The Beloved Country
Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens the pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children...
Brrm! Brrm!
Though he was going to be a writer, the kind of writing he was going to do was traditional. While at Tokyo University he had published some short stories in a prominent magazine and on the strength of this auspicious debut he had been pleasingly identified as one who...
The Third Policeman
'The last hanging we had in this parish,' he said, 'was thiry years ago. It was a very famous man called MacDadd. He held the record for the hundred miles on a solid tyre. I need to tell you what the solid tyre did for him. We had to hang the bicycle.' 'Hang the...