Fooled by Randomness ...

Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy — or something altogether more unpredictable? This book is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck, more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets — we hear an entrepreneur has ‘vision’ or a trader is ‘talented’, but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. This irreverent bestseller has shattered the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognise randomness.

The Long Tail ...

What happens when there is almost unlimited choices? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits — the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve — but in what used to be regarded as misses — the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choices it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time.

Two Caravans

In the idyll of the English countryside, on a beautiful summer’s evening in a Kent field, and around their two caravans, a little group of strawberry pickers is getting ready to celebrate a birthday. But who picks our strawberries these days? The Ukrainians, Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, trying to find true love with a romantic Englishman; Andriy, the miner’s son from the other Ukraine; the Poles, Bob Dylan fan, Tomasz, Yola, the petite, voluptuous gang mistress and her religious niece Marta; Emanuel, the round eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi, come to England to look for his sister. Two Caravans has every bit of the extraordinary distinctiveness and wit and heart that made A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian so successful.

Love in the Time of Cholera

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.’ Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Arizo’s impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half century, Florentino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. Having sworn his eternal love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina’s husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives? This new edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s much-loved tale is published to coincide with celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of this Nobel Prize winning author in 2007.

The World Is Flat ...

The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, Friedman argues, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalisation. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, levelling the playing field, so that each of us is potentially an equal. Friedman brilliantly demystifies the exciting global scene unfolding before our eyes, one which we sense but barely yet understand. The World is Flat is the most timely and essential update on globalisation, its successes and its discontents. In his new chapters the author explores both the benefits and disadvantages of the emergent popularity of blogging, pod-casting, YouTube and MySpace.