Bonanza Non-fiction Book Club

Kaput: The End of the German Miracle (Wolfgang Münchau)

'Compelling' Guardian
'Eloquent and comprehensive' Financial Times
'Excellent' The Telegraph
'Astonishing' The Times
'An eye-opener' Gavin Esler

Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.
In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany’s economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The close connections between the country’s industrial and political elite have left Germany technologically behind, over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China, and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the twenty-first century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe’s most important economy.

We are marching towards a future in which three-quarters of humans live in cities, more than half of the landmass of the planet is urbanized, and the rest is covered by farms,pasture, and plantations. Increasingly, as we become ever more city-centric, species and ecosystems crafted by millions of years of evolution teeter on the brink of extinction - or have already disappeared.

A growing band of 'urban ecologists' is beginning to realize that natural selection is not so easily stopped. They are finding that more and more plants and animals are adopting new ways of living in the seemingly hostile environments of asphalt and steel that we humans have created. Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai, for example, have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts for them; otters and bobcats, no longer persecuted by humans, are waiting at the New York City gates; superb fairy-wrens in Australia have evolved different mating structures for nesting in strips of vegetation along roads; while distinct populations of London underground mosquitoes have been fashioned by the varied tube line environments.
Menno Schilthuizen shows us that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin had dared dream.

Invigorating and beautifully written. - BBC Wildlife
My eyes and ears have been opened to the emerging science of urban ecology by Menno Schilthuizen - Financial Times
Delightful and charmingly written - Daily Telegraph
Spellbinding and important - Sunday Times

We are marching towards a future in which three-quarters of humans live in cities, more than half of the landmass of the planet is urbanized, and the rest is covered by farms,pasture, and plantations. Increasingly, as we become ever more city-centric, species and ecosystems crafted by millions of years of evolution teeter on the brink of extinction - or have already disappeared.

A growing band of 'urban ecologists' is beginning to realize that natural selection is not so easily stopped. They are finding that more and more plants and animals are adopting new ways of living in the seemingly hostile environments of asphalt and steel that we humans have created. Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai, for example, have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts for them; otters and bobcats, no longer persecuted by humans, are waiting at the New York City gates; superb fairy-wrens in Australia have evolved different mating structures for nesting in strips of vegetation along roads; while distinct populations of London underground mosquitoes have been fashioned by the varied tube line environments.
Menno Schilthuizen shows us that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin had dared dream.

Invigorating and beautifully written. - BBC Wildlife
My eyes and ears have been opened to the emerging science of urban ecology by Menno Schilthuizen - Financial Times
Delightful and charmingly written - Daily Telegraph
Spellbinding and important - Sunday Times

From one of the funniest writers of our time, the award winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of One Two Three Four and Ma'am Darling turns his attention to Queen Elizabeth II in an unforgettable and fascinating biography.

She was the most famous person on earth and first appeared on the cover of Time magazine at the age of three. Nowadays, only those over the age of 100 would have any chance of recalling a time when she was not a fixture of British identity.

Her countenance has been reproduced – in photographs, on stamps, on the notes and coins of thirty different currencies – more than any since Jesus. Over the course of her ninety-six years, she was likely introduced to a greater number of different people than anyone who has ever lived. Many can remember what they said to her, but not a word of what she said to them.

Until now the curious tactic employed by her biographers has been to ignore what is interesting and to concentrate on what is not. Craig Brown overturns this formula, bringing his kaleidoscopic approach to one of the most guarded women who ever lived, examining The Queen in her time through a succession of interlocking prisms, with hilarious wit and sharp social commentary.

'Brown understands the simple paradox: that the only way to write insightfully about the Queen is to write entirely around the Queen … Brilliantly funny [and] perceptive'FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Brown sees, correctly, that comedy is a part of all that is serious, and by laughing at things we have a better understanding of their nature … Most of all in this magnificent book we have a sense of the monarch being looked at freshly, without any prejudice or point to prove, and with a real understanding of human complexity … It is hard to think that a more thoughtful book on its subject will be published for many years’ PHILIP HENSHER, SPECTATOR
‘This is a book about ourselves as a nation, reflected and refracted through our own relationships with one person, or our ideas of that person… Brown’s method is worth describing because it amounts almost to a new kind of history… He is by turns affectionate and scornful, but always absorbed…Stuffed with trash, this is a deeply serious book’ MATTHEW PARIS, LITERARY REVIEW
'A very unusual masterpiece … teems with facts, humour and intelligence … I enjoyed A Voyage Around the Queen so much that I wished it were longer than its 672 pages' CHRISTOPHER HOWSE, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Brown gives an astute account of the wellnigh unaccountable public life of an intensely private person … In any case, he has performed the task with admirable zeal. The book is crammed with facts, statistics, anecdotes, and much of it is gloriously bizarre…' JOHN BANVILLE, GUARDIAN
Brown has given us a serious reflection on the nature of power and why institutions such as the monarchy, in the right hands, can provide a society with stability and a sense of continuity, especially in turbulent times' NEW STATESMAN
'Rich in vignettes, but also has a revelatory depth … thought-provoking, perhaps even deep … a vivid and remarkably telling study of our late head of state, and even more so of the people she reigned over for 70 years' STEPHEN SMITH, OBSERVER