Production is a complex system of interdependent activities, necessary to the system as a whole, which itself depends on the continuance of each individual activity that composes it. In such a system, resources must be committed to specifi c technological purposes long in advance to the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer.

When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700 -- and everything has changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings -- unearth their secret and then retum to his own time -- until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.

H.G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.

Spine-tingling and entertaining, The Invisible Man is a science fiction classic–and a penetrating, unflinching look into the heart of human nature. To its author, H. G. Wells, the novel was as compelling as “a good gripping dream.” But to generations of readers, the terrible and evil experiment of the demented scientist, Griffin, has conveyed a chilling nightmare of believable horror. An atmosphere of ever-increasing suspense begins with the arrival of a mysterious stranger at an English village inn and builds relentlessly to the stark terror of a victim pursued by a maniacal invisible man. The result is a masterwork: a dazzling display of the brilliant imagination, psychological insight, and literary craftsmanship that made H. G. Wells one of the most influential writers of his time.

Amazon.co.uk Review
In the post-war period, the CIA funded not just the right-wing bits of European intellectual life but also the centre, in order to detach intellectuals from the Left, and this book tells us how. It is touching on the career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual bagman who in 1950 became the Congress' Administrative Secretary, and his eventual betrayal by various people like Stephen Spender who scapegoated him. Sanders demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.
Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated bookburning in US libraries caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. Saunders does not discuss the way the cult of Kennedy grows out of the same soil as a lot of this stuff--he was an excuse to love America after all. This is an exhaustive account, which, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an essential book. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In the Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, struggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy's most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were instruments - whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not - of America's secret service.

"Amexica" provides the first full account of the terror unfolding along the US-Mexico border. An area of land more than 2,000 miles long and 100 miles wide - effectively a country in its own right - has become a battleground. Drugs, guns and killings are the currency of everyday existence as an ever-escalating narco-war explodes out of control. In the last three years more than 23,000 people have been murdered in Amexica as criminal drug cartels fight each other - with ever more inventive twists of violence - for pre-eminence in the 'plazas' - the rivers of narcotics flowing into America, and for consumption in Mexico itself. The war is a grotesque pastiche of the globalised economy: the cartels are inextricably bound up with sweatshop factories, with the smuggling of guns south from the US, with the entertainment industry and with the mass abduction and exploitation of women. This is both the busiest and most deadly frontier in the world, studded with guard-posts, infra-red searchlights and heavily armed patrols. It's a war that's scarcely reported - a war that's being fought, with thousands dying and millions of lives blighted, so that Europe and America can get high. Journalist Ed Vulliamy has long had a love-hate relationship with Amexica - the place and its people. For four months he went on a road trip zigzagging along the entire border. This is the story of that journey and of the visits that preceded it; of the causes and consequences of the war and its impact on the everyday life which somehow goes on around it.

Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013
In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.
The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point.
A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America throuh one of its most difficult and potentially explosive areas. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining US solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe. In 'Kennedy's Wars', noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors - Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy - and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. Readers will follow Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts - taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgements that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency. 'Kennedy's Wars' offers a dynamic and human portrait of Kennedy under pressure: a political leader shaped by the ideas of his time, conscious of his vulnerability to electoral defeat but also of his nation's vulnerability to nuclear war. Military and Kennedy enthusiasts will find its balanced consideration of the president's foreign policy and provocative 'what if' scenarios invaluable keys to understanding his accomplishments, failures, and enduring legacy.

The United States is locked into three prolonged conflicts without much hope of early resolution. Iran is pursuing a nuclear programme; the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has seen unrelenting intercommunal violence; and the Taliban have got back into Afghanistan. Lawrence Freedman teases out the roots of each engagement over the last thirty years and demonstrates with clarity and scholarship the influence of these conflicts upon each other. The story is complex and often marked by great drama. First, the countries in dispute with America are not themselves natural allies; second, their enmity was not, at first, America's choice. Third, the region's problems cannot all be traced to the Arab-Israeli dispute. Unique in its focus, this book will offer not only new revelations but also remind us of what has been forgotten or has never been put in context.