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Bread for All
Bread for All
Oct 7, 2024 2:24 PM

Author:Chris Renwick

Bread for All

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY PRIZE 2018

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018

'Makes a gripping human story out of the wisest and most progressive policy achievement of any government in the history of the world ... the welfare state deserves books this good' Stuart Maconie, New Statesman, Books of the Year

'A brilliant book, full of little revelations' Jon Cruddas, Prospect

'Carefully argued, deftly balanced and wittily written, with countless lovely details' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A landmark book from a remarkable new historian, on a subject that has never been more important - or imperilled

Today, everybody seems to agree that something has gone badly wrong with the British welfare state. In the midst of economic crisis, politicians and commentators talk about benefits as a lifestyle choice, and of 'skivers' living off hard-working 'strivers' as they debate what a welfare state fit for the twenty-first century might look like.

This major new history tells the story of one the greatest transformations in British intellectual, social and political life: the creation of the welfare state, from the Victorian workhouse, where you had to be destitute to receive help, to a moment just after the Second World War, when government embraced responsibilities for people's housing, education, health and family life, a commitment that was unimaginable just a century earlier. Though these changes were driven by developments in different and sometimes unexpected currents in British life, they were linked by one over-arching idea: that through rational and purposeful intervention, government can remake society. It was an idea that, during the early twentieth century, came to inspire people across the political spectrum.

In exploring this extraordinary transformation, Bread for All explores and challenges our assumptions about what the welfare state was originally for, and the kinds of people who were involved in creating it. In doing so, it asks what the idea continues to mean for us today.

Reviews

Chris Renwick's fresh and inspiring study shows the long term history of the British welfare state and its liberal underpinnings. He reminds us all of its remarkable significance as a means of making a good society.

—— Mike Savage, author of Social Class in the 21st Century

In lively and incisive fashion Chris Renwick tells the story of the remarkable men and women whose ideas and decisions led, by accident as much as by design, to the creation of a distinctively British welfare state.

—— Paul Addison, author of The Road to 1945

Formidably learned... Carefully argued, deftly balanced and wittily written, with an infectious sense of intellectual enthusiasm... although we often associate the welfare state with the 1940s, Renwick shows that the key period was the turn of the 20th century... Bread for All ends with the Attlee government's implementation of William Beveridge's blueprint for a postwar welfare state. In Renwick's account, this is best seen as the final act in a long drama, rather than a revolutionary moment... the product of endless compromises with private and local interests, built on the legacy of the past and designed to improve capitalism rather than to replace it.

—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday Times

A brilliant book, full of little revelations-my personal favourite is that Britain's leading eugenicist also invented the dog whistle. Bread for All anchors the creation of the welfare state deep within 19th-century science... It is written with real agility in an accessible style, and is bound to figure in "books of the year" lists-it will in mine.

—— Jon Cruddas , Prospect

Thought I was reading a Carl Hiaasen novel. Then I realized it was NON-fiction. Hotel Scarface is to Miami what 'Narcos' is to Colombia.

—— Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, CNBC's Chief International Correspondent

Miami in the 1980's. It's one of the most exciting and dangerous stories in modern American history. Yet so little is known of this time and place other than a handful of oft-repeated legends. Enter Roben Farzad, whose Hotel Scarface will now and forever serve as the definitive record. You won't be able to put this book down!

—— Joshua Brown, author of Backstage Wall Street

Farzad captures the excess, decadence, and debauchery of the Mutiny in its heyday... a crucial piece to Miami's history as the era's cocaine epicenter. A gripping account of how the Mutiny's role in Miami's cocaine business changed not only the city, but America.

—— Kirkus Reviews

'Scarface' was inspired by this lavish, coke-fuelled hotel. The de-facto headquarters for Miami’s cocaine trade was a dangerous, opulent place where the underworld mixed it up with celebrities.

—— VICE

I can all but guarantee that this will be the most enjoyable and entertaining non-fiction book you’ll read this year.

—— BroBible

Exhaustively researched... clean and precise. It’s an easy read; its implications, however, are profound. Tales of opportunistic, cutthroat men who made fast money at the expense of other people’s lives.

—— Miami New Times

Sensational. Farzad seems to have penetrated the minds, while discovering the habits, of cocaine traffickers and users.

—— The Spectator

McGregor's brilliant book is packed with insights on the complex Sino-Japanese relationship, the gist of that being that past history should be our teacher rather than master. Will a more powerful China learn magnanimity, one wonders.

—— David Sexton , Evening Standard, Book of the Year

For journalists taking up new posts in China, the first book I always suggest is Richard McGregor's The Party. I will now add McGregor's new book, Asia's Reckoning, to my list for those headed to the Far East.

—— Melissa Chan , Los Angeles Review of Books

In Asia's Reckoning, Richard McGregor provides a cogent and superbly researched guide to the deep forces that undergird China's geopolitical strategy and the attempts of two other great powers in the region, the United States and Japan, to deal with it.

—— Peter Tasker , The Mekong Review

McGregor's fascinating narrative of the three countries' relations over 50 years is filled with fresh anecdotes drawn from interviews and newly released archival documents. McGregor has a sharp eye for personalities and policy factions, as well as a firm grasp of geopolitics.

—— Andrew Nathan , Foreign Affairs

Richard McGregor has followed up his masterful 2010 book on The Party by focusing on the collisions and the less frequent collusions between the three Pacific powers: China, Japan and the US. Most regional strategic writing is focused on one of the three countries, but McGregor has done immense research in each of them and sets up the story beautifully.

—— Rowan Callick , The Australian

McGregor offers a masterful account of the complex fifty-year dance between China, Japan and the United States.

—— Graeme Dobell , The Strategist

McGregor has written a magisterial book that combines old-fashioned shoe leather reporting and extensive archival research to hart seven decades of history between the three countries.

—— Anna Fifield , Australian Foreign Affairs
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