The Famous Five would have cracked their cases sooner if they had packed this in their haversacks. The budding crime writer will reach for it when writing a police procedural.

The ultimate guide to the art of detection

Absorbing...a gloriously idiosyncratic work

Rip-roaring... Kealey's gallop through capitalism, sociology, history, economics and science is a stimulating and splendid read

An entertaining canter through global history...energy and muscular prose are much in evidence

Extraordinary... a brilliant, counter-intuitive argument in favour of individualism and market forces

Kealey writes with enthusiasm and panache... exhilarating and exciting

This is a compassionate, front-line report from what can often seem like alien territory.

The practice of medicine is a way of living: vivid and engrossing, it stimulates senses physical and metaphysical...It is a rare skill for a doctor to be able to communicate this rich sensorium in writing. It is a delight to read the words of one who does it so well

A superb account of life on the grisly front line of the operating theatre

This slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre

Through this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life

Gabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction

Glinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise

A curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy

A valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth

This book is mesmerising

Her description of the struggle to remain individual and hence moral is her real achievement. This, to me, is what female writing has to do, and she does it with style and humour and beauty

This much appreciated book should be a must-read for everyone who likes to travel, and should be translated into the languages of the world's tourism champions. It should also be a must-read for politicians and decision makers in development agencies to finally understand that tourism has lost the 'virginity' of a harmless leisure sector to develop into a dangerous global driving force which needs to be regulated and restricted.