Meticulous, clinical and sobering, a shockingly important and incisive book.

I You We Them is a uniquely gripping journey around the landscapes of mass murder.

This remarkably powerful book entails a dogged and worldwide pursuit of 'the desk-killer', the government functionary or business executive whose decisions so often cost human lives. The model of this remote-control assassin is Hitler's architect Albert Speer, but the German story is subsumed in a far more compelling and modern investigation of the collective amnesia which so often operates in the telling of national histories, including our own.

Not since Gitta Sereny’s vast script of Into That Darkness arrived on my desk have I read anything so disturbing as the early draft of Dan Gretton’s book. I was shaken to the core by his brilliant treatment of the Wannsee meeting… The book seemed to be humming with life... much more alive than anything I’ve read for ages... I’m certainly grateful for having been given the chance to read this amazing work.

Great books never occur out of a desire for greatness, but often out of a possessed persistence in the face of a chosen and immensely difficult task. This is such a book. In it, through it, a century speaks to us - not with the thunderous voice of History, but in the intimate voice of a sequence of confessions.

A complex and exceptional book. Gretton's determination to bear witness so long after the events themselves does not diminish the power of his story. On the contrary his decision to make it personal intensifies the impact... The book highlights how society in general is susceptible to a form of collective amnesia, a wish not to confront the troubling details in its past. John Berger observed that "the role of capitalism is to destroy history... to orientate all effort and imagination to that which is about to occur". Dan Gretton's profound moral effort in this book is a massive bulwark against that possibility and a guarantee that the truth will be heard.

Brilliant... the writing has the power at times to mesmerise... Gretton is a brave man to have stared so long and so intently at the subject.

A book of extraordinary importance and urgency - we need this book now. For its determined, passionate, and vulnerable seeking; for its insistence on what matters. Climate catastrophe tells us the reach of the desk killer has never been greater. We must take the hope and political will in this book as our own: forged in darkness and therefore - inextinguishable.

Gretton raises profoundly unsettling questions about the capacity for doing evil that exists within all of us, and the ways in which the distancing effect of technology allows perpetrators to avoid thinking about the consequences of their actions.

A testament both mighty and meticulous, a devastating case for the prosecution, against which there is no defence. This book should be compulsory reading.

It is much more than a history of bureaucratic crime. Rather, Gretton has written himself deeply and intimately into the work, which also serves as a poignant memoir; a travelogue that leads the reader through time and space, history and memory; and an extended exercise in observation and introspection.

I have long loved Oliver Burkeman's wise and witty journalism that both interrogates and elevates the 'self-help' realm-revealing its possibilities for absurdity while honoring the deeper human impulses that it meets. Four Thousand Weeks is a splendid offering in that spirit. This book is at once sobering and refreshing on all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as 'time management.' It invites nothing less than a new relationship with time-and with life itself

Four Thousand Weeks is a book to read and re-read, to absorb and reflect on. Compassionate, funny and wise, it has not left my mind since I read it. The modern world teaches us to pretend to be immortal-this book is a dip in the cold, clear waters of reality, returning us refreshed and alive

Peppered with good stories... Subtle, provocative and multi-layered... Offers many wise pointers to a happier, less stress-filled life, with none of the usual smug banalities of the self-help genre... Happy days!

Four Thousand Weeks is full of such sage and sane advice, delivered with dry wit and a benevolent tone. I didn't wish back any of the time I spent reading it

A fantastic, warm, clever book

Terrific

Every so often you read a book that so profoundly shifts your thinking that you feel indebted with gratitude to the author. Utterly brilliant

So easy to read that I finished it in one sitting... I'll probably never organise my time so well again

I seldom read self-help books, but Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks is in a class of its own

A compelling argument for why we should be doing less and doing it better... This comforting, calm book is filled with sensible, practical ideas

Burkeman offers practical solutions to problems that might otherwise seem too monolithic to disassemble

Oliver Burkeman's Guardian feature was called "This Column Will Change Your Life". The wisdom of this book could do the same

[A] brilliant, comforting time-management guide

Kind of cool