This is an extraordinary book, one that braids together two through lines in the long and distinguished career of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The first is grand strategy: No practical geopolitical thinker has more assuredly mastered the way the modern global system works or how nations use the tools of statecraft to bend an often-resistant world to their will. But Mr. Kissinger is also an astute observer of the personal element in strategy-the art and science of leadership, or how, on the executive level, "decisions [are] made, trust earned, promises kept, a way forward proposed." In Leadership he presents a fascinating set of historical case studies and political biographies that blend the dance and the dancer, seamlessly. ... In doing so, he lays out a set of graspable tools that leaders can use effectively today. ... Kissinger puts a high premium on a deep and considered knowledge of history, coupled with a strength of inner character.

Do individuals matter in shaping the course of events? Henry Kissinger thinks they do, and in his latest book he draws on case studies and his own experience to argue that the individual leader, and his or her statecraft, can sometimes determine history ... Although Kissinger, now aged 99, has not held office since 1977, he has advised virtually every US president since Nixon... For Kissinger, good leaders have a deep appreciation of the past and an ability to imagine possible futures ... Elder statesman is an overused term but Kissinger is the genuine article, and worth listening to.

As he heads towards his century, Kissinger has lost none of the intellectual firepower that set him apart from other foreign policy professors and practitioners of his and subsequent generations.

Yoda for foreign policy geeks

The 99-year-old Kissinger has written what purports to be a handbook for the leaders of today and tomorrow, built around six portraits of global figures from the second half of the 20th century: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. Kissinger draws interesting parallels between them. All six lives were shaped by what he calls the Second Thirty Years War - the period of global conflict from 1914 to 1945. ... Kissinger knew them all and enlivens his text with accounts of his own interactions with the leaders and those around them. ... informed and authoritative

They all triumphed over their modest starts in life, through their great ability and drive, to reach the pinnacle of power. All of his six subjects, Kissinger argues, show that "transformative leadership" by great people matters more than impersonal forces in shaping history.

authoritative... given the pitiful state of leadership in the western world today, a few of those already in high office would lose nothing except, perhaps, their idiocy by reading it.

There is no denying his intellectual potency ... this tome is a robust study of six leaders who he asserts 'transcended the circumstances they inherited'. ... he makes shrewd comments about the way in which leaders operate today in an era dominated by social media and identity-based factionalism.

One of America's most legendary diplomats finds the soul in statecraft in these enlightening sketches of world leaders. . . . Kissinger infuses his lucid policy analyses with colorful firsthand observations. . . . Kissinger's portraits of politicians spinning weakness and defeat into renewed strength are captivating. This is a vital study of power in action.

Now aged 99, Henry Kissinger is still writing books. Here he profiles six leaders he has known - Lee Kuan Yew, Konrad Adenauer, Richard Nixon, Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher and Anwar Sadat - and draws general lessons about the character and intellect of leaders who are able to change the world.

Henry Kissinger's Leadership, looks at the same period, but through six people he knew personally - de Gaulle, Adenauer, Sadat, Lee Kwan Yew, Thatcher and, most controversially, Nixon - and argues why they were successful... it is always worth hearing from this astonishing eyewitness to history.

Set over 24 hours as an unnamed Black British woman prepares to attend a garden party hosted by her boyfriend's wealthy parents. With a clear eye she assesses her experience of corporate culture with its embedded racism, her awful boss, the myth of true social mobility... A short but exceptionally powerful novel from a gifted new writer

In this excoriating indictment of the white supremacy underpinning the office space, Natasha Brown shows us the triple bind under which Black British Women live. How can there be wholeness in a society which demands so often that Black women melt parts of themselves down so that the machinery can shape them anew? I have scarcely read a work of fiction which confronts me so clearly and viscerally with the nature of injustice in our contemporary moment. This is an important work from a writer I hope we'll be hearing from for a long, long time

One of the buzziest debuts of the summer

Natasha Brown's exquisite prose, daring structure and understated elegance are utterly captivating. She is a stunning new writer

This marvel of a novel manages to say all there is to say about Britain today in the most precise, poetic prose and within the story of one complicated, compelling woman. Formally thrilling, politically captivating, endlessly absorbing... I will never forget where I was when I read it, how I felt at the start of it and by the end - it takes you on a complete carousel of a life lived both in dread and in defiance. Superb.

Like the fictional companion to Jamaica Kincaid's nonfiction masterpiece A Small Place... A book like a finely honed scalpel - marking a new and electrifying dawn

Tightly conceived and distinctively written, perceptive, precise and unsparing... An elegiac examination of a Black woman's life and an acerbic analysis of Britain's racial landscape. Brown's rhythmic, economic prose renders the narrator's experiences with breathless clarity

Stunningly good

Assembly is an astonishing work. Formally innovative, as beautiful as it is coolly devastating, urgent and utterly precise on what it means to be alive now

Searing... A rousing, inspired voice demanding to be recognized and heard

Deft, essential, and a novel of poetic consideration, Assembly holds (the Black-British) identity in its hands, examining it until it becomes both truer and stranger - a question more than an answer. I nodded, I mhmmed, I sighed (and laughed knowingly, bitterly)

Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society: how it has poisoned even our language, making its necessary dismantling almost the stuff of dreams. I take hope from Assembly, not just for our literature but also for our slow awakening

Mind-bending and utterly original. It's like Thomas Bernhard in the key of Rachel Cusk but about black subjectivity

Brilliantly sharp and curiously Alice-like... It centres on a gifted and driven young Black woman navigating a topsy-turvy and increasingly maddening modern Britain... Her indictment is forensic, clear, elegant, a prose-polished looking glass held up to her not-so-post-colonial nation. Only one puzzle remains unsolved: how a novel so slight can bear such weight

A piercing, cautionary tale about the costs of assimilating into a society still in denial about its colonial past. Brown writes with the deftness and insight of a poet

Bold, elegant, and all the more powerful for its brevity, Assembly captures the sickening weightlessness which a Black British woman, who has been obedient to and complicit with the capitalist system, experiences as she makes life-changing decisions under the pressure of the hegemony

This is a stunning achievement of compressed narrative and fearless articulation

One of the most talked-about debuts of the year . . . you'll read it in one sitting

Thrilling... Brown gets straight to the point. With delivery as crisp and biting into an apple, she short-circuits expectation... This is [the narrator's] story, and she will tell it how she wishes, unpicking convention and form. Like The Drivers' Seat by Muriel Spark, it's thrilling to see a protagonist opting out and going her own way

A nuanced, form-redefining exploration on class, work, gender and race

Across 100 lean pages, Brown deftly handles a gigantic literary heritage... Her style rivals the best contemporary modernists, like Eimear McBride and Rachel Cusk; innocuous or obscure on a first reading, punching on a second... Assembly is only the start

There's something of Isherwood in Brown's spare, illuminating prose... A series of jagged-edged shards that when accumulated form an unhappy mirror in which modern Britain might examine itself

A debut novel as slender and deadly as an adder

A razor-sharp debut... This powerful short novel suggests meaningful discussion of race is all but impossible if imperialism's historical violence remains taboo

Bold, spare, agonisingly well-observed. An impressive debut

Excoriating, unstoppable... The simplicity of the narrative allows complexity in the form: over barely a hundred pages, broken into prose fragments that have been assembled with both care and mercilessness

Beguiling and beautifully written, this is the work of an author with a bright future

Coruscating originality, emotional potency, astonishing artistic vim... This signals the arrival of a truly breathtaking literary voice... A scintillating tour de force

Fierce and accomplished, Assembly interrogates the high cost of surviving in a system designed to exclude you

I was blown away by Assembly, an astonishing book that forces us to see what's underpinning absolutely everything

Coiled and charged, a small shockwave... Sometimes you come across a short novel of such compressed intensity that you wonder why anyone would bother reading longer narratives... [Assembly] casts a huge shadow

A masterwork . . . it contains centuries of wisdom, aesthetic experimentation and history. Brown handles her debut with a surgeon's control and a musician's sensitivity to sound

An extraordinary book, and a compelling read that had me not only gripped but immediately determined to listen again... Highly recommended

'As utterly, urgently brilliant as everyone has said. A needle driven directly into the sclerotic heart of contemporary Britain. Beautiful proof that you don't need to write a long book, just a good book'

Every line of this electrifying debut novel pulses with canny social critique

Devastatingly eloquent, bold, poignant

An achievement that will leave you wondering just how it's possible that this is only the author's very first work... Brown packs so much commentary and insight inside of every single sentence... Original and startling all at once. After reading Assembly, I cannot wait to see what Natasha Brown does next

[Brown's] work is like that of an excellent photographer - you feel like you are finally seeing the world sharply and without the common filters. That is hypnotising

A brilliantly compressed, existentially daring study of a high-flying Black woman negotiating the British establishment