An entertaining behind-the-scenes memoir of a young Obama White House staffer.

As someone who loves The West Wing, From the Corner of the Oval Office spoke to my geeky heart and gives great, sometimes surprising, insights into what it’s like to work for one of the most powerful person on the planet.

Bright pink and zinging with energy and sparkle...this book beautifully recaptures those vanished days of Obama's gentle wisdom. What makes it stand out among fly-on-the-wall accounts of the White House is Beck's honesty about the roller-coaster love affair she embarks on with a senior staffer, a grade-one, Jilly-Cooper-novel rotter.

Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters and discovering her voice in the process.

This memoir is good and gossipy, will make you wish that you got to hang out with Barack and Michelle on a daily basis and is the missing link between The West Wing and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

An apolitical, fundamentally human story, and one with which many women will identify.

An entertaining, relatable and refreshingly frank guide to life in the orbit of the President... This lively, entertaining story offers a joyful nostalgia trip back to more hopeful times.

An extraordinary behind-the-scenes glimpse into Obama's White House, from a young woman who stumbles her way almost by chance into a job as a stenographer amongst the inner circle of the West Wing. Dorey-Stein’s memoir navigates intimate liaisons and world history, from hotel gyms to Air Force One.

This memoir by a former Oval Office stenographer is equal parts racy, pacy and funny. From barely keeping her head above financial waters in Washington DC to hopping on board Air Force One with Barack Obama and his elite team, Dorey-Stein doesn’t so much dish the dirt as mop up the mess left at her feet by the drama of politics and the heartbreak of romance.

An incredible story

Delightful... a bit Legally Blonde. What's most surprising about this isn't the hot pink cover, it's that we haven't had such a book before. Washington DC is famously a city of eager twentysomethings who work and date within the same pool. Where has the workplace relationship comedy been this whole time?

Hilarious . . . [Beck] Dorey-Stein writes with honesty and panache.

An insider account of Obama's presidency in this fascinating memoir by former White House staffer Beck Dorey-Stein

Intriguing and funny

A White House story with shades of Bridget Jones... Dorey-Stein is perceptive and has made an unusually interesting contribution to the groaning shelves of presidential history.

For five years Beck Dorey-Stein was a stenographer in the White House, giving her a front-row seat as US political history was made.

[This] breezy page turner is essentially Bridget Jones goes to the White House.

Hilsum is a former colleague, well placed to chart her friend’s life, with an especially brilliant account of her final week, where Colvin’s exposure to peril again went beyond the call of duty

Superb and moving

[Hilsum’s] tone is admiring but never adulatory, and her book is richly informed by her close knowledge of the events described… [an] excellent book

Lindsey Hilsum… in this account… [shows] just how brim full of life and heart Colvin was: from the start to the finish of her brilliant career, and of her sassy, rambunctious life

[An] excellent biography… I found it inspirational

This is a remarkable book, deeply moving, disturbing in its sometime intensity… such is the power of Lindsey Hilsum’s book

Colvin’s tumultuous life has inspired a number of recent accounts… it is Hilsum’s biography, written by a woman who both knew Colvin and had access to her unpublished reporting notes and private diaries, that seems to most closely capture her spirit.

Hilsum writes with admiration and compassionate understanding of her colleague, and of their collegial friendship that gets close to what we can, without sentiment, call love.

A refreshing take on the ecology of modern economics . . . This book serves as a fascinating reminder to business leaders and economists alike to stand back at a distance to examine our modern economics.

I am loving Kate Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics. It puts inequality in a far broader context, connecting a great many 21st century problems with a single vision. Every business leader and every policy maker should read it.

What if it were possible to live well without trashing the planet? Doughnut Economics succinctly captures this tantalising possibility and takes up its challenge. Brimming with creativity, Raworth reclaims economics from the dust of academia and puts it to the service of a better world.

Kate Raworth makes a powerful argument to look beyond economic growth alone for a true measure of prosperity and progress . . . The doughnut offers a vision for an equitable and sustainable future.

This book gave me faith that there is an alternative story to tell to the neoliberal narrative.

Finding a healthy alternative to the prevailing growth model that has strained the planet to bursting is the holy grail of environmental economics. And it looks like maybe we’ve found it . . . It’s hard to understate how exciting this revelation is

This is truly the book we've all been waiting for. Kate Raworth provides the antidote to neoliberal economics with her radical and ambitious vision of an economy in service to life. Given the current state of the world, we need Doughnut Economics now more than ever.

I read this book with the excitement that the people of his day must have read John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. It is brilliant, thrilling and revolutionary. Drawing on a deep well of learning, wisdom and deep thinking, Kate Raworth has comprehensively reframed and redrawn economics. It is entirely accessible, even for people with no knowledge of the subject. I believe that Doughnut Economics will change the world.

Raworth’s groundbreaking book hand-picks the best emergent ideas – ranging from ecological, behavioural and institutional economics to complexity thinking, and Earth-systems science – to reveal the insights of eclectic economic re-thinkers . . . Revolutionary.

In Doughnut Economics Raworth takes on the enormous task of sketching out a new approach to the economy in 290 pages . . . A dizzying whirl through the 300 years of economic theory, and challenges to their fundamental principles

One of last year's most important books on (fixing) economics

A good starting point for a much needed debate about economic policy priorities.

Highly informed and intelligent.

[Raworth’s] business-friendly 2017 book Doughnut Economics advocated meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet.

Powerful and radical

It's an absolute must-read about the circular economy and an economic model beyond capitalism.

Excellent

It’s the first book about the future economy that I can’t put down!

A fascinating look at future economic policy

Kate is not the first person to try to reconcile economic growth with our world's finite resources . . . but her book makes a complex thesis accessible.

One of the best books I have read in the last year or two was Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, an economist. She puts economics into the framework of society and the environment, rather than at the top. I recommend it to all.

In Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth's economics serve life - not the endless growth of late capitalism. Compellingly, she invites us to see the economy as an organism rather than a mechanism. By referring to our knowledge of natural systems instead of the machine models of Newtonian mechanics, she offers us a way to reimagine money in order to regenerate rather than degenerate. In this wonderful, readable book, Raworth completely rewrites the textbooks of economic theory in language that is lucid and inspirational: a must read!

Raworth radically redraws the system, putting people's needs at its heart . . . with growth bound by an ecological ceiling, the outer edge of the circle, beyond which there is climate change, freshwater stress and biodiversity loss. The doughnut is the safe space where there can be sustainable development.

An accessible, relatable account that relays academic thinking back to everyday lives and communities.