Author:Leonard Mlodinow
Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is an exhilarating, eye-opening guide to understanding our random world.
Randomness and uncertainty surround everything we do. So why are we so bad at understanding them?
The same tools that help us understand the random paths of molecules can be applied to the randomness that governs so many aspects of our everyday lives, from winning the lottery to road safety, and reveals the truth about the success of sporting heroes and film stars, and even how to make sense of a blood test.
The Drunkard's Walk reveals the psychological illusions that prevent us understanding everything from stock-picking to wine-tasting - read it, or risk becoming another victim of chance.
'A wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives' Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time
Hard to imagine a better book, or a more original one...writes at least as well as many good novelists...funny, and honest, and beautifully done
—— Claire TomalinHer wisdom, empathy, morality and self-awareness are very revealing... Her writing is as incisive, precise and clean as keyhole surgery
—— The TimesA beautiful, haunting and upsetting book. Weston's prose is cool and elegant
—— Sunday TelegraphDirect Red is Gabriel Weston's memoir of the years she spent pursuing a surgical career... She examines these with an honesty that is both brave and uncomfortable
—— GuardianWhat a terrific book. Gabriel Weston's voice is so seductive; her wisdom so fresh and earned, and unimpaired by sentimentality, and yet you sense her empathy - and scintillating honesty - behind every well-turned sentence. She leaves you feeling that if push came to shove you'd want to be operated on by her
—— Nicholas Shakespeare , Daily TelegraphA curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance of expression heightened by both its clarity and economy. Weston slices into sentences with scalpel-like precision
—— ObserverConcise, literate, truthful and often moving... as well-written and sensitive an account, by a decent, cultivated and highly intelligent person, of the glories and miseries of the practice as are likely ever to read
—— Literary ReviewThis is a compassionate, front-line report from what can often seem like alien territory.
—— Daily Telegraph Summer ReadsThe 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
—— The EconomistA superb account of life on the grisly front line of the operating theatre
—— Christopher Hart , Sunday TimesThis slender, elegantly written memoir by a female surgeon, Gabriel Weston, is a fascinating, no holds barred account of life in the operating theatre
—— IndependentThrough this insightful book, Weston succeeds superbly in communicating the fascinating brutal reality of a surgeon's life
—— Ian Critchley , Daily TelegraphGabriel Weston's story succeeds better than any I have known...more riveting and thought-provoking than any fiction
—— The Lady, Susan HillGlinting like a tray of instruments, her prose is satisfyingly precise
—— Victoria Segal , The GuardianA curiously thrilling read, written with an elegance heightened by its clarity and economy
—— Elizabeth Day , ObserverA valuable and unflinching account, since it so clearly tells the truth
—— Christopher Hart , The Sunday TimesThis book is mesmerising
—— William Leith , ScotsmanHer 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
—— Rachel CuskThis 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.
—— Contours magazine