“... to their previous owners, a dozen being among the 25 barons – the most barefaced example of self-interest in the proceedings. When the king met the barons at Oxford a month later, they treated him with contempt. John was in bed, unable to walk because of gout. The barons refused to come to him in his chamber. When he was carried into them on a ...”

“... Tamerlan ‘perfect’ and ‘destined for greatness’, no doubt instilled a great deal of self-belief in him. But, as Gessen writes, ‘he had lived in seven cities and attended an even greater number of schools,’ entering tenth grade in Cambridge at 17. He struggled for good grades and to learn English, but as the oldest child was also the most ...”

“... in the potion was amphetamine – speed. But to get things exactly right Williams’s daily self-medication before addressing the typewriter required one final element: cranked up to racing mode with speed, he backed down the rpms before starting to work by making himself a Martini. He told Kazan it was a double Martini. When a man makes himself a ...”

“... 1930s. And the situation was deteriorating in the United States. In the 1960s conservatives and self-described liberals were clamping down, radicals were dropping out and social scientists were becoming more rigid. The Hirschmans’ friends at Harvard were moving to extremes. Adelman describes the long moment well. Hirschman was dismayed and confused. He ...”

“... about the English bourgeoisie: Their character has been moulded in the course of centuries. Class self-esteem has entered into their blood and marrow, their nerves and bones. It will be much harder to knock the self-confidence of world rulers out of them. But the American will knock it out just the same, when he gets ...”

“... that the UK should do the same, to ‘avoid becoming like Greece’, was treated as if it was self-evident. What about the problem that austerity would make the recession worse? Supporters of austerity put forward two counter-arguments. First, the prospect of a rising government deficit would worry consumers and firms so much that they would spend less as ...”

“... oldest daughter, was said to be ‘the loveliest girl in Vienna’, with lustrous dark hair and a self-confident gaze. She had her first kiss aged 17 with Gustav Klimt, while travelling in Genoa. Klimt found her beautiful but also something more: ‘She has everything a discerning man could possibly ask for from a woman, in ample measure; I believe wherever ...”

“... bolder claims disfigures, is also impaired by the worn phrasing of portentous historiographical self-positioning. This is a ‘post-revisionist’ volume that aims to ‘revitalise’ studies of the era by, among other moves, adopting the insights of ‘the “cultural turn”’. The authors deploy a ‘diverse set of methodologies and narrative ...”

“... for the first time under pressure.’ Since the war, the US had privileged the economic self-interest of its recovering allies, accepting their protectionism and an overvalued dollar as the price to be paid for its political hegemony. But the Vietnam War had depleted the Treasury, escalated inflation and upset the balance of payments, which only ...”

“... being in his predilections. Wouldn’t a mirror have done just as well? But maybe the risk of self-sabotage is part of what drove him on. Asquith, too, was aware that he might be ruined if his letters to Venetia fell into the wrong hands. He told Venetia he was ‘certain’ that she wouldn’t help any scurrilous biographers by passing on his ...”

“... thinking; but the public wants instant gratification. Without constraints, democracies are bad at self-preservation. It’s for this reason that most central banks are kept formally independent of the elected branches of government; that way, monetary policy is preserved as the business of supposedly neutral technocrats. This is the common sense that emerged ...”

“... he keeps sliding back into talking about race. One crucial chapter, on the concept of ‘racial self-interest’, argues that a pattern of white people moving out of mixed urban communities into whiter ones shows that people are more comfortable living with their own kind, and that this isn’t a problem because there is a difference ‘between love for ...”

“... writes, in Nietzsche’s sense of having nothing to constrain the full expression of his true self. Surprisingly, his first instinct was a policy of benign paternalism. He organised rubbish collections, helped launch the seasonal tuna hunt, welcomed Arab notables to state receptions, and embarked on an ambitious scheme to turn Benghazi into an elegant ...”

“... might still emerge a ‘new object’ needing to be represented was not, in 1932, simply self-delusion. I realise that this last form of words offers cold comfort, and no doubt has a ‘Western Marxist’ flavour to it. But I stand by it – I think it is true to the tortured reality – and turn finally to Deineka and Eisenstein for support. Not ...”

“... aesthetic, sotto-voce style’, his ‘preference for backstage manoeuvring’, an ‘unfailing self-regard’ and the way ‘he quickly forms fixed opinions about people, sometimes based on scant evidence’ (no evidence was given for this opinion about Kushner’s opinions: no evidence and no source). ‘He also has a habit,’ unnamed sources were ...”