“... free markets, Popper didn’t spill much ink on the flaws in his model of the open society. He may have wanted it to be open to critical discussion, but he was surprisingly uninterested in the question of how to ensure that such discussion would be open to everyone and conducted on equal terms. Though he advocated a continual ‘fight against ...”

“... unreliable narrator on your hands – ‘I have always liked stunts (and also, as you may have guessed, pranks, hoaxes, games)’ – is the literary equivalent of discovering that you have invited a kleptomaniac into your home. In fact the ‘lie’ about filmmaking in upstate New York is close to what really happened, though there wasn’t a ...”

“... temporary safety’. According to Hayden, we must also consider the number of innocent people who may be killed in a future terrorist attack. ‘What might be admirable for a court system is unconscionable for an intelligence agency,’ he writes. Hayden was appointed to lead the National Security Agency in 1999 by Bill Clinton, and stayed on through 9/11 up ...”

“... In some respects, Cliff’s book has been overtaken by events. He imagines a day when Beijing may attempt to use its new muscle to alter the balance of power in the South China Sea. Since the book was published this has begun to happen: China has built artificial islands in areas of the sea contested by Vietnam and the Philippines, and equipped them for ...”

“... coalition would have disintegrated. Mussolini could never have won the war for Hitler but it may well be that he lost it. Kershaw’s ten decisions are really only eight, for he splits into two both Roosevelt’s resolve to aid Britain and Japan’s resolve to go to war. This is unnecessary. The fascination lies not so much in the decisions as in the ...”

“... have always been served by the path activists have taken since the late 1980s. The movement may now have its greatest opportunity in decades, and any lessons learned from past misjudgments will be invaluable. Often referred to as ‘The Lady’ by her supporters, Suu Kyi, who was born in 1945, is the daughter of the murdered independence leader and army ...”

“... conventional answers to a common set of questions. Milton’s individual combination of doctrines may have been idiosyncratic, but if he was a sect of one, there were many sects of one in 17th-century England. His insistence on the supremacy of the individual conscience was a standard Protestant position, and the problems he took on in his late poems were ...”

“... leaders walked out during a speech he made when he was the head of the IDF’s Central Command in May 1987 because he used the word ‘occupation’ to describe Israel’s presence in the West Bank. They returned to their seats only after he agreed to repeat his talk without using that word. While the IDF, with the help of Shin Bet, is somehow able to locate ...”

“... slaughtered relatives, destroyed homes, amputation of hands and feet and ears. Millions may still be living with the psychological effects. The UN Human Development Index, which ranks countries by life expectancy, education and standard of living, places Sierra Leone 177th out of 177. Twenty-eight per cent of children die before reaching the age of ...”

“... subtitle, ‘The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng’, appears only on the title page). This may make sense from the point of view of publicity and sales – Eggers’s name sells books, and selling more books raises awareness of and more funds for the causes that matter most to Achak – but it also inspires unease: Achak ...”

“... a woman, disembowel her and then reanimate her corpse. If you read Bidart’s books in order you may also find yourself startled early on by typography, as in this passage from The Sacrifice (1983): The War allowed me to project, – to EMBODY, – an ultimate ‘aspect’ of the ‘self’ … Such extreme typesetting reflects extreme states of mind: the ...”

“... new moon, and then eight days after the next full moon, they would be bound to come up double. (It may work with tulips, too, he suggests.) Platt also offered some very strange advice about fertilisers: ‘Dogs & cats applyed to the rootes of trees before the sap rise, have recovered many old decaying trees. Shred them.’ These modest and largely neglected ...”

“... He compares reading his memoir to looking through the windows of a house: ‘At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen.’ The chapters devoted to Salter’s years in the Air Force in Burning the Days are the most vividly realised, full of clear and thrilling descriptions of flying. This is his ...”

“... was no harm intended. It was simply an entertainment for him.’ Quite. Squat-necked Scot Erdal may have been, but she was not, she makes it clear, one of his girls. She was outside the gaggle of squealing debutantes, an amanuensis not part of an entourage, employed for her skills and brains as a copy editor and to commission Russian books for ...”

“... A male rat will continue mating with a female rat even if she’s dead. A ‘dominant male rat may mate with up to twenty female rats in just six hours,’ Sullivan says. Male rats exiled from their nest by more aggressive male rats will also live in all-male rat colonies and have sex with the other male rats. The gestation period of a pregnant female rat ...”