“... precise in address. Desire is not only registered in products today, it is anticipated there: a self-interpellation of ‘hey, that’s me’ greets the consumer in catalogues and on-line. This perpetual personalising of the commodity is one factor that drives the inflation of design. What happens when this commodity machine – now conveniently located out ...”

“... him, from art that fed people’s imaginations to ‘art’ that fed people. Buford got good. The self-deprecating jokiness of earlier sections of the book probably hides just how good he got. He cooks at home now, but he was good enough to pass at the grill station at Babbo, which has been called Manhattan’s top restaurant. Some restaurant skills are ...”

“... invasion of Egypt. He effectively contests the portrayal of Orientalism ‘as a unified, self-confirmatory discourse’ by emphasising internecine disagreements. He provides an impressive list of Arab academics to challenge the suggestion that Orientalism has prevented Arabs from writing about themselves. Some readers will enjoy Irwin’s ad hominem ...”

“... is beginning to be written. It assumes that the metropolis and the colonies were not self-contained realms (as the older ‘imperial history’ often assumed); it recognises that empires were made and ruled by individuals with often very different, even conflicting aspirations. Above all it recognises that all empires were ...”

“... are complex structures, containing some very delicate mechanisms. They have the potential to self-destruct. It might take a cascade of 1000 centrifuges operating continuously for a year to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon. On the other hand, Iran’s claim could be designed to divert attention from an attempt to develop other ...”

“... to find the switch. A telling passage which seems to belong more to the inspirational world of self-help and dieting manuals than to a book concerned with scientific data informs us that ‘at the heart of the story are the people whose lives are bound by their struggle with weight. It is their stories – the eminently human ones – that are the common ...”

“... explore the relationships that other major French painters enjoyed with Spain. Delacroix’s small self-portrait of 1821 and a study for the old women in the foreground of his Massacre at Chios were hung on either side of Goya’s portrait dedicated to Ascensio Juliá. This is a brilliant combination of images which remains suggestive even after we have ...”

“... National Accord, one of the members of the Governing Council, had been set on fire. There is a self-defeating crudity about the occupation’s methods. US troops routinely tie up those they detain, force them to lie on the ground and put bags over their heads. Saddam Hussein should not have been a hard act to follow. Iraqis know that he ruined their ...”

“... be tailed, and catastrophe ensued. At his trial in 1987, Barbie claimed that Moulin died from self-inflicted wounds, which is not unthinkable – he had after all tried to take his life in June 1940 and a number of resisters did choose to kill themselves rather than betray their friends. (Although the Nazis interned but did not ordinarily molest French ...”

“... loss. ‘For a year now,’ he wrote of her interference, ‘she has cheated me out of my greatest self-conquest by talking at the wrong time and being silent at the wrong time, so that in the end I am the victim of her merciless desire for vengeance.’ But if Nietzsche was capable of seeing himself as a pitiful victim, he was also able to see the ...”

“... own excuses, is more tangled. Taubman refers to his ‘stunning blend of deception and self-deception’. He never admitted that he had obeyed Stalin out of fear, though fear must have played a part. (Back in 1923 he had briefly joined a Trotskyist opposition group in the Donbas, the sort of mistake which cost thousands of people their lives. He ...”

“... Twickenham, 1954 The New Zealanders handled the countdown with more aggression and a lot more self-importance. The selector, John Hart, on their arrival in the changing room: ‘It’s going to be a long wait, boys. Time to concentrate.’ Then the coach Brian Lochore, voice breaking with emotion: ‘You’re a good team but you’re not yet a great ...”

“... job helped you not only to learn practical skills such as arb, but also to witness the exercise of self-discipline. Traders could assess whether a clerk or runner who wanted to start trading was the kind of person it might be worth backing financially. Chicago’s tightly-knit neighbourhoods seem to have helped, by providing recruits who would already be known ...”

“... to publish it as soon as possible: Tony Blair’s topicality is on the wane. The Ghost is self-consciously concerned with the logic of publicity and sales, the pressure to get the former prime minister’s memoirs out there as soon as possible. It also acknowledges the short shelf-life of most satire. Discussing an old Cambridge Footlights comic ...”

“... problem. This is one short section in a book that, industry by industry, systematically uncovers self-servingness wherever it exists. But Dorothy’s experiments in efficiency come about partly as a reaction to the weakness of her husband, a gentleman farmer of the old school who doesn’t like to see animals suffer. She realised something had to be done on ...”