The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton
Large scale poverty is the result of political and organisational failures
Tag: Books & literature
Book Review: Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee
Lee's subject was too elusive to be loved
Rebecca Miller interviews the Marquis de Sade
The author and film director imagines a conversation with the notorious French libertine
Book Review: The Book of Job A Biography by Mark Larrimore
Job and the shift from "pre-modern" to "modern" ways of thinking
The First World War: Jeremy Paxman in conversation with Bronwen Maddox
On 29th October, Prospect hosted an event with Jeremy Paxman at London’s Royal Geographical Society to discuss his new book Great Britain’s Great War with Prospect’s editor Bronwen Maddox
Norman Mailer: A Double Life
A new biography of Norman Mailer misses the mark
Ian Buruma in conversation with Prospect
The author and historian examines the ideas raised by his new book on the aftermath of the Second World War
Autobiography by Morrissey: the tale of a charmless man
How does the much-anticipated autobiography from Manchester's most miserable son compare to other classic music memoirs?
Orwell’s Anglomania
George Orwell was a romantic. His politics represents the clang of his aspirations against the cold steel of reality
For Who the Bell Tolls: ban the gobbledygook
Have the abuses of language by those in power become so severe that we need a Language Czar to restore grammatical order?
Woodrow Wilson’s long shadow
Who was Wilson: the remote and dull professor President or the tragic crusader for global democracy?
Does Salinger’s biography matter?
Revelations about Salinger the man are no substitute for understanding his work
Lost and found
Russell Banks's story has its origins in an image of a middle-aged businessman in a hotel room, about to commit adultery with an attractive, slightly younger woman
The Embassy of Cambodia
What Bath was to Austen, or Paris to Balzac, Willesden is to Zadie Smith
Be ye perfect!
When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, Britain was on the brink of unrest. Forty years later, it was a nation transformed
The Indian Ideology
Perry Anderson takes aim at the abiding cliché of contemporary commentary on India
Latin: Story of a World Language
Latin might be classified as a long-dead language—but this work reminds us that no one has informed Latin of that fact
A drama never surpassed
How could Europe’s leaders have “allowed the First World War to happen, then continued it for four more years?”
The controlling voice
A new book about Philip Roth shows that his achievement has been to wring so many great novels from his limited gifts