Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo:Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do
- Taschenbuch 2010, ISBN: 9780525951605
Gebundene Ausgabe
Arrow. Good. 5.12 x 1.75 x 7.81 inches. Paperback. 2008. 816 pages. Cover worn<br>Campbell, Alastair Editorial Reviews A bout the Author Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yo… Mehr…
Arrow. Good. 5.12 x 1.75 x 7.81 inches. Paperback. 2008. 816 pages. Cover worn<br>Campbell, Alastair Editorial Reviews A bout the Author Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a vet. After graduating from Cambridge Unive rsity in modern languages, his first chosen career was journalism , principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leade r of the Labour Party, he asked Campbell to be his press secretar y. He worked for Blair - first in that capacity, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy - from 199 4 to 2003, since when he has been engaged mainly in writing, publ ic speaking and working for Leukaemia Research, where he is chair man of fundraising. He has continued to act as an advisor to Mr B lair and the Labour Party, including during the 2005 election cam paign. He lives in North London with his partner of 25 years, Fio na Millar. They have three children Rory, 19, Calum, 17 and Grace , 12. His interests include running, triathlon, bagpipes and Burn ley Football Club. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Repri nted by permission. All rights reserved. The following are excerp ts from Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years. Mr. Campbell's comme nts on the entries are in bold. Meeting Diana As a journalist, I had often been critical of Princess Diana. The moment I met her , former negative thoughts were banished. Thursday, May 4, 1995 Local elections. Terry picked me up to go to collect TB/CB to go to Walworth Rd for the results coming in. They were at a dinner in Hyde Park Gardens that had been organised for them to meet Pri ncess Diana. I rang the bell and said could you tell Mr Blair his car is here. I went back to the car and the next thing TB is tap ping at the car window and he says: 'Someone wants to meet you.' I get out and she's walking towards me, and she says: 'There he i s, can I come over and say hello,' and then she's standing there, absolutely, spellbindingly, drop-dead gorgeous, in a way that th e millions of photos didn't quite get it. She said hello, held ou t her hand and said she was really pleased to meet me, so I mumbl ed something back about me being more pleased and how I didn't ex pect when I left the house tonight that I'd end up standing in th e middle of the road talking to her. 'It would make a very funny picture if there were any paparazzi in those trees,' she said. TB was standing back and Cherie was looking impatient and I was jus t enjoying flirting with her. I asked if he had behaved well and she said yes, very well. I said in that case I think you should come with us to Walworth Road and create an almighty sensation. 'I just might,' she said. Northern Ireland In the introduction to the book I cite TB's optimism and resilience as two of his gre atest qualities. Here, in his second week as Prime Minister, the optimism is on display after a weekend spent reflecting on Northe rn Ireland. The resilience would follow as, over the course of hi s Premiership, he secured progress towards peace. Monday, May 12 , 1997 TB said he reckoned he could see a way of sorting the No rthern Ireland problem. I loved the way he said it, like nobody h ad thought of it before. I said what makes you think you can do i t when nobody else could? Death of Diana The events following t he death of Diana are recorded in some detail in the book. Here i s a short extract which records how I heard the news, and how TB initially reacted. Saturday, August 30, 1997 I got to bed, and at around two I was paged by media monitoring: 'Car crash in Pari s. Dodi killed. Di hurt. This is not a joke.' Then TB came on. He had been called by Number 10 and told the same thing. He was rea lly shocked. He said she was in a coma and the chances are she'd die. I don't think I'd ever heard him like this. He was full of p auses, then gabbling a little, but equally clear what we had to d o. We started to prepare a statement. We talked through the thing s we would have to do tomorrow, if she died. By now the phones we re starting from the press, and I didn't sleep. Then about an hou r later Nick, the duty clerk, called and said simply 'She's dead. The Prime Minister is being told now.' I went through on the cal l. Angus Lapsley was duty private secretary and was taking him th rough what we knew. But it was hard to get beyond the single fact of her death. 'I can't believe this. I just can't believe it,' s aid TB. 'You just can't take it in, can you?' And yet, as ever wi th TB, he was straight onto the ramifications. Historic day with Sinn Fein There were many important milestones on the road to t he Good Friday Agreement, which was perhaps the greatest high of my entire time with TB, elections included. This extract relates to one such milestone, the first visit to Downing Street by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, two men crucial to the peace proces s. Thursday, December 11, 1997 Gerry Adams and his team arrived 15 minutes early, and he did a little number in the street, wher e the media numbers were huge. This was a big moment, potentially historic in the progress it could lead to. They came inside and we kept them waiting while we went over what TB was due to say. M o Mowlam and Paul Murphy were both there and Mo was pretty fed up , feeling she was getting shit from all sides. They were hovering around the lifts and were summoned down to the Cabinet room. We had agreed TB should be positive but firm. He actually came over as friendly, welcoming them individually as they came in. I shook McGuinness by the hand, who as he sat down said, fairly loudly, 'So this is the room where all the damage was done.' It was a cla ssic moment where the different histories played out. Everyone on our side thought he was referring to the mortar attack on Major, and we were shocked. Yet it became obvious from their surprise a t our shock that he was referring to policymaking down the years, and Britain's involvement in Ireland. 'No, no, I meant 1921,' he said. I found McGuinness more impressive than Adams, who did the big statesman bit, and talked in grand historical sweeps, but Mc Guinness just made a point and battered it, and forced you to tak e it on board. Of the women, I could not work out whether they re ally mattered, or whether they just took them round with them to look a bit less hard. They were tough as boots all three of them. TB was good in the use of language and captured well the sense o f history and occasion. He said we faced a choice of history - vi olence and despair, or peace and progress. We were all taking ris ks, but they are risks worth taking. He said to Adams he wanted t o be able to look him in the eye, hear him say he was committed t o peaceful means, and he wanted to believe him. I was eyeing thei r reaction to TB the whole time, and both Adams and McG regularly let a little smile cross their lips. Martin Ferris [Sinn Fein ne gotiator] was the one who just stared. Mo got pissed off, volubly , when they said she wasn't doing enough. TB was maybe not as fir m as we had planned, but he did ask - which I decided not to brie f, and knew they wouldn't - whether they would be able to sign up to a settlement that did not explicitly commit to a united Irela nd. Adams was OK, but McGuinness was not. Adams said the prize of a lasting peace justifies the risks. Lloyd George, Balfour, Glad stone, Cromwell, they all thought they had answers of sorts. We w ant our answers to be the endgame. A cobbled-together agreement w ill not stand the test of time. He pushed hard on prisoners being released, and the aim of total demilitarisation, and TB just lis tened. TB said he would not be a persuader for a united Ireland. The principle of consent was central to the process. Adams said i f TB could not be a persuader, he could be a facilitator. He said we would be dead in 40 years, but in the meantime this was the b iggest test of TB's time in office, how he deals with the displac ed citizens in a divided territory. 9/11 September 11 was meant to be another fairly routine day. It came to be a defining momen t in the Blair years and would ensure foreign policy dominated hi s second term. As with Diana's death, once the initial shock subs ided, he was straight onto the ramifications. Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I woke up to the usual blah on the radio about TB and the TUC speech, all the old BBC clichés about us and the unions, the only new thing GMB ads asking if you trust TB not to privatis e the NHS. Peter H and I went up to the flat. TB had done a good section on public-private, an effective hit back at the Edmonds l ine. With the economy, public services, Europe/euro and a bit on asylum, we had a proper speech. We sharpened it and honed it a bi t. He was furious at the GMB ads, said he intended to give Edmond s a real hammering. We finished it on the train to Brighton, were met and driven to the hotel. We were there, up at the top of th e hotel putting the finishing touches to the speech, when the att acks on the New York Twin Towers began. Godric was watching in th e little room where the Garden Room girl had set up, came up to t he top of the little staircase leading to the bit where TB and I were working, and signalled for me to go down. It was all a bit c haotic, with the TV people going into their usual breathless brea king-news mode, but it was clearly something way out of the ordin ary. I went upstairs, turned on the TV and said to TB he ought to watch it. It was now even clearer than just a few moments ago ju st how massive an event this was. It was also one that was going to have pretty immediate implications for us too. We didn't watch the TV that long, but long enough for TB to reach the judgement about just how massive an event this was in its impact and implic ations. It's possible we were talking about thousands dead. We wo uld also have to make immediate judgements about buildings and in stitutions to protect here. TB was straight onto the diplomatic s ide as well, said that we had to help the US, that they could not go it all on their own, that they felt beleaguered and that this would be tantamount to a military attack in their minds. We had to decide whether we should cancel the speech. There was always a moment in these terrorist outrages where governments said we mus t not let the terrorists change what we do, but it was meaningles s. Of course they changed what we did. At first, we felt it best to go ahead with the speech but by the time we were leaving for t he venue, the Towers were actually collapsing. The scale of the h orror and the damage was increasing all the time and it was perfe ctly obvious he couldn't do the speech. We went over to the confe rence centre, where TB broke the news to John Monks [TUC general secretary] and Brendan Barber that he intended to go on, say a fe w words, but then we would have to head back to London. We would issue the text but he would not deliver the speech. Monks said to me that it's on days like this that you realise just how big his job is. TB's mind was whirring with it. His brief statement to t he TUC went down well, far better than his speech would have done . We walked back to the hotel, both of us conscious there seemed to be a lot more security around. We arranged a series of confere nce calls through Jonathan with Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, David Blu nkett. We asked Richard Wilson to fix a Cobra meeting as soon as we got back. We set off for Brighton station. He said the conseq uences of this were enormous. On the train he was subdued, though we did raise a smile when someone said it was the first and last time he would get a standing ovation from the TUC. Robert Hill w as listening to the radio on his earpiece and filling us in every now and then. TB asked for a pad and started to write down some of the issues we would have to address when we got back. He said the big fear was terrorists capable of this getting in league wit h rogue states that would help them. He'd been going on about bin Laden for a while because there had been so much intelligence ab out him and al-Qaeda. He wanted to commission proper reports on O BL and all the other terror groups. He made a note of the need to reach out to the British Muslim community, who would fear a back lash if this was bin Laden. Everyone seemed convinced it couldn't be anyone else. Crucial talks with Bush The Blair-Clinton rela tionship was easy for people to understand, his close relationshi p with President Bush less so. TB was determined to get on with h im, and believed maximum public support, particularly post Septem ber 11, led to increased private influence, including on the effo rts to resolve Iraq through the UN. Saturday, September 7, 2002 When TB came back in, GWB said he'd decided to go to the UN and put down a new UNSCR, challenge the UN to deal with the problems for its own sake. He could not stand by. He would say OK, what wi ll you do? Earlier, not too convincingly, Karen [Hughes, GWB's co mmunications adviser] had claimed GWB was always going to go down the UN route. Cheney looked very sour throughout, and after dinn er, when TB and Bush walked alone to the chopper, Bush was open w ith him that Cheney was in a different position. Earlier, when we had said that the international community was pressing for some direction but that in the US there would be people saying 'Why ar e you going to the UN, why aren't you doing it now?' Cheney smile d across the table, making it pretty clear that was where he was. The mood was good. As we left, Bush joked to me 'I suppose you c an tell the story of how Tony flew in and pulled the crazed unila teralist back from the brink.' He was very clear on the threat, a nd the need of the UN to deal with it. He said he would get somet hing on the Middle East. 'That's a promise.' He was, as Sally Mor gan [director of political and government relations] said, far mo re impressive close up. Robin Cook's resignation and Commons deb ate over Iraq The day before the defining Commons vote on Iraq, Robin Cook resigned, adding to a sense of crisis and a Prime Mini ster's future on the line as he sought to persuade Parliament to support military action. Monday, March 17, 2003 TB started Cabi net, introduced Goldsmith, then Clare came in and asked Sally whe re Robin was. 'He's gone,' said Sal. 'Oh my God.' TB's only refer ence to Robin was to say that he had resigned. Peter Goldsmith we nt through the answer on legal authority to use force. One by one , a succession of colleagues expressed s, Arrow, 2008, 2.5, Dutton, New York, 2010. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Condition/Very Good. First impression. Size: Octavo 8vo (standard book size). 310 pages. Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. No foxing in this copy. Dust Jacket is in very good condition, without tears or chips or other damage. All edges clean, neat and free of foxing. A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and bestselling author. Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely random. Precise, orderly, predictable patterns...Bursts reveals what this amazing new research is showing us about where individual spontaneity ends and predictability in human behavior begins. The way you think about your own potential to do something truly extraordinary will never be the same. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Science & Technology; ISBN: . ISBN/EAN: 9780525951605. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 10077. . 9780525951605, Dutton, 2010, 3<
