Jonathan Conlin

Paris and London have long held a mutual fascination, and never more so than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when they both vied to be the world's greatest city. Each city has been the focus of many books, yet here Jonathan Conlin uncovers the intriguing relationship between them for the first time. It is a history of surprises: Sherlock Holmes was actually French, the can-can was English and the first restaurant served English food in Paris. Tales of Two Cities examines and compares six urban spaces - the street, the cemetery, the apartment, the restaurant, the music hall and the nocturnal underworld. The citizens of Paris and London were the first to create these landmarks of the modern cityscape. By borrowing, imitating and learning from each other they invented the modern metropolis and so defined urban living for us all.

Great Economic Thinkers presents an accessible introduction to the lives and works of the most influential economists of modern times: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, and Nobel Prize winners Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, John Forbes Nash Jr, Daniel Kahneman, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. Free from jargon and equations, the book describes key economic concepts - from the role played by the division of labour to wages and rents, cognitive biases, game theory and liberalism - showing how they have come to shape our society today.