Paul Collier's marvellous book about poverty and economic development is just out as an OUP paperback, I noticed in the Sunday papers. Highly commended. No quick fixes, very realistic and sober, and extremely readable. Both my husband and son No. 1 read and enjoyed this one.

Most Sundays I meet a couple of friends for a mini-philosophical salon (ok, a drink and chat), and last week Richard the Philosopher of Vagueness in Education (yes really!) asked if he could borrow Daniel Bell's 'The Coming of Post Industrial Society' from me.
I first read this as a student in the late 1970s & put it out of my mind until I was being interviewed by a nasty neocon columnist in the US about one of my books, Paradoxes of Prosperity. What was I saying, the nasty neocon asked, that Daniel Bell hadn't said better and 30 years earlier? When I recovered from the mauling, it was time to re-read the book, which did indeed turn out to be astonishingly prescient. Bell had underestimated two things about modern capitalism: the scale and scope of the organisational and social change being driven by new technologies; and globalisation, the way the reshaping of capitalism would cross borders. Still, it remains an impressive book, and one of its key points – the tension between technocratic decision-making by experts in a complex society and the pressures for ever more democracy and populism – is spot on.
Anyway, I tracked down the book on my shelves for Richard the Philosopher but decided I need to read it again in preparation for my next book. As his birthday's coming up I thought I might buy it for him, and found it's only available used, as are the other Daniel Bell titles I hunted for. I've ordered both Post Industrial Society and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (from O'Donoghue Books in Hay on Wye, via Abe – Sean O'Donoghue is a specialist social science bookseller), so if you're reading Richard the Philosopher, you'll have the book soon. But what a surprise to find Bell out of print. Even though those of a neocon persuasion obviously still love him, for me he's an interesting thinker full of insight about capitalism. Don't we need a bit of that these days?