Jane Gordon - Böcker

A new novel from the bestselling author of MY FAIR MAN and STEPFORD HUSBANDS is a tense and compelling suspense of obsession and desire.Chrissie, Carole and Joanna are more than friends, they're like family, their bond forged as a result of their unhappy childhoods.Now in their thirties, they're just as close, even at very different stages in their lives: Chrissie is single, Carole happily married with a son to a man they all joke is Mr Perfect, and Joanna divorced with a young daughter. But a fundamental desire unites them – their yearning for children. Carole is pregnant again. But how can Chrissie and Joanna fulfil their dream without going through the turmoil of finding a man?It is Carole who comes up with the ingenious plan. Her husband, Goran, is warm-hearted and generous, good-looking and clever – who better to be the father of all their children?And so one by one three little boys are born. But Goran, it turns out, is not content to be just the nominal father of Chrissie and Joanna's sons. He wants something dangerously more…

Why have statelessness and contemporary enslavement become endemic since the 1990s? What is it about global political economic policies, protracted warfare, and migration rules and patterns that have so systemically increased these extreme forms of vulnerability? Why have intellectual communities largely ignored or fundamentally rejected the concepts of statelessness and contemporary enslavement? This book argues that statelessness and enslavement are not aberrations or radical exceptions. They have been and are endemic to Euromodern state systems. While victims are discrete outcomes of similar processes of the racialized debasement of citizenship, stateless people share the predicament of those most likely to be enslaved and the enslaved, even when formally free, often face situations of statelessness. Gordon identifies forcible inclusion of semi-sovereign nations, extralegal expulsion of people who cannot be repatriated, and the concentrated erosion of the rights of full-fledged citizens as the primary modes through which people experience degrees of statelessness. She argues for the political value of seeing the connections among these discrete forms. With enslavement, she insists that while the centuries-long practice has taken on some new guises necessary to its profitability in the current global economy, what and who it involves have remained remarkably consistent. Rather than focusing on slavery as a radical and exceptional extreme of abuse or coercion, Gordon contends that we can understand contemporary slavery’s specificity most usefully through considering its defining dimensions together with those of wage laborers and guest workers. Gordon concludes that appreciation of the situation of the stateless and of the enslaved should fundamentally orient our thinking about viable contemporary conceptions of consent and of the kinds of twenty-first-century political institutions that would make it harder for some to make the vulnerability of others so lucrative.

Why have statelessness and contemporary enslavement become endemic since the 1990s? What is it about global political economic policies, protracted warfare, and migration rules and patterns that have so systemically increased these extreme forms of vulnerability? Why have intellectual communities largely ignored or fundamentally rejected the concepts of statelessness and contemporary enslavement? This book argues that statelessness and enslavement are not aberrations or radical exceptions. They have been and are endemic to Euromodern state systems. While victims are discrete outcomes of similar processes of the racialized debasement of citizenship, stateless people share the predicament of those most likely to be enslaved and the enslaved, even when formally free, often face situations of statelessness. Gordon identifies forcible inclusion of semi-sovereign nations, extralegal expulsion of people who cannot be repatriated, and the concentrated erosion of the rights of full-fledged citizens as the primary modes through which people experience degrees of statelessness. She argues for the political value of seeing the connections among these discrete forms. With enslavement, she insists that while the centuries-long practice has taken on some new guises necessary to its profitability in the current global economy, what and who it involves have remained remarkably consistent. Rather than focusing on slavery as a radical and exceptional extreme of abuse or coercion, Gordon contends that we can understand contemporary slavery’s specificity most usefully through considering its defining dimensions together with those of wage laborers and guest workers. Gordon concludes that appreciation of the situation of the stateless and of the enslaved should fundamentally orient our thinking about viable contemporary conceptions of consent and of the kinds of twenty-first-century political institutions that would make it harder for some to make the vulnerability of others so lucrative.

A funny, informative and entertaining exploration of the unexpected joy of getting older.

'A jolly quest to make the greying years more colourful' The TimesWhen journalist Jane Gordon was hospitalised and left immobile after a nasty car accident, dependent on others to feed her and help her to the bathroom, she suddenly had to confront what it might be like to one day be old and infirm. Determined to not only regain her strength but find ways to stay physically and mentally fit for as long as possible, Jane decided to road-test different self-help programmes designed to promote longevity. From ballroom dancing to brain training, learning a second language to silent meditation, joining the gym and improving her gut health, Jane seeks advice from top neuroscientists and medical professionals to assess the impact these courses have on her health, and whether they will stop her getting old before her time. Part self-help, part manifesto, How Not To Get Old is about future-proofing your physical and mental wellbeing and taking control of the ageing process, rather than wallowing in it. For what begins as a clever experiment in the art of stopping time becomes a joyous celebration of what we CAN do, not what we can't or shouldn't, and ultimately demonstrates how later life is still very much for living...