Exceptionally readable...a colourful narrative full of well-judged extracts from contemporary material

An absorbing read, full of good quotations and riveting anecdote... A significant piece of scholarship

It would be difficult to conceive a more lucid or entertaining study of a subject both immensely complex and of the greatest historical importance

Charlotte Brontë once wrote: "At the West End you may be amused, but in the City you are deeply excited." A better blurb for this book is hard to imagine... Wonderfully vivid

It's rare to be able to say that a historical book is positively life-enhancing but David Kynaston, in his vivacious yet measured book, has proved that he is a rare kind of writer

Like the earlier volumes, this book is rich in detail and splendidly entertaining-Kynaston relates these events with great verve.

David Kynaston chronicles these changes with elegance, detachment and wit, and striking flashes of perception-a masterpiece of sharp social observation.

The business book of the year has to be Michael Woodford's Exposure

The first westerner to work his way to the top of a Japanese corporation discovered a few months later a £950m secret eating away at its heart. ... when he blew the whistle [he] learned of potential plots to take his life.

In a world increasingly dominated by global multinationals, he just felt someone had to speak out

He lost his job for his integrity

Michael Woodford could have spent years turning a blind eye to the shady dealings of executives at Olympus. Instead he dove headfirst into allegations of corporate misconduct

Michael Woodford has proven himself a hero, though he never wanted the battle. He risked everything

A gripping chronicle by a corporate whistle-blower who achieved a stunning victory

He is one of the few foreign businessmen to have penetrated deep inside a Japanese corporation and to report back unflinchingly on what he saw. What he found was not pretty

In this riveting, well-written expose, Shaxson goes deep into the largely unexamined realm of offshore money. In the process, he reveals that this shadow world is no mere sideshow, but is troublingly central to modern finance, with the US and the UK as leaders. The resulting abuses are widespread, ranging from tax revenue stripping from African nations to individuals and corporations escaping enforcement and accountability. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the hidden reasons why financial services firms have become so powerful and impossible to reform

They who sold us globalisation as a way of the whole world getting richer with fair rules, cheated us by letting the rich and powerful go "offshore". This gripping exposé should help end the scandal

Possibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level

He has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms

Lively and well written book

A welcome account of how the sun is never allowed to set on the British empire's old islands, whose fiscal pirates hoard the tax-free treasures of the rich

Shaxson delves into capitalism's secret nooks and tells us about how a culture of secrecy can perpetuate itself. Very interesting

A compelling read [...] an important and very much a live topic, it'll take you a few hours to read the book but it will be a worthwhile investment of time

What makes this such a good read for the layman is that the author employs all his journalistic skill (he used to work at Reuters) to illustrate his arguments and uses real examples to real examples to illustrate complex issues

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in

This engrossing book about the offshore banking racket, with its eye-opening scrutiny of tax havens and the suited scoundrels who profit from them, will make you think again about the murkier side of the City...This first-rate forensic work ends with a plea that the closed City "must be abolished and submerged into a...fully democratic London"

[An] informed polemic against finance capital

Now more than a decade old, this is still the best introduction to the world of tax havens