Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry by David C. Robertson

The biography is interesting both for what it says and for what it omits. It’s remarkably thin in terms of content or juicy gossip. Merkel developed deep habits of paranoia when she lived in East Germany, so much so that years later she refused to use text or email. Her inner circle was so intensely loyal that nobody spilled the beans for this book, and it’s not clear that there were any beans in the first place. A few facts do emerge: Merkel had immense stamina for diplomacy, for engaging in dialogue. Germany’s chancellor is the de facto leader of…

We’re all doomed, was my internal head-shaking reaction, when I read this very unsettling book. Ben Goldacre is a British physician with a wicked sense of humour. In Bad Pharma he takes aim at the unholy and uneasy alliance of pharma companies, regulatory bodies, journal editors and even physicians who conspire to sell drugs to patients. If the drugs are efficacious and safe, so much the better. If not: we have a pill for that. Goldacre credibly presents the strategies deployed to pass off good results as bad. The first eye-opening point for me was: why are drugs always compared…