What on Earth is Going On?

On a balmy night in late September 2008, at the height of the credit crunch panic, Tom Baird and Arthur House were catching up over a couple of pints. Lehman Brothers had just been allowed to collapse, short selling (whatever that was) had just been banned, the US was gearing up for presidential elections, and it was all going down in Afghanistan, Darfur and Sri Lanka, to name but a few. There was also a lawsuit being lodged which claimed that CERN hadn’t properly considered the danger to human life that the Large Hadron Collider posed, and that humanity was therefore doomed.

The conversation turned to how little they felt they knew about current affairs, and they were pretty sure they weren’t the only ones who felt slightly bewildered by it all. In our world of 24-hour news and endless internet coverage, we are bombarded with a constant stream of information from around the world. The latest developments in ongoing situations are analysed minutely; but often, unless you’ve been paying attention for years, you may not have an idea of why there is a situation in the first place. We all know, for instance, that India and Pakistan argue over Kashmir, but how many of us can honestly say why?

So they decided to write a book that filled in this gap; one that provided the missing backstory to the news, and that picked out the essential information from the ephemeral. The result is a gentle and amusing survival guide for people of all ages who wish they knew slightly more about what on earth is going on. It is a book for the bedside table, the morning commute or the downstairs loo, where it can be consulted by the confused dinner party guest who has taken refuge from the conversation going on next door. We hope that they will rejoin the table having flushed away some of their ignorance, and feeling all the better for it.

Check out extracts from the book on Afghanistan and modern day Piracy!

What on Earth is Going On? A crash course in current affairs (Fourth Estate) is available in all good bookshops, price £12.99, and on Amazon here.