The 100 most important books - all squashed up into neat little afternoon reads. There's a certain set of books which you're just supposed to know about, at least if you live in The West and fancy the idea of being thought 'educated'. The polite world expects its members to have at least a rough working relationship with the Holy Books, and Shakespeare, of course, to be able to spot Brobdingnag on a map, to know that Gaul is divided into three parts, that a line has no width and to be at least on nodding terms with Dr Jekyll, Tiny Tim, Starbuck, Socrates, Mr. Scrooge, Leopold Bloom, Raskolnikov, Einstein and Enkidu. So here they all are, but squashed up into nice little abridgements. Not summaries or reworkings, but a bloody good attempt at making these Lilliputian versions still read like the originals - keeping the beam of the story, the guts of the style, and definitely all those quotable quotes. The words the author wrote, in the order they wrote them. And there's something more... with The Hundred Books it becomes possible to read the whole thing as a single narrative, to discover a Pisgah View of the written history of the great grand thing of how We got where We are now, in way that's just impossible for ordinary mortals. Read the lot, you'll love it, and you'll never, ever, be bored in an airport again.