Our summer reading list offers eight articles as an eclectic alternative to the latest poolside reading. All are available free and online.

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This piece is long but almost every page offers something to raise eyebrows. Through extraordinary access to the charismatic and opinionated former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoifakis, The New Yorker's Ian Parker gets a first-hand account of the private meetings, events and fall-outs that very nearly broke Europe's single currency bloc. It provides a unique account of the characters and personalities at the heart of the euro area's biggest crisis to date, and offers some telling insight in to problems that may lie ahead (31 pages) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-greek-warrior

This brief yet highly discursive essay from Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel explores the modern world in which we live. One in which the increasing reach of markets can come in to conflict with traditional views of morality. His personal views provide food-for-thought on the role of business and profit in modern social democracies. (8 pages).

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/

This blog piece from New York's Federal Reserve Bank provides a fascinating historical account of railway mania in the 19th century Britain – a bubble that bankrupted many commercial firms and raised doubts about the stability of the financial system. It seems that much of what we have seen through the recent financial crisis was eerily predicted by this "manic episode" and that – 200 years later – many questions remain unanswered about how to deal with such crises (2 pages).

http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/06/crisis-chronicles-railway-mania-the-hungry-forties-and-the-commercial-crisis-of-1847.html

Talent spotting has traditionally been something of an art form. The music agent John Hammond had an exceptional ability to unearth creative genius: using his instinct and spur-of-the-moment hunches to discover legends from across the musical ages. In today's world of data and analytics we increasingly apply a much more scientific approach to understanding what will make people successful in music, sport or business. But this compelling piece from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine argues that human intuition should always play a role (10 pages).

http://moreintelligentlife.co.uk/content/features/data-or-hunch

For years governments have warned about the threats of destructive digital attacks on domestic companies by foreign parties. This Bloomberg Businessweek article sheds light on how a cyber-attack can inflict severe damage on a company's infrastructure, yet may still fall below the threshold that would trigger a forceful government response (9 pages).

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-12-11/iranian-hackers-hit-sheldon-adelsons-sands-casino-in-las-vegas#p1

The story of how the innovative car-maker McLaren was able to take their high-performance culture from formula one racing to successfully improve the production efficiency of a toothpaste factory by 20 million tubes a year, by transferring their work ethic and technology from the race-track to the factory floor (10 pages).

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/08/features/mclaren/viewall

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