Claire Berlinski Libri

Great Britain in the 1970s appeared to be in terminal decline -- ungovernable, an economic train wreck, and rapidly headed for global irrelevance. Three decades later, it is the richest and most influential country in Europe, and Margaret Thatcher is the reason. The preternaturally determined Thatcher rose from nothing, seized control of Britain's Conservative party, and took a sledgehammer to the nation's postwar socialist consensus. She proved that socialism could be reversed, inspiring a global free-market revolution. Simultaneously exploiting every politically useful aspect of her femininity and defying every conventional expectation of women in power, Thatcher crushed her enemies with a calculated ruthlessness that stunned the British public and without doubt caused immense collateral damage. Ultimately, however, Claire Berlinski agrees with Thatcher: There was no alternative. Berlinski explains what Thatcher did, why it matters, and how she got away with it in this vivid and immensely readable portrait of one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.

Claire Berlinski (the real Claire Berlinski, that is) wrote Loose Lips, the best (and certainly the funniest) contemporary novel about the CIA. Of course, that never meant she was the greatest spy of her generation. When a fictional spy novelist named Claire Berlinski, who lives in Paris, begins exchanging e-mails with an Iranian archeologist who likes her work, she thinks nothing of it. Lots of people like spy novels. Lots of people meet online. Lots of people flirt online. But when Claire visits Istanbul at the suggestion of this charming Persian, whom she calls the Lion, she finds herself, to her astonishment, in the thick of a real espionage novel. As life begins menacingly to imitate art, Claire discovers that the Lion is not who she thinks he is. And the Lion discovers that Claire is not who he thinks she is, either.