Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly - Tapa dura

Read this book for pleasure, and indirectly - obliquely - you will gain invaluable insights into how successful decisions are made. (Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England)

John Kay has long been our wittiest and most perceptive interpreter of economic theory. And now that circumstances have given the theory a bit of a kicking, he has become the most challengingly lateral: here is an ingenious riff about unintended consequences. Kay argues that hunger for profit is rarely satisfying. Instead, messianic commitment to products and consumers makes businesses enduringly successful. But Obliquity is not so much humble recantation as brilliant re-statement: this on-the-money re-design of economics proves the efficiency of markets. (Stephen Bayley, architecture and design critic for The Observer)

Obliquity is a very timely and clever book because it is written by one who sees clearly that, in place of the crashing intellectual and moral certainties that appeared to underpin our understandings of the modern world, we need a heavy dose of human understanding and indeed humility. (Anthony Seldon)

From Vietnam to Iraq, Sony to ICI, Chess to mountaineering, John Kay tells a fast-paced detective story as he searches for the surprising secret to success in politics, business and life. Kay is persuasive, rigorous, creative and wise. Brilliant. (Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life)

John Kay is an admirable debunker of myths and false beliefs -- he can see substantial things others don't. Read this book. (Nassim N Taleb, author of The Black Swan)

John Kay builds on a great philosophical tradition - stretching back through Charles Darwin and Adam Smith - that understands how remarkable things can be achieved without anybody understanding how or even intending them. He has taken this idea and applied it with style to modern conundrums from the physics behind Beckham's goals to the mathematics behind Buffett's riches. A great book. (Matt Ridley, author Genome and Nature Via Nurture)

An elegant new book...Kay applies his insight to art, politics, sport and family life (Heather Stewart Observer)

Obliquity is a characteristic John Kay production. It is a pleasure to read (Howard Davies Financial Times)

Fascinating (Richard Lambert, Director-General of the CBI)

Kay is one of our most dependably perceptive and interesting economic commentators and he wields a deft pen, so the pages of Obliquity fly by. (John McLaren Management Today)