John Simpson, in the vein of his best-selling A Mad World, My Masters, offers a lively and upbeat look at the challenges and the changes the world has gone through in his life and long career.
In it, he looks at the world's troubles - the Middle East, global warming, the population explosion - and takes the perhaps surprising view that it's actually not, nor will be, the end of the world.
His vivid prose, his clear-sightedness, and the wonderful anecdotes about the many strange people and places he has come across all add up to a richly satisfying read. And with his long experience and his remarkable ability to explain what's really going on out there, he offers us all a crumb of comfort in desperate times.