Books by Mark Lawson

From Chapter 1:Once a week in a conference room in Salt Lake City, in the American state of Utah, a dozen people gather for a session of climate change grief counselling. Convened by a Laura Schmidt, a full-time activist with a masters in environmental humanities, the sessions permit the participants to vent over all the things not being done about climate change, and how the participants themselves are doing things that contribute to a problem (such as drive cars to the meetings, we suppose) that they imagine will affect their loved ones. One tale to emerge from these fraught sessions is that of a woman who, when confronted by piles of merchandise in a store produced and packaged in all sorts of energy-intensive ways, had to retreat to her car to recover for a time before she could face shopping again. Ms Schmidt, who organised additional sessions following the election of Donald Trump as American president (Trump easily won Utah, a traditionally Republican state), has developed a ten-step coping program loosely based on the Alcoholics Anonymous program to cope with this sort of stress. 

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault. Ned is one of the country's best-known historians - teaching at a leading university, advising governments and making top-rating TV documentaries - but this 'historic' claim from someone the cops insist on calling 'the victim' threatens him with personal and professional ruin and potential imprisonment. Professor Marriott would normally turn for support to Tom Pimm, his closest friend at the university, but Tom has just been informed that a secret investigation has raised anonymous complaints, which may end Dr Pimm's career. Swinging between fear, bewilderment and anger, Ned and Tom must try to defend themselves against the allegations, and hope that no others are made. The two men's families and friends are forced to question what they know and think. Can the complainants, detectives, HR teams, journalists and Tweeters who are driving the stories all be seeing smoke that has no fire behind it? By turns shocking and comic, reportorial and thoughtful, The Allegations startlingly and heart-breakingly captures a contemporary culture in which allegations are easily made and reputations casually destroyed. Asking readers to decide who they believe, it explores a modern nightmare that could happen, in some way, to anyone whose view of personal history may differ from someone else's.

Activists and even some scientists will tell you that the science behind the expected major warming of the globe is rock solid. In fact, the projections of temperature increases in coming decades are based on entirely unproven forecasting systems which depend on guesses about crucial aspects of the atmosphere behaviour and the all-important oceans. In addition, these forecasts use carbon dioxide emission scenarios that have been generated by economic calculations rather than from science, and parts of which are already hopelessly wrong less than a decade after they were made. As Mark Lawson explains in this book, in layman's language, this lunacy has been compounded by further forecasts based on these already deeply flawed projections and combined with active imaginations, to produce wild statements about what will happen to plant, animal, bird and marine life, as well as coral reefs, hurricanes, sea levels, agriculture and polar ice caps. The books shows that these projections are little more than fantasy. On top of all this lunacy activists, aided and abetted by some scientists, have proposed a range of solutions to the supposed problem that are either never going to work, such as an international agreement to cut emissions, or are overly complicated and expensive for no proven return, such as carbon trading systems and wind energy. None of these proposals have been shown to be of any use in reducing carbon emissions, outside of theoretical studies. Where wind energy has been used in substantial amounts overseas the sole, known result has been very expensive electricity for no observed saving in emissions. Mark Lawson is a senior journalist on the Australian Financial Review. He has a science degree from Melbourne University, and has been a science writer, editorial writer and Perth bureau chief for the Review. He now edits a series of reports for the AFR, including environmental reports.

Beginning in Timaru, reputedly the most activity-challenged place in New Zealand, Lawson travels through Australia and Canada, where he learns to be especially wary of any place named after Queen Victoria or her close relatives. After dropping in on Normal, Illinois and Dead Horse, Alaska - place names in the quiet world are sometimes disarmingly honest - he travels through soothing Switzerland, Milton Keynes, and Belgium, before his journey's end in EuroDisney, Expo '92, and Center Parcs: territories of Somewhere, the new tourist continent where, in a reversal of the usual rules of travel, countries come to you.

Based on actual events, Enough is Enough is a satirical and unnerving spy thriller which shows how stupid intelligence can be and how, in politics, what we see is rarely what we're getting.

"A CRC title, part of the Taylor & Francis imprint, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group, the academic division of T&F Informa plc."

A design guide to the detailing of exposed steelwork in buildings, this text is written for architects, with technical guidance, general principles and examples of best practice. It covers all aspects from manufacture to detailing, specification of finishes and fabrication.