A new political novel from John Stewart

The President goes missing. Every corner of the White House has been searched and double-checked, without success. The Vice President is in Europe, so the decision of whether to go public or not falls upon the Chief of Staff. Just then the phone rings: a journalist has spotted the President sitting on a park bench near the Lincoln Memorial, his only disguise a baseball cap pulled well down over his eyes.

The Commander in Chief of the most powerful military force in the world has acted strangely and explanations are sought, but the President is far from apologetic. It is he who is asking questions.

This incident, which occurs about fifteen months from the end of the President’s first term, provokes a change of attitude. This worries his campaign manager who fears he is throwing away his chances of re-election, but more sinisterly, it provokes the opposition of vested interests who fear their privileges are under threat.

But the President is convinced he has seen a way to make a real change, to cut through the tired arguments of both Left and Right and heal the rifts in society. In a carefully crafted dialogue, John Stewart spells out the implications and the reaction of press and public.

The interest in real change aroused by the US presidential primaries makes this book timely on both sides of the Atlantic. The reform the President seeks to introduce in the USA could be just as relevant for the UK.

If you have, you're not the first.

The economist Henry George asked these sort of questions over 120 years ago, then he realised they were all just different parts of the same problem. He wrote a book, Progress and Poverty, that became the world's best selling book on economics and society.

Great thinkers including Churchill, Einstein and Tolstoy believed he held the key to creating the basis of a truly prosperous and just society.

So why have so few of us heard of him, and why will it make so much difference if we do?

At the Henry George Foundation we believe his ideas are even more relevant today than they were over a century ago. They could help solve our impending housing crisis, make it easier to live near our work, improve community relations, help us to launch our own enterprises and make trade truly win-win for all. They are also, we believe, critical to the resolution of public and private property issues, international conflicts and even saving the planet.

A New Model of the Economy by Brian Hodgkinson

This book offers a radical revision of modern economic theory. Its starting point is the existing body of both micro and macro economics, as developed in such textbooks as Economics by Begg, Fischer and Dombusch and Positive Economics by Lipsey and Chrystal.

Following a similar framework to these books, it adjusts the whole range of theory by introducing some new concepts and other earlier ones that have been much neglected in the economic thought of the past century. These are related especially to the fundamental part played by land, in it proper sense of all natural resources available on the earth, the significance of credit, especially through the banking system, and the crucial impact of the method of taxation.

Now published and available @ £30.00 HB from Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd. 15 Alder Road, London, SW14 8ER. www.shepheard-walwyn.co.uk