Written with self-excoriating candour and the driest humour, comes a book about being a dad from one of our best loved journalists. For Tim Dowling, fatherhood has sometimes felt like two decades of lessons learned through failure. 1. Don't give your children sugary drinks and expect them to be as sweet. You could end up with a chopstick in your earhole. 2. There is no reason holidays should be thought of as relaxing. Consider them an opportunity to be shrieked at in different climates. 3. 'Let's not tell mum about this' is not legally binding. It never has been. You're only trying to make yourself feel better. Drawing on what actually feels like two lifetimes of experience, Dad You Suck is a hilarious account of the joy of fatherhood, and the subtle art of transforming your children's insults into a reason for being.

The much-loved Guardian columnist asks what it takes to make a husband, and looks to his own married life to provide the answer.* *Anything resembling advice should be taken at reader's own risk. You'll never get divorced if you never get married. Not even your granny minds if you live in sin anymore. And if you're single you can choose curtains without somebody else butting in. So why bother with marriage? It can't just be an easy way round having to buy your own deodorant. Guardian columnist Tim Dowling is a husband of some twenty years. His marriage is resounding proof that even the most impossible partnership can work out for the best. Some of the time. So while this book is called 'How To be a Husband', it's not really a how-to guide at all. Nor is it a compendium of petty remarks and brinkmanship - although it contains plenty of both. You may pick up a few DIY hints. You might learn that while marriage is founded on love, it endures through bloody hard work. Most likely it will make you whimper with the laughter of painful recognition. 'How To be a Husband' is a cautionary tale about throwing caution to the wind. It's the strange romance of two people consenting to share a roll-on. It's a new manifesto for marriage and an answer to why, even when we suck at it, we stick at it.

While this book is indeed titled How to Be a Husband, please do not mistake it for a self-help book. Tim Dowling-columnist for The Guardian, husband, father of three, a person who once got into a shark tank for money-does not purport to have any pearls of wisdom about wedded life. What he does have is more than twenty years of marriage experience, and plenty of hilarious advice for what not to do in almost every conjugal situation. With the sharp wit that has made his Guardian columns a weekly must-read, Dowling explores what it means to be a good husband in the twenty-first century. The bar has been raised dramatically in the last hundred years: back in the day, every time you went out for cigarettes, it was simply expected that you came back. Now, every time you're sent out for espresso pods and tampons, it is expected that you come back with the right sort. And being a father doesn't seem to command much innate respect these days, either. When his first child was born, Dowling imagined himself eliciting a natural awe as the distant, authoritative figurehead; he did not anticipate his children hijacking his Twitter account to post heartfelt admissions of loserdom like, "Hi, I suck at everything I try in life." Still, two decades of wedded bliss is nothing to sneeze at, particularly from a couple who agreed to get married with the resigned determination of two people plotting to bury a body in the woods. How to Be a Husband is a wickedly funny guide to surviving the era of "The End of Men" (hint: it involves DIY), and an unexpectedly poignant memoir about love, marriage, and staying together until death doth you part.

The author follows three main characters from high school onward as they each embark on successful yet very different paths. Refusing to drift apart, the lifelong friends soon find they are more connected than they ever imagined as science, politics, and religion all come to a head with the discovery of new technologies. The President of the United States worked as a research scientist before being elected. He experienced firsthand the role creative technology can play in problem solving. Following his election, without delay the President secretly engaged his best friend's company to search for technological solutions to put an end to some of the nation's unrelenting problems. Within months of the President's request, Solutions, LLC attained his directive by discovering an answer to a problem which not only beleaguered the President's four predecessors, but deeply divided the nation. The President's initiative created unintended consequences. A staunch ally surreptitiously obtains the new technology and Solutions, LLC's team made an accidental finding which can potentially abolish the nation's worst problem. The story will not only keep you guessing, but will capture your imagination and then will refuse to let it go. Is this technology possible? You decide.