Before Pep Guardiola and before Jose Mourinho, there was Bela Guttmann: the first superstar football coach, and the man who paved the way for the celebrated coaches of the modern age. He was also a Holocaust survivor. In 1944, much of Europe had wanted Guttmann dead. He hid for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered. Later, he escaped from a slave labour camp before a planned deportation and almost certain death. His father, sister and wider family were murdered. But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted Europe's greatest sporting prize, the European Cup, a feat he repeated the following year. This biography spans two contrasting visions of Europe: one of barbarism and genocide, and one of beauty, wonder and romance, of balmy evenings in magnificent cities, where great players would stretch every sinew in a bid to win football's holy grail. With dark forces rising once again in that continent, the story of Bela Guttmann's life asks the question: which vision will triumph in our times?

Switch on the business news and you will probably be bombarded with yet more workplace experts telling you that everyone nowadays is grossly overworked, madly juggling their work-life balance until they finally keel over and die from the sheer stress of it all. We all know that's right, don't we? The real truth is that there are millions upon millions of people who are actively disengaged from their jobs, who spend months and years sitting in offices doing next to nothing, lost in the cracks of laughably inefficient and abysmally managed large organisations, their talents wasted and long forgotten. The Living Dead unmasks the myth of the workplace for the first time. It tells the truth. Not cloaked in humour, as in Dilbert and The Office, but in plain black and white. The Living Dead will captivate anyone anywhere in the world who has ever worked in a large office environment, or those who have a genuine desire to make people's working lives more productive and enjoyable. Here are some astonishing statistics about office life you probably never knew: *40 per cent of all casual drugs users in the US (people who use drugs just once a month) still choose to do it at work. 19.6 per cent of people who take drugs at work do so at their workstation. * One in three mid-week visitors to the theme park Alton Towers has taken the day off work on a dishonest pretext. * One in five US workers has had sex with a co-worker during work hours. Full sex, that is. 44 per cent of men and 35 per cent of women have had at least some sexual contact at work. * One third of UK young professionals are hungover at least twice a week on working days. Two thirds admitted to having called in sick due to alcohol at least once in the previous month. *70 per cent of Internet porn sites are accessed during the 9 to 5 working day. * More than half of the UK's 14.5 million pet owners say they would need between two and five days off work to grieve for a dead pet, while 10 per cent said they would need as much as two weeks. * Monday (23 per cent) and Friday (25 per cent) are the days most commonly taken off sick by UK employees. Wednesday is the most rarely taken (8 per cent). * UK doctors receive 9 million 'suspicious' or 'questionable' requests each year for sick notes. David Bolchover writes frequently on business and management issues for The Times and The Sunday Times as well as a number of other national newspapers and specialist publications. His first book, The 90-Minute Manager, outlines the lessons which business managers can learn from football managers. Previously, he was employed for several years in a large office. But now he wants to do something with his life.

Even amid the enduring financial crisis, sky-high salaries for top executives and bankers persist, further inflaming public anger. But nothing will change, argues David Bolchover, until we confront the root cause - a self-serving "talent myth" that justifies high pay on the ground that the recipients possess extraordinary abilities without which no company could hope to prosper. These claims are not only unfounded; they are also an abuse of free-market capitalism. Pay Check aims to win the system back for those who actually take the risks, and expose those who merely snatch the rewards.

Reviews This is a thoughtful, persuasive and well-written book. It is a timely and powerful contribution to the debate about the corrosive effects of the banking bonus culture. I commend Mr Bolchover s work to anyone who cares about the future of capitalism. - Luke Johnson, Chairman Channel 4; Columnist Financial Times; Entrepreneur. There is, in my view, no better writer on the modern workplace than David Bolchover. With this book he has done it again. He has asked one of the questions that really matter. And the answer? Well, read it for yourself .. -Daniel Finkelstein, The Times Synopsis Who deserves what they earn? Seldom has this question been more relevant than now, as senior executives grab outrageous salaries while the companies they manage go bankrupt, and British parliamentarians fiddle their expenses. From jargon-spouting consultants to the financial whiz kids undertaking risky deals, oversized pay packets are justified on the flimsiest of grounds that the recipients possess extraordinary talent without which no company or organisation could prosper. But the evidence suggests otherwise. This book explodes the myth of talent, and shows how the term has been deliberately misused and abused. Pay Check aims to win capitalism back for those who actually take the risks, and expose those who merely snatch the rewards.