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Seduced by the apparently infinite wealth of LA, Ayres embarks on an ill-advised odyssey of self-gratification (in the name of research) and breaks first rule of foreign reporting: he goes native. Before long, he is an SUV-driving narcissist with a flat-screen TV in every room, eight pairs of designer flip-flops, a seven-digit overdraft, and a wife he met on the internet. As always, however, disaster looms. After a fire the size of Luxembourg, a Biblical flood, and the apocalypse of Katrina, Ayres realises he is living on a precipice. Like a gonzo Great Gatsby, Death by Leisure is a savage and hilarious takedown of our times, and a wake-up call to aspiring Leisuretocrats everywhere.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49563303379217,"sku":"GOR000933889","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0719560152.jpg?v=1750700483"},{"product_id":"war-reporting-for-cowards-book-chris-ayres-9780719560019","title":"War Reporting for Cowards","description":"Chris 'risk averse' Ayres saw journalism as his ticket to schmoozing with celebrities and penning pompous opinion pieces. Instead he landed a plane ticket to Iraq. Chris Ayres is a self-confessed coward, born of a proud line of shirkers and well-versed in taking the cushy option. After a bad start in New York during 9\/11 and the anthrax attacks, life seemed to be improving when, as a young reporter, he was promptly promoted to Los Angeles correspondent. The thrill of foreign reporting couched in the comforts of the Golden State. What could go wrong? But everything goes wrong. One day his boss calls to offer him an assignment as a war reporter, 'embedded' with US Marines on the front line of the Iraq War. Too cowardly to say no, Chris soon finds himself camped in the desert, blinded by sandstorms, caught in the crossfire, surrounded by military machismo on all sides. He decides he wants out - proud to be the first embedded reporter to bottle it. But this, his greatest act of cowardice, will almost kill him...War Reporting for Cowards is an extraordinary true story and the debut of a brilliant new voice - wry, intelligent, honest and deeply human. Hilarious, like a latter-day Scoop, it offers a seditious insight into the political events that have defined the century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49590169239825,"sku":"GOR003013059","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53545945661713,"sku":"GOR001973748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0719560012.jpg?v=1751455150"},{"product_id":"death-by-leisure-book-chris-ayres-9780719560163","title":"Death by Leisure","description":"After a brief and undignified stint as a war correspondent, Chris Ayres is exiled by his newspaper to Hollywood, where he lives in a building called The Leisureplex and sends celebrity tittle-tattle back home. 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But this, his greatest act of cowardice, will almost kill him. War Reporting for Cowards is an extraordinary true story and the debut of a brilliant new voice. A hilarious cross between Scoop and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, it is a seditious insight into the political events that have defined the century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49598158176529,"sku":"GOR001478610","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50760125939985,"sku":"GOR001352142","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50901643460881,"sku":"GOR001357749","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0719560020.jpg?v=1751199823"},{"product_id":"war-reporting-for-cowards-book-chris-ayres-9780871138958","title":"War Reporting for Cowards","description":"Chris Ayres is a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a neat freak with an anxiety disorder. Not exactly the picture of a war correspondent. 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After returning to Los Angeles from his harrowing experience in Iraq, Ayres decides to trade the front lines of war for the front lines of the extreme leisure economy. Like Hunter Thompson crossed with one of David Brooks's bobos in paradise, Ayres embeds himself in L.A.'s leisuretocracy: an over-the-top-everything world of caviar facials, billionaire charity balls, souped-up SUVs, and monster home loans . . . not to mention thousand-dollar-a-night brothels and million-dollar poker tournaments. Ayres's highly leveraged lifestyle lands him a surreal night with a supermodel and a disastrous date at Michael Jackson's birthday party at Neverland Ranch (Ayres bribes the organizers five grand to get in). Dreading his thirtieth birthday and determined to find meaning--and maybe a girlfriend--through gratuitous consumption, Ayres begins to auction his possessions via Craigslist as part of a pledge to upgrade everything. Bizarrely, he discovers this is the perfect way to meet girls: A succession of beautiful-but-broke starlets parade through his living room to buy his old furniture. Naturally, he marries one of them. But disaster is never far away. Whether it's a wildfire the size of Massachusetts in which Ayres becomes trapped or a flood that almost wipes his home off its mountainside, the leisure economy seems to be balanced on a precipice. In the book's brutal final section, Ayres is forced to confront theexcesses of his generation at a scene of apocalyptic destruction: the Katrina-ravaged South. Told with the same blend of offbeat irreverence, genuine pathos, and incisive social commentary as War Reporting for Cowards, Ayres's Death by Leisure is a savage and darkly humorous odyssey that taps directly into the contemporary psyche.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360856510737,"sku":"CIN080211881XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080211881X.jpg?v=1750745750"},{"product_id":"death-by-leisure-book-chris-ayres-9780802143655","title":"Death by Leisure","description":"For Chris Ayres, the young British journalist whose first book, War Reporting for Cowards, was celebrated as gripping (People), blushingly honest (Los Angeles Times), and hysterically funny (CN), life in Hollywood is no celebrity junket--it's a full-immersion gonzo experiment. 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Bizarrely, he discovers this is the perfect way to meet girls: A succession of beautiful-but-broke starlets parade through his living room to buy his old furniture. Naturally, he marries one of them. But disaster is never far away. Whether it's a wildfire the size of Massachusetts in which Ayres becomes trapped or a flood that almost wipes his home off its mountainside, the leisure economy seems to be balanced on a precipice. In the book's brutal final section, Ayres is forced to confront theexcesses of his generation at a scene of apocalyptic destruction: the Katrina-ravaged South. 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