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In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, at that time the most celebrated male dancer in the Western world, moved into a villa in St. Moritz with his wife, Romola, and their three-year-old daughter, Kyra. His relations with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the company in which he had made his name, were now severed, and with a war on, it was impossible for him to seek other engagements. So he and Romola had decided to re treat to neutral Switzerland and wait for peace. By the time of the armistice, however, Nijinsky had begun to go insane. The diary that follows, written in six and a half weeks, from Jan-uary 19 to March 4, 1919, is the record of his thoughts as that was happening. To my knowledge, it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad-Hölderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud but none of them left us a record like this.

— The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky by Vaslav Nijinsky (Page 1)

—No anecdotes.

This time I didn't know what to answer.

—I was reading your latest book yesterday, and someone—I think it was the guy from Mud—was telling a story about something that happened to them in the seventies,” he said in his usual soft but eerily firm tone, “and I thought, “I don’t want this.” I don’t want to read: “Felt was going sixty miles an hour down the highway when the van spun out of control and headed head-on into a truck that was coming toward them in the other lane. But Lawrence swerved and managed to save the group from a terrible death.”

That anecdote wasn't going to appear in this book - because it never happened in the first place - but how about this one? In 1986, Felt - one of the scene's up-and-coming bands - were due to play at a venue in West London called Bay 63, under a ring road bridge. Representatives from six of the biggest record labels were due to attend the gig, to get a glimpse of the great hope of alternative music. Felt had recently signed to Creation, and the label's founder, Alan McGee, wanted to strike a deal with a bigger label to pump some money into his struggling independent venture. And Felt, one of the names of the moment, were the band to make that project a reality. That afternoon, hours before the concert, Lawrence called his friend Douglas Hart, bassist of the Jesus and Mary Chain, who had moved to London from his hometown in Scotland, East Kilbride, and told him he wanted to take LSD.

—I said, 'Don't you have a gig tonight?' Hart recalled. 'For me, taking acid in a pub was hard enough, let alone before a gig. But Lawrence insisted it was fine. So he took it for a while before he went on stage. Lawrence ingested this innocuous-looking portal to another world with the help of a glass of Coca-Cola. Since Felt was a very static band that never spoke to its audience, Lawrence's idea was to turn the show into a trip of mental expansion. He'd read interviews with musicians who claimed that being on stage was almost an out-of-body experience, but he'd never felt that way—perhaps because the small audiences he usually played for were more given to polite applause than to collective delirium. If the acid helped him feel less tense, perhaps the fans would respond accordingly and start shaking their bangs.

Half an hour later, Lawrence walked out onto the stage, stood in front of the audience and asked, “Why are you staring at me?” During the second song, the back wall began to melt. Lawrence asked the lighting technician to turn off the lights until the room was almost completely dark, and refused to continue playing until everyone turned around and faced the wall opposite the stage. When they refused to do so, he encouraged them to demand their ticket money. "Talk to that guy," he said, pointing to Jeff Barrett, a concert promoter who would soon found the Heavenly Recordings label and was now rushing to close the metal box with the money so he could get out of there as quickly as possible.

Could that anecdote be told?

—No!

— Street-Level Superstar by Will Hodgkinson (3%)

368 281 svenskar valde att lägga sin röst på lan och Bert hösten 1991. Miljöpartiet åkte ur riksdagen och Ny demokrati blev vågmästare i ett val där Socialdemokraterna visserligen hade ökat i valspurten, men där det borgerliga blocket blev störst. Tittade man lite mer noggrant på Ny demokratis politik gick det att se att deras ekonomiska program överlappade och ofta var identiska med förslag från den nyliberala tankesmedjan Den nya välfärden, som i sin tur finansierades av SAF. Flyktingmotståndet var det som skapade energi och som hördes mest, men därunder fanns kopplingarna till näringslivshögern.

Bengt Westerberg hade lovat dyrt och heligt att inte samarbeta med Ny demokrati och när Ian Wachtmeister kom in i tv-studion på valnatten reste sig folkpartiledaren och gick. Det är detta ögonblick alla minns, som gör att folk än idag tror att Westerberg hade ryggrad. I själva verket accepterade Folkpartiet ganska snart ett samarbete där regeringen gjorde sig beroende av Ian och Bert. Egentligen borde ingen ha blivit förvånad. Westerberg var även han en del av Timbro-sfären, en av dem som formats av och fått jobb på en av näringslivets tankesmedjor. Han hade tagit sitt parti från mitten till en plats långt ut på den nyliberala högerkanten. Under de hårda orden mellan Westerberg och Wachtmeister fanns det gemensamma; synen på skatterna, marknaden, staten. Det var med hjälp av Ny demokrati som systemskiftet kunde genomföras.

— Förbannelsen by Karin Pettersson (Page 117 - 118)

När friskolereformen infördes fanns det en säkerhetsventil: de privata skolorna fick en lägre skolpeng än den som gick till kommunala skolor. Det var rimligt, eftersom de offentligt ägda skolorna hade ett ansvar för helheten. Den lägre procentsatsen begränsade också möjligheterna för privata skolor att göra vinst och därmed expandera. 1994 drevs bara elva procent av friskolorna som aktiebolag.

Det var först 1997, när Göran Persson var tillbaka som statsminister som detta ändrades. Detta var året då idén om marknaden som den enda vägen nådde sin absoluta höjdpunkt. Tony Blair vann valet i Storbritannien, IMF meddelade att avreglerade kapitalmarknader var ett krav för att fattiga länder skulle få låna pengar, världen befann sig mitt i it-boomen. I Sverige erbjöds kapitalet en räkmacka in i det nationella projektets hjärta och det var nu den verkliga expansionen inleddes. Konkurrensen var liten, marginalerna höga och skolan förvandlades till en i stort sett riskfri pengamaskin för investerare.

— Förbannelsen by Karin Pettersson (Page 104)