Lee Child - The Hero

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THE JACK REACHER NOVELS

Killing Floor (1997)

Die Trying (1998)

Tripwire (1999)

Running Blind (US)/The Visitor (UK) (2000)

Echo Burning (2001)

Without Fail (2002)

Persuader (2003)

The Enemy (2004)

One Shot (2005)

The Hard Way (2006)

Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)

Nothing to Lose (2008)

Gone Tomorrow (2009)

61 Hours (Spring 2010)

Worth Dying For (Autumn 2010)

The Affair (2011)

A Wanted Man (2012)

Never Go Back (2013)

Personal (2014)

Make Me (2015)

Night School (2016)

The Midnight Line (2017)

Past Tense (2018)

Blue Moon (2019)

NON-FICTION

Jack Reacher’s Rules (2012)

Contents 1 Cover 2 About the TLS 3 Also by Lee Child 4 Title Page 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 The Hero 8 About the Author 9 Enjoyed the book? 10 Also from TLS Books 11 About the Publisher Landmarks Cover FrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter List of Pages i ii v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 131415161718192021222324252627283132333435363739404143444546474849505354555657596061626364656667686971727374757677 81

TLS Books

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London SE1 9GF

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by TLS Books in 2019

Copyright © Lee Child 2019

Cover illustration by Shutterstock

Lee Child asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Illustrations © Ella Baron 2019

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008355784

Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008355791

Version: 2019-11-01

1 Cover

2 About the TLS

3 Also by Lee Child

4 Title Page

5 Copyright

6 Contents Contents 1 Cover 2 About the TLS 3 Also by Lee Child 4 Title Page 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 The Hero 8 About the Author 9 Enjoyed the book? 10 Also from TLS Books 11 About the Publisher Landmarks Cover FrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter List of Pages i ii v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 131415161718192021222324252627283132333435363739404143444546474849505354555657596061626364656667686971727374757677 81

7 The Hero

8 About the Author

9 Enjoyed the book?

10 Also from TLS Books

11 About the Publisher

Landmarks Cover FrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

List of Pages i ii v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12131415161718192021222324252627283132333435363739404143444546474849505354555657596061626364656667686971727374757677 81

Let’s start with opium. That venerable poppy grew wild and natural after the retreat of the last Ice Age, across a broad band of territory stretching from Asia Minor to the Mediterranean to North Africa. We know from the archaeological record that New Stone Age farmers were interested in it. A carefully curated stash of seeds, about seven thousand years old, was discovered near the Mediterranean Sea; seventeen other New Stone Age sites throughout what we now call Europe show evidence of opium use five or six thousand years ago; and the first deliberate cultivation of the poppy, as opposed to its casual collection, seems to have happened in Mesopotamia over five thousand years ago, organized by the local Sumerians, who called their crop hul gil , which translates as ‘the joy plant’.

I would love to know who tried it first. I would love to know who tried anything first. Who first dug up a strange root or random tuber and thought, hey, you know what – maybe I should cook this and eat it? In particular, I would love to know how many died trying. Our species seems to be restless and curious to a degree that seems almost unhinged. Recent research concerning the Neanderthal people shows them to have been pretty much the opposite of what we have long assumed – they were intelligent, bigger-brained, better animals than us, stronger, faster, healthier, more durable, better toolmakers, caring, compassionate, gentle, artistic and organized. But they seem to have been constitutionally timid. Their settlements migrated slowly, cautiously and sensibly. Often a new settlement would be within sight of a previous settlement. In particular travel over water seems never to have been attempted, unless the far shore was clearly visible. By contrast, our own ancestors, Homo sapiens , went anywhere and everywhere, many of them, we assume, to their doom. Not cautious or sensible at all. The consensus – in what I suppose we could call psychological archaeology – seems to be that Homo neanderthalensis was painfully rational, and Homo sapiens was batshit crazy.