On the surface, David Baddiel's childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family's past, his father's memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother's affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.

The International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management is sponsored by the Chinese Industrial Engineering Institution, CMES, which is the only national-level academic society for Industrial Engineering. The conference is held annually as the major event in this arena. Being the largest and the most authoritative international academic conference held in China, it provides an academic platform for experts and entrepreneurs in the areas of international industrial engineering and management to exchange their research findings. Many experts in various fields from China and around the world gather together at the conference to review, exchange, summarize and promote their achievements in the fields of industrial engineering and engineering management. For example, some experts pay special attention to the current state of the application of related techniques in China as well as their future prospects, such as green product design, quality control and management, supply chain and logistics management to address the need for, amongst other things low-carbon, energy-saving and emission-reduction. They also offer opinions on the outlook for the development of related techniques. The proceedings offers impressive methods and concrete applications for experts from colleges and universities, research institutions and enterprises who are engaged in theoretical research into industrial engineering and engineering management and its applications. As all the papers are of great value from both an academic and a practical point of view, they also provide research data for international scholars who are investigating Chinese style enterprises and engineering management.