A personal trip into the uncanny Mirror World of our polarised culture, from the international bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine
What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all?
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable?
To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.
This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.
Packed with practical examples and insightful wisdom. . . A highly enjoyable and effective guide to better thinking' Sabine Hossenfelder
'I wish David Sumpter had been my maths teacher. I hated the subject at school. I hoover up his books now' Sunday Times
Acclaimed mathematician David Sumpter shows how we can deal with the chaos and complexity of our lives
What is the best way to think about the world? How often do we consider how our own thinking might impact the way we approach our daily decisions? Could it help or hinder our relationships, our careers, or even our health?
Thinking about thinking is something we rarely do, yet it is something science questions all the time. David Sumpter has spent decades studying what we could all learn from the mindsets of scientists, and Four Ways of Thinking is the result. Here he reveals the four easily applied approaches to our problems: statistical, interactive, chaotic and complex.
Combining engaging personal experience with practical advice and inspiring tales of ground-breaking scientific pioneers (with a tiny bit of number crunching along the way), Sumpter explains how these tried and tested methods can help us with every conundrum, from how to bicker less with our partners to pitching to a tough crowd - and in doing so change our lives.
There are many routes to mental wellbeing and award-winning neuroscientist Camilla Nord is at the forefront of finding them. In this ground-breaking book, she offers a revelatory tour of the scientific and technological developments that are revolutionizing the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events - and treatments - can affect people in such different ways.
In The Balanced Brain, Nord reframes mental health as an intricate, self-regulating process, one which is different for all of us. She examines a huge diversity of treatments, from therapy to medication, to show how they work, and why they sometimes don't. In doing so, she reveals how the small things we do to lift our mood during the course of a day - a piece of chocolate, a coffee, chatting to a friend - often work on the same pathways in our brain as the latest pharmacological treatments for mental health disorders. Whether they help us to manage pain, learn from experience or expend energy on the things that are important for our survival, these conscious actions are part of a complex self-regulating process that is unique to each individual and the constant backdrop to our everyday lives.
Nord shows that, with so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think. This book is an invitation to discover those pathways, in order to help us identify what makes each of us feel better - and why.
How do we measure our self-worth?
For many of us, it signifies accomplishment, self-reliance, and wealth. Decades of neoliberalism have driven our definition of success. Yet, as we have amassed more achievements, we have been overwhelmed and overworked in a world of growing inequality. Should we start judging others, and ourselves, differently?
In this capstone work, acclaimed sociologist Mich?le Lamont argues that it is time to move our focus from having to being. We will only heal ourselves by the power of recognition: by rendering others visible and valued. By drawing on nearly forty years of research and interviews, as well as new interviews with Gen Z, change agents, and cultural icons who intentionally practice and promote recognition, she shows how new narratives are essential to shifting our metrics of success to focus on respect and dignity. Seeing Others fills a gaping hole left by recent economic and psychological thinking, with its focus on nudging, grit, and constant striving, offering a powerful, sociological alternative.
This book is a clarion call: it strikes at the heart of our struggles and illuminates an inclusive path forward.
Since he first developed the idea that depression is a stress response gone awry, Philip Gold has spent decades researching what this means for our whole bodies, not just our brains. In this book, he reveals the latest research on how depression affects every aspect of our health - from the chemical messengers that control sleep and appetite to the brain's structure and functionality. By painting a fuller picture of this insidious disease, Gold transforms our understanding of different forms of depression - including related conditions such as bipolar and seasonal affective disorders - and its huge impact on global health.
Timely, urgent and important, Breaking Through Depression articulates the workings of this misunderstood illness in compelling and often surprising detail, introducing the newest innovations in treatment that offer hope for healing.
The year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her adoptive nation. Simone Weil, disenchanted with the revolution's course in Russia, devotes her entire being to the plight of the oppressed. Over the next decade, one of the darkest in Europe's history, these four philosophers will conceive in parallel ideas that would circle the globe in the second half of the century, reshaping it.
The Visionaries follows in its protagonists' footsteps from Leningrad to New York, Spain at civil war to France under occupation, as each is uprooted by totalitarianism's ascendence. It shows them facing the injustices, unfreedom and unfathomable violence of their time as women, refugees, activists, resistance fighters - but above all as thinkers. Wolfram Eilenberger expertly distils the radical, brilliant philosophies each lived as well as developed, showing the two to be part of the same story, all testament to thought's redemptive power.
What can the fall of Rome teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist, both experts in their field, investigate
Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline.
This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. In Why Empires Fall, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it.
In this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. From 399 to 1999, the life cycles of empires, they argue, sow the seeds of their inevitable destruction. The era of western global domination has reached its end - so what comes next?
An illuminating account of the war in Ukraine - its historical roots, its course, its possible outcomes - from the bestselling, award-winning author of Chernobyl
On 24 February 2022, Russia shocked the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on loved ones who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider consequences.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a conflict that has burned since 2014, and that, with Russia's attempt to seize Kyiv, exploded a geo-political order that had been cemented since the end of the Cold War. With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and down in the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the conflict, from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR, and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics soon loathed by its neighbour in the east.
Plokhy argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's demonstration of unity and strength, has presented a profound challenge to Putin's Great Power ambition, and further polarized the world along a new axis. A riveting, enlightening account, this is present-minded history at its best.
'I couldn't put it down. . . an important book, raw and simple enough that you can't help but feel it deeply' James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life
Talented and ambitious, Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both determined to make something of themselves. How did their lives turn out so different?
Growing up gifted and working-class in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. Bonding over a shared love of learning, they pored over the giant map in their classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape their broken town. In the end, Monica left Clinton for university and fulfilled her dreams. Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.
Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Monica discovers what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas. Their life expectancy had steeply declined -- the sharpest such fall in a century. As she returns to Clinton to report the story, she reconnects with Darci, and finds that her once talented and ambitious best friend is now a statistic: a single mother of two, addicted to meth, jobless and nearly homeless. Deeply aware that Darci's fate could have been hers, she retraces the moments in each of their lives that led such similar women toward such different destinies. Why did Monica make it out while Darci became ensnared in a cycle of poverty and opioid abuse?
Gripping and unforgettable, The Forgotten Girls is a story of friendship and lost promise in 21st century America.
'Fascinating, suspenseful, revelatory, alive' The Times
An exhilarating reappraisal of one of the most dramatic years in European history, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalkers
There can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. Almost as if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed.
Christopher Clark's spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period. Some rulers gave up at once, others fought bitterly, but everywhere new politicians, beliefs and expectations surged forward. The role of women in society, the end of slavery, the right to work, national independence and the final emancipation of the Jews all became live issues.
In a brilliant series of set-pieces, Clark conjures up both this ferment of new ideas and then the increasingly ruthless and effective series of counter-attacks launched by regimes who still turned out to have many cards to play. But even in defeat, exiles spread the ideas of 1848 around the world and - for better and sometimes much worse - a new and very different Europe emerged from the wreckage.
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