'A shining beacon of sense and wisdom. We can all benefit from reading this brilliant book about how to respond with resilience.' RACHEL CLARKE
'An unlikely superhero' SUNDAY TIMES
'An amazing woman' JAMES O'BRIEN

We all experience uncertainty, change and loss. How can we weather the storms, and cope with whatever comes next?

No one can answer this better than Lucy Easthope, an emergency planner whose job is to support survivors of major disasters. Time and again she has watched how people rebuild: the work, the pitfalls and the fragile joy. In Come What May, she distils for us what she has learned about how to carry on and come back stronger.

Through poignant stories and hard-won wisdom, she offers a roadmap for resilience in the face of adversity. She explains what shape the recovery journey might take, how to triage your life, how to plan for 'the slump' (also known as the lasagne phase), and what good (and bad) help looks like.

This is a book for all of us who want not just to survive, but to live and unleash strengths we never knew we had.

‘A shining beacon of sense and wisdom. None of us can avoid life-changing upheavals – but we can all benefit from reading this brilliant book about how to respond with resilience. Fascinating and empowering.’ RACHEL CLARKE
‘An unlikely superhero’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘An amazing woman’ JAMES O’BRIEN

We all know that at some point in life, we will experience pain, uncertainty and loss. Widowhood, redundancy, a life-changing diagnosis, pregnancy loss, or a global pandemic. So how can we weather the storms, and cope with whatever comes next?

No one can answer this better than Lucy Easthope, an emergency planner whose job is to support survivors of major disasters. She has been there after countless earthquakes, fires and floods. Time and again she has watched how people rebuild: the work, the pitfalls and the fragile joy. In Come What May, she distils for us what she has learned about how to carry on during and after terrible times.

Through poignant stories and hard-won wisdom, she offers a roadmap for resilience in the face of adversity. She explains what shape the recovery journey might take, how to triage your life in an emergency, how to plan for ‘the slump’ (also known as the lasagne phase), how to take stock of what has happened to you, how to watch out for ‘learned helplessness’, and what good (and bad) help looks like.

This is a book for all of us existing in ‘the after’ who want not just to survive, but to live and unleash strengths we never knew we had.

‘This book is a triumph.’ Bill McKibben

A riveting, revelatory account of how the climate emergency is changing us from the inside out

It is now inarguable that climate change threatens the future of life on Earth. But in The Weight of Nature, award-winning journalist and neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern shows that the warming climate is not just affecting our planet – it is affecting our brains and bodies too.

Drawing on seven years of ground-breaking research, Aldern documents a burgeoning public health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Eco-anxiety, he shows us, is just the tip of the iceberg. The rapidly changing environment is directly intervening in our brain health, behaviour, decision-making and cognition in real time, affecting everything from spikes in aggravated assault to lower levels of productivity and concentration, to the global dementia epidemic. Travelling the world to meet the scientists and doctors unravelling the tangled connections between us and our environment, and reporting the stories of those who are already feeling these shifts most keenly, Aldern shows how climate change isn’t just around us, but within us.

Lucid, urgent and at times deeply moving, The Weight of Nature is a revelation, bringing to light the myriad ways in which the natural world tugs and prods at the decisions you make; how it twists and folds your memories and mental states; how this nebulous everywhere we call the environment is changing our very humanity from the inside out.

Our world is in a mess. The challenges of climate change, inequality, hunger and a global pandemic mean our way of life seems more imperilled and society more divided than ever; but economics can help!

From parenting to organ donation, housing to anti-social behaviour, economics provides the tools we need to fix the biggest issues of today. Far from being a means to predict the stock market or enrich the elite, economics provides a lens through which we can better understand how things work, design clever solutions and create the conditions in which we can all flourish.

With a healthy dose of optimism, and packed with stories of economics in everyday situations, Erik Angner demonstrates the methods he and his fellow economists use to help improve our lives and the society in which we live. He shows us that economics can be a powerful force for good, awakening the possibility of a happier, more just and more sustainable world.

Every day we make decisions: about the things we buy or the meals we eat; about the investments we make and the time we spend; about our health and that of the planet. Unfortunately, we often choose badly.

We are all susceptible to biases that can lead us to make bad decisions that make us poorer, less healthy and less happy. And, as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein show, no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way. But by knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for themselves, for their families and for society. With brilliant insight and wonderful levity, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how best to nudge us in the right directions, without ever restricting our freedom of choice.

‘Nothing could be more relevant today than war and peace. Why We Fight by Christopher Blattman is an outstanding and original book on this topic’ Martin Wolf, Financial Times

It’s easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It’s also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen-and most of the time it doesn’t. Around the world there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a tiny fraction erupt into violence. Too many accounts of conflict forget this.

With a counterintuitive approach, Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. That’s because war is too costly to fight. Enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it or struggle over thin slices. So, in those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: what kept rivals from compromise?

Why We Fight draws on decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation.

From warring states to street gangs, ethnic groups and religious sects to political factions, there are common dynamics to heed and lessons to learn. Along the way, we meet vainglorious European monarchs, African dictators, Indian mobs, Nazi pilots, British football hooligans, ancient Greeks, and fanatical Americans.

What of remedies that shift incentives away from violence and get parties back to deal-making? Societies are surprisingly good at interrupting and ending violence when they want to-even the gangs of Medellín, Columbia do it. Realistic and optimistic, this is book that lends new meaning to the old adage, “Give peace a chance.”

An urgent analysis of global gender inequality and a passionately argued case for change by a pioneer in the movement for women’s economic empowerment.

‘Passionate and timely . . . in a world where so many of us stick to criticising the status quo, it’s heartening to read someone willing to offer viable solutions.’
CAROLINE CRIADO-PEREZ, OBSERVER (author of Invisible Women)

‘A compelling and actionable case for unleashing women’s economic power.’
MELINDA GATES

The Cost of Sexism is an urgent analysis of global gender inequality and a fervently argued case for change by a pioneer in the movement for women’s economic empowerment. Drawing on decades of statistical evidence, original research and global on-the-ground experience, Linda Scott outlines a revolutionary, actionable plan to remove economic barriers against women, and in the process combat humankind’s most pressing problems.

‘One of the most objective, data-led, rigorously scientific and morally persuasive books of the year.’
GUARDIAN (Books of the Year)

‘Shocking.’ ADAM RUTHERFORD, BBC INSIDE SCIENCE
‘Scholarly and impassioned.’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Essential.’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Powerful.’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

***

The Cost of Sexism was previously published in 2020 in hardback under the title The Double X Economy.

One of the most influential books of the 21st century

*Fully revised and updated from cover to cover*

Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the word has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to hundreds of “nudge units” in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioural scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful choice architecture to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.

Now, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have updated the book, making use of their experiences in and out of government over the past dozen years as well as an explosion of new research. This final edition offers a wealth of new insights, for both its avowed fans and newcomers, about a wide range of issues that we face in our daily lives — health, personal finance, climate change, and “sludge” (paperwork and other nuisances we don’t want, and that keep us from getting what we do want) — all while honouring one of the cardinal rules of nudging: make it fun!