Aeschylus

Aesop lived in the early sixth century BC on the island of Samos, which lies off the coast of modern Turkey. He originally came from Thrace which was a separate country in those days, though it now forms part of Greece and Bulgaria. Very little is known about his life except that he worked as a slave on Samos for a master called Iadmon, and that he became a very famous storyteller. He was so famous that almost any fable which could have been told by him became attributed to him.

Aesop

Afsaneh Knight

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

Afua Hirsch

AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS is an author, blogger and international speaker who inspires audiences around the world. She has spoken at many corporations and conferences, such as Nike Women, Starbucks,Time Inc., Virgin, Johnson &amp; Johnson and the American Heart Foundation. She was born in Athens and trained in London at RADA before gaining a Master’s in psychology at the University of Santa Monica. She has collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to develop talks and seminars, and has worked with the Oprah Winfrey network. She is currently hosting a new podcast series in collaboration with The Huffington Post, entitled ‘Sundays with Agapi’, which includes guided meditations and interviews with prominent guests. She lives in Los Angeles.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Agatha Christie

Aggie MacKenzie

Aghnia Mardiyah is a London-based Illustrator and Character Designer with a passion for children's books and animation. She is drawn to fun, bright and vibrant colours. When she isn't disappearing under piles of work, she loves to travel! Exploring foreign places, exciting new sights and sensations is what inspires her the most!

Aghnia Mardiyah

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Boston Review, and penned a monthly column for the Point. From 2019 to 2020, she held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the research that contributes to this book.

Agnes Callard

Agnes Jekyll

Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855-29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, dubbed the 'Queen of Ices'. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for 'cornets with cream', possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone. Marshall was born in Walthamstow. She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs A B Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs A B Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894).

Agnes Marshall

Agnes Prus

Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3:AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow &amp; RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.

Agri Ismaïl

Aharon Appelfeld authored more than 45 acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction and received many international awards including the MLA Commonwealth Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, the prix Médicis étranger, the Israel prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine) in 1932, he survived the Holocaust and passed away in Israel in 2018.

Aharon Appelfeld

Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist based in London. He is the co-founder and director of We Are Not Numbers and a journalist with Palestine Deep Dive. Ahmed holds a degree in English Literature from Al-Azhar university in Gaza, and an MA in International Journalism from Leeds University, where he was a Chevening Scholar. 
 
Pam Bailey is a social-justice activist and journalist based in Washington DC. She lived and worked in the Gaza Strip following the 2008/9 Israeli assault, and co-founded We Are Not Numbers. Today, in addition to her ongoing dedication to the Palestinian cause, she dedicates herself to two nonprofits that advocate for people detained in American prisons -- including one she co-founded in 2020, called More Than Our Crimes.

Ahmed Alnaouq

Ahmed Errachidi

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahron Bregman is the author of four books about Israel and the Arabs: The Fifty Years War (with Jihan el Tahri), Israel's Wars, A History of Israel and Elusive Peace. He teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Ahron Bregman

Ai Qing is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Ai Qing

Ai Weiwei

Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Aidan Chambers

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Mathews

Aidan Potts

Aidan Smith

Aidan Storey

Aidan Trimble is the Chief Instructor to the Federation of Shotokan Karate and a former British, European and World Karate Champion, winning the world title in Tokyo - the home of Karate. Aidan has trained with some of the world's leading teachers of 'traditional' and 'sport' karate and is now an award-winning instructor and teacher who is in demand throughout the world. He can be contacted via www.fsk-karate.com.

Aidan Trimble

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Andrew Newberg

Mark Robert Waldman

In our default state, our brains constantly get in the way of effective communication. They are lazy, angry, immature, and distracted. They can make a difficult conversation impossible. But Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Waldman have discovered a powerful strategy called Compassionate Communication that allows two brains to work together as one. Using brainscans as well as data collected from workshops given to MBA students at Loyola Marymount 
University, and clinical data from both couples in therapy and organizations helping caregivers cope with patient suffering, Newberg and Waldman have seen that Compassionate Communication can reposition a difficult conversation to lead to a satisfying conclusion. 
 
Whether you are negotiating with your boss or your spouse, the brain works the same way and responds to the same cues. The truth, though, is that you don't have to understand how Compassionate Communication works. You just have to do it. Some of the simple and effective takeaways in this book include: 
 
• Make sure you are relaxed; yawning several times before (not during) the meeting will do the trick 
• Never speak for more than 20-30 seconds at a time. After that they other person's window of attention closes. 
• Use positive speech; you will need at least three positives to overcome the effect of every negative used 
• Speak slowly; pause between words. This is critical, but really hard to do. 
• Respond to the other person; do not shift the conversation. 
• Remember that the brain can only hold onto about four ideas at one time 
 
Highly effective across a wide range of settings, Compassionate Communication is an excellent tool for conflict resolution but also for simply getting your point across or delivering difficult news.

Words Can Change Your Brain

12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict, and Increase Intimacy

Tom Burns

In this deeply thoughtful, descriptive and sympathetic book, Tom Burns reviews the historical development of psychiatry. What he reveals is that mental illnesses are intimately tied to that which makes us human in the first place and have always followed us. The drive to relieve the suffering they cause is even more human. Psychiatry, for all its flaws, currently represents our best attempts to discharge this most human of impulses. It is not something we can just ignore or decide to leave. It is our necessary shadow.

Our Necessary Shadow

The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry

Alain de Botton

We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment - from status anxiety. 
 
For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics - and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking - but genuinely wise and helpful as well.

Status Anxiety

Adrian Raine

Are some criminals born, not made? What causes violence and how can we treat it? An Anatomy of Violence introduces readers to new ways of looking at these age-old questions. Drawing on the latest scientific research, Adrian Raine explains what it reveals about the brains of murderers, psychopaths and serial killers. Anti-social behaviour is complex, he argues, and based on the interaction between genetics and the biological and social environment in which a person is raised. But the latest statistical evidence between certain types of biological and early behavioural warning signs is also very strong. These are among the thorny issues we can no longer ignore and this book is an important milestone in our growing understanding of criminal behaviour.

The Anatomy of Violence

The Biological Roots of Crime

Robert Trivers

In Deceit and Self Deception Robert Trivers, whose work has been acclaimed by figures such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, looks at how and why we so often deceive ourselves. 
 
We lie to ourselves every day: about how well we drive, how much we're enjoying ourselves - even how good looking we are. In this ground-breaking book, Robert Trivers examines not only how we self-deceive, but also why, taking fascinating examples from aviation disasters, con artists, sexual betrayals and conflicts within families. 
 
 Revealing, provocative and witty, Deceit and Self-Deception is one of the most vital books written this century, and will make you rethink everything that you think you know. 
 
Robert Trivers is one of the leading figures pioneering the field of sociobiology. He received his bachelors and PhD from Harvard University. He has been on the faculty at Harvard, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Rutgers University. 
 
'A remarkable book, by a uniquely brilliant scientist' Richard Dawkins 
 
'One of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought' Steven Pinker 
 
'Trivers ranks as one of the most important evolutionary theorists of his generation' E. O. Wilson 
 
'A powerful book ... essential for anyone who wants to try to counter their own unconscious biases' Independent

Deceit and Self-Deception

Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson, author of the international bestseller The Element and the most viewed talk on TED.com, offers a practical guide to discovering your passions and natural aptitudes, and finding the point at which the two meet: Finding Your Element. 
 
The Element has inspired readers all over the world to change their lives and this new companion is a practical guide containing all the tools, techniques and resources you need to discover the depth of your abilities and unlock your potential. Among the questions it answers are: 
 
<ul><li>How do I find out what my talents and passions are?</li><li>What if I love something I'm not good at - or I'm good at something I don't love?</li><li>What if I can't make a living from my Element?</li><li>How do I help my children find their Element?</li></ul> 
No matter what you do, or where you are in life, if you're searching for you Element, this book will help you find it. 
 
'Relevant, imperative... It will help you to find yours' Vanity Fair 
 
'Happiness really is within your grasp' Guardian 
 
'Leads readers to a place where natural aptitudes and abilities converge with one's passions' Kirkus Reviews 
 
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, and human potential. He advises governments, corporations, education systems, and some of the world's leading cultural organizations. The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries. 
 
Lou Aronica is the author of two novels and co-author of several works of nonfiction, including The Culture Code (with Claudia Rapaille) and The Element.

Finding Your Element

How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life

Leonard Mlodinow

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard's Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking) and War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra) here examines how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world, and how, for instance, we often misperceive everything from our relationships with family, friends and business associates, the reasons for our investment decisions, to our own past. 
 
Your preference in politicians, the amount of tip you give the waiter-all our judgments and perceptions-reflect the workings of our mind on two levels, the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades scientific researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious, and a sea change in our understanding of how the mind affects the way we live. 
These cutting-edge discoveries have revealed that the way we experience life-our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment-is largely driven by the mind's subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed. Employing his trademark wit and his lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self, increasing our understanding of how the human mind works, and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us. 
 
Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches at the California Institute of Technology. His previous books include War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra); the two national best sellers The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking) and The Drunkard's Walk (a New York Times Notable Book and short-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books); Feynman's Rainbow; and Euclid's Window. He also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Subliminal

The New Unconscious and What it Teaches Us

Flora Schreiber

'How are you today?' the doctor asked. 'I'm fine', was the reply. 'But Sybil isn't. She was so sick she couldn't come. So I came instead.' 
 
A collaboration between journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber and Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, Sybil is the story of a woman with sixteen separate personalities, and was instrumental in influencing the definition and diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. 
 
Sybil's diagnosis has since been called into question - but, forty years after it was first published, her story remains a gripping and disturbing account of one woman's struggle for mental stability and happiness.

Sybil

The True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities

Susannah Cahalan

Brain on Fire is the stunning debut from journalist and author Susannah Cahalan, recounting the real-life horror story of how a sudden and mysterious illness put her on descent into a madness for which there seemed to be no cure 
 
'My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the same person ...' 
 
Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year old. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of what had happened or how she had got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis, undergoing rages and convulsions, hallucinating that her father had murdered his wife; that she could control time with her mind. Everything she had taken for granted about her life, and who she was, was wiped out. 
 
This is Susannah's story of her terrifying descent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of tests and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric ward. It is also the story of how one brilliant man, Syria-born Dr Najar, finally proved - using a simple pen and paper - that Susannah's psychotic behaviour was caused by a rare autoimmune disease attacking her brain. His diagnosis of this little-known condition, thought to have been the real cause of devil-possessions through history, saved her life, and possibly the lives of many others. Cahalan takes readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, piecing it together using memories, journals, hospital videos and records. Written with passionate honesty and intelligence, Brain on Fire is a searingly personal yet universal book, which asks what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back. 
 
'With eagle-eye precision and brutal honesty, Susannah Cahalan turns her journalistic gaze on herself as she bravely looks back on one of the most harrowing and unimaginable experiences one could ever face: the loss of mind, body and self ... a mesmerizing story', Mira Bartók, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Palace 
 
Susannah Cahalan is a reporter on the New York Post, and the recipient of the 2010 Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, and is frequently picked up by the Daily Mail, Gawker, Gothamist, AOL and Yahoo among other news aggregrator sites.

Brain On Fire: My Month of Madness

Adam Phillips

In this superb and provocative new book from one of Britain's most elegant and original prose stylists, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips addresses a variety of urgent concerns - many centred around the idea of balance. When might we know that enough is enough? Does the road of excess ever lead to the palace of wisdom?What is the role of the parent, the teacher and of psychoanalysis itself in the development of children's minds? Should we be happy, or is there something better we can be? And what can we learn from the tales of Jack and the Beanstalk or Cinderella? 
 
With his trademark combination of open-minded enquiry and exhilarating argument, drawing primarily on the twin worlds of literature and psychoanalysis, Adam Phillips will delight readers old and new in this much-anticipated new book.

Missing Out

In Praise of the Unlived Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

'Really made me think about how I think' - Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West 
 
Tough times don't last. Tough people do. 
 
In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncer&shy;tainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resil&shy;ient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. 
 
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. 
 
Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. 
 
'The hottest thinker in the world' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Antifragile

Things that Gain from Disorder

Darian Leader

If the post-war period was called the 'Age of Anxiety' and the 1980s and '90s the 'Antidepressant Era', we now live in Bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike, with child prescriptions this decade increasing by 400% and overall diagnoses by 4000%. 
 
What could explain this explosion of bipolarity? Is it a legitimate diagnosis or the result of Big Pharma marketing? Exploring these questions, Darian Leader challenges the rise of 'bipolar' as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and argues that we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression. 
 
What, he asks, do these experiences have to do with love, guilt and rage? Why the spending sprees and the intense feeling of connection with the world? Why the confidence, the self-esteem and the sense of a bright future that can so swiftly turn into despair and dejection? 
 
Only by looking at these questions in a new way will we be able to understand and help the person caught between feelings that can be so terrifying and so exhilarating, so life-affirming yet also so lethal. 
 
Strictly Bipolar is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary views of the self, bipolarity and a deeper understanding of manic-depression.

Strictly Bipolar

Jonathan Haidt

'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times 
 
Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion? 
 
Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and how moral values are not just about justice and equality - for some people authority, sanctity or loyalty matter more. Morality binds and blinds, but, using his own research, Haidt proves it is possible to liberate ourselves from the disputes that divide good people.

The Righteous Mind

Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Irvin D. Yalom

Love's Executioner offers us the humane and extraordinary insight of renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom into the lives of ten of his patients - and through them into the minds of us all 
 
Why was Saul tormented by three unopened letters from Stockholm? What made Thelma spend her whole life raking over a long-past love affair? How did Carlos's macho fantasies help him deal with terminal cancer? 
 
In this engrossing book, Irvin Yalom gives detailed and deeply affecting accounts of his work with these and seven other patients. Deep down, all of them were suffering from the basic human anxieties - isolation, fear of death or freedom, a sense of the meaninglessness of life - that none of us can escape completely. And yet, as the case histories make touchingly clear, it is only by facing such anxieties head on that we can hope to come to terms with them and develop. Throughout, Dr Jalom remains refreshingly frank about his own errors and prejudices; his book provides a rare glimpse into the consulting room of a master therapist. 
 
'Dr Yalom demonstrates once again that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction' Eva Hoffman, New York Times 
 
'These remarkably moving and instructive tales of the psychiatric encounter bring the reader into novel territories of the mind - and the landscape is truly unforgettable' Maggie Scarf 
 
'Love's Executioner is one of those rare books that suggests both the mystery and the poetry of the psychotherapeutic process. The best therapists are at least partly poets. With this riveting and beautifully written book, Irvin Yalom has joined their ranks' Erica Jong 
 
'Dr Yalom offers a valuable insight into the delicate process of therapy' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Dr Yalom is unusually honest, both with his patients and about himself' Anthony Storr 
 
'Yalom is a gifted storyteller, and from the sound of these tales, a no-less-gifted psychotherapist' Los Angeles Times

Love's Executioner

Olivia Fox Cabane

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 
 
What if charisma could be taught? 
 
 What you'll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You'll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment. 
 
 The Charisma Myth is a mix of fun stories, sound science, and practical tools. Cabane takes a scientific approach to a heretofore mystical topic, covering what charisma actually is, how it is learned, what its side effects are, and how to handle them. 
 
'Engaging, clear, and chock-full of wisdom, practical recommendations, and uncommonly good sense' Stephen Kosslyn, director, Center for Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford 
 
 'Cabane has done us a big favor. She's woven solid science and engaging narrative into an instructive treatment of the role of charisma in leadership' Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence 
 
 'If you are interested in increasing your ability to be charismatic in your unique setting or employment, this book will give you direct skills to use' Psychology Today

The Charisma Myth

How to Engage, Influence and Motivate People

Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

Jesse J Prinz

We are constantly told that human traits - from aggression to gender differences - are 'hardwired'. In Beyond Human Nature Jesse J. Prinz reveals that it is the societies we live in, not our genes, that determine how we think and feel. From why mental illness differs so widely between cultures to how geography influences morals, from our sexual preferences to how we learn languages, he proves that the vast diversity of behaviour is not ingrained. 
 
This is a book about humanity's power to transcend nature; and one that, ultimately, celebrates our differences.

Beyond Human Nature

How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives

Marina Lewycka

Marina Lewycka returns to the characters from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, with a hilarious erotic twist, in this laugh-out-loud short story. 
 
'Ever since she'd first read Sherlock Holmes, Laura Carter had dreamed of being a detective . . . Books were both her escape and her guilty pleasure, which eased her through the boring days and enlivened the nights when her husband was too tired for love. She devoured everything from Proust to Harry Potter, from James Joyce to EL James, she adored detective stories, but maybe her favourite author was Marina Lewycka, whose A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian had strangely echoed a case she had once worked on.'

A Shorter History of Tractors in Ukrainian with Handcuffs

Nassir Ghaemi

This New York Times bestseller is a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership. 
 
Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Programme at Tufts Medical Center, offers and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: the very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. 
 
From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lacklustre leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

A First-Rate Madness

Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

Susan Cain

Quiet, the Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller by Susan Cain, will permanently change how we see introverts - and how you see yourself. 
 
Our lives are driven by a fact most of us can't name and don't understand: whether we're an introvert or an extrovert. This defines who our friends and lovers are, which careers we choose, and whether we blush when we're embarrassed. 
 
At least a third of us are on the introverted side. Some of the world's most talented people are introverts. Without them, we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity and Van Gogh's sunflowers. 
Yet extroverts have taken over. Shyness, sensitivity and seriousness are often seen as being negative. Introverts feel reproached for being the way they are. 
 
In Quiet, Susan Cain shows how the brain chemistry of introverts and extroverts differs, and how society misunderstands and undervalues introverts. She gives introverts the tools to better understand themselves and take full advantage of their strengths. 
 
'I can't get Quiet out of my head. It is an important book - so persuasive and timely and heartfelt it should inevitably effect change in schools and offices' Jon Ronson, The Guardian 
 
'Susan Cain's Quiet has sparked a quiet revolution...perhaps rather than sitting back and asking people to speak up, managers and company leaders might lean forward and listen' Megan Walsh, The Times 
 
'Quiet is a very timely book...maybe the extrovert ideal is no longer as powerful as it was; perhaps it is time we all stopped to listen to the still, small voice of calm' Daisy Goodwin, The Sunday Times

Quiet

The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Steven Pinker

'The most inspiring book I've ever read' Bill Gates, 2017 
 
'A brilliant, mind-altering book ... Everyone should read this astonishing book' Guardian 
 
'Will change the way you see the world' Daily Mail 
 
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012 
 
Wasn't the twentieth century the most violent in history? In his extraordinary, epic book Steven Pinker shows us that this is wrong, telling the story of humanity in a completely new and unfamiliar way. From why cities make us safer to how books bring about peace, Pinker weaves together history, philosophy and science to examine why we are less likely to die at another's hand than ever before, how it happened and what it tells us about our very natures. 
 
 'May prove to be one of the great books of our time ... he writes like an angel' Economist 
 
'Masterly, a supremely important book ... For anyone interested in human nature, it is engrossing' The New York Times 
 
 'Marvellous ... riveting and myth-destroying' New Statesman 
 
'A marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling, written in Pinker's distinctively entertaining and clear personal style ... I was astonished by the extent to which violence has declined in every shape, form and scale' Financial Times 
 
'An outstandingly fruitful read, with fascinating nuggets on almost every page' Sunday Times, Books of the Year

The Better Angels of Our Nature

A History of Violence and Humanity

The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes

What separates the sane from the mad? How can we tell them apart? And what if the difference is really between being mad and going mad? 
 
In this landmark work Darian Leader undermines common conceptions of madness. Through case studies like the apparently 'normal' Harold Shipman, he shows that madness rarely conforms to standard models. And by exploring the idea of quiet madness - that at times many of us live interior lives that are far from sane but allow us to function normally and unthreateningly - he argues that we must seek a new way to assess, treat and deal with those suffering mental health problems.

What is Madness?

Roy F. Baumeister

John Tierney

'Immensely rewarding...filled with ingenious research, wise advice and insightful reflections on the human condition' New York Times Book Review 
 
Can you resist everything except temptation? In a hedonistic age full of distractions, it's hard to possess willpower - or in fact even understand why we should need it. Yet it's actually the most important factor in achieving success and a happy life, shown to be more significant than money, looks, background or intelligence. This book reveals the secrets of self-control. 
 
Here, Roy Baumeister, one of the world's most esteemed and influential psychologists, and journalist John Tierney, turn this notion on its head. They show us that willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened with practice and improved over time. Based on years of psychological research and filled with practical advice, this book will teach you how to gain from self-control without pain, and discover the very real power in willpower. The results are nothing short of life-changing.

Willpower

Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength

Simon Baron-Cohen

Men and women have always seemed to think in entirely different ways, from conversation and communication to games and gadgets. But are these differences created by society, or do our minds come ready-wired one way or another, with female brains tending towards interaction and male towards organisation? And could this mean that autism - rather than being a mental anomaly - is in fact simply an extreme male brain? 
 
Why are female brains better at empathasing? How are male brains designed to analyse systems? And what really makes men and women different? Simon Baron-Cohen explores list-making, lying and twenty years of research in a ground-breaking examination of how our brains can be male or female but always completely fascinating.

The Essential Difference

Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain

We have always struggled to explain why some people behave in the most evil way imaginable, while others are completely self-sacrificing. Is it possible that - rather than thinking in terms of 'good' and 'evil' - all of us instead lie somewhere on the empathy spectrum, and our position on that spectrum can be affected by both genes and our environments? 
 
Why do some people treat others as objects? Why is empathy our most precious resource? And does a lack of it always mean a negative outcome? From the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two to the playgrounds of today, Simon Baron-Cohen examines empathy, cruelty and understanding in this fascinating and challenging new look at what exactly makes our behaviour uniquely human.

Zero Degrees of Empathy

A new theory of human cruelty and kindness

Joshua Foer

Can anyone get a perfect memory? Joshua Foer used to be like most of us, forgetting phone numbers and mislaying keys. Then he learnt the art of memory training, and a year later found himself in the finals of the US Memory Championship. He also discovered a truth we often forget: that, even in an age of technology, memory is the key to everything we are. 
 
In Moonwalking with Einstein he takes us on an astonishing journey through the mind, from ancient 'memory palace' techniques to neuroscience, from the man who can recall nine thousand books to another who constantly forgets who he is. In doing so, Foer shows how we can all improve our memories.

Moonwalking with Einstein

The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Simon Baron-Cohen, expert in autism and developmental psychopathology, has always wanted to isolate and understand the factors that cause people to treat others as if they were mere objects. In this book he proposes a radical shift, turning the focus away from evil and on to the central factor, empathy. Unlike the concept of evil, he argues, empathy has real explanatory power. 
 
Putting empathy under the microscope he explores four new ideas: firstly, that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum, from high to low, from six degrees to zero degrees. Secondly that, deep within the brain lies the 'empathy circuit'. How this circuit functions determines where we lie on the empathy spectrum. Thirdly, that empathy is not only something we learn but that there are also genes associated with empathy. And fourthly, while a lack of empathy leads to mostly negative results, is it always negative? 
 
Full of original research, Zero Degrees of Empathy presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.

A new theory of human cruelty

Wensley Clarkson

This is the compelling and disturbing true story of Vanessa George and the evil abuse she doled out upon th children of more than 300 families. 
 
As a nursery worker, wife and mother, she was a figure to place trust in. Yet her adulterous relationship and sick love triangle with Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen drew her into a dark world of violence and sexual abuse. To compete for Blanchard's attention she would do everything in her power to impress him, even if this meant committing unspeakable acts of sexual violence on children as young as two years old. 
 
What could have driven a mother to betray not only her daughters and loving husband but the very families who entrusted her with their children? How could a seemingly caring women become engaged in a sordid and vile love triangle with a man and woman she had never met? Were there events in her own childhood that pushed her to commit these acts? 
 
True crime expert Wensley Clarkson pieces together the events surrounding the case as well as new investigative research to compile a fascinating yet disturbing account of a case which shocked a nation. 
 
We may never know the full extent of Vanessa George's cruelty, but the horror of her story will remain as a chilling memory for generations.

Vanessa

A Portrait of Evil

Timothy Wilson

A problem shared is a problem halved? Not necessarily... 
 
Talking about our problems isn't always a good idea. World-renowned psychologist Timothy Wilson reveals how this, and many other conventional therapies and interventions, can often do us more harm than good. Presenting the very latest research, Wilson argues that the key to transforming our lives lies simply in learning to redirect the stories we tell ourselves. His revolutionary approach reveals how reshaping our internal narratives can increase our personal well-being and transform our understanding of human behaviour - our narratives can change surprisingly quickly if tweaked in the right way. 
 
How can we best recover from trauma? Why might some sex education result in more teen pregnancies? Why will most self-help books leave you worse off? Redirect proposes a radical new view of the world. It also offers a range of practical advice - that has, crucially, been tested scientifically and found to have real results - that can show us the way to social progress.

Redirect

The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

Are we too obsessed with excess? 
What can childhood teach us about bad behaviour? 
And should we be happy, or is there something better we might be? 
 
In On Balance, acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips explores a variety of urgent concerns related to how we attempt to manage our conflicting desires, needs and motives. 
 
In essays on excess, childhood development, fairy tales and the pursuit of happiness, Phillips provides exhilarating arguments, witty wordplay and much intellectual and emotional food for thought on literature and life.

On Balance

Richard Layard

In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe, and Japan. What is going on? Now fully revised and updated to include developments since first publication, Layard answers his critics in what is still the key book in 'happiness studies'.

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