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Many of us grew up believing in a meritocracy, where hard work and a good education brings rewards. Go to university, get a job, put in the hours and things will be OK. That’s what we were told – but the reality is that life chances and opportunities are no longer shaped by what we learn or earn but by whether we have access to the Bank of Mum and Dad. We’re living in an inheritocracy, where parental support is what matters most – whether that’s covering the cost of university, stumping up for a house deposit or helping with childcare.

Rory Stewart spent nearly a decade as an MP of Britain's most rural constituency, Penrith and the Border. As he came to know and love this part of Cumbria, he found inspiration in the beauty of its landscape, its rugged history as a frontier land, and in the spirit of its people. Drawing on pieces originally written for a local newspaper, Debatable Land is an unforgettable portrait of rural Britain today, as well as a timeless evocation of the history, people and landscape of Cumbria.

The outside world’s perception of Black promise comes and goes. It does so in ways that are undeniably advantageous for Black children. Yet here, Dr. Bennett explores the rarely examined pitfalls of being a Black prodigy in a society that has, too often, defined Blackness as the very absence of intellect. Bennett probes what it means to be othered, even if this othering is the same key to an individual’s success in an unfair world, demanding that we build alternative futures that make space for the promise and hope of every child.

Through thousands of training sessions, she’s seen firsthand the strength we carry in our bodies, no matter our background or circumstance. Her revolutionary framework for finding that strength starts with emotional healing, then teaches physical self-defense and economic safety, and finally equips readers with organizing strategies to fight the systems that enable violence in the first place. A rallying cry and a practical guide, Get Home Safe will leave listeners, regardless of strength, identity, or income, knowing they can fight back and reclaim power.

There are an infinite number of possible futures that lie ahead of us—like threads stretching out into the distance. Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the international Transition Network movement, invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.

Here we find the roots of growing public resentment. Despite headlines heralding growth and prosperity, most Americans have fallen behind. They’re working harder year upon year not to get ahead but merely to stay apace. For them, the American dream appears to be slipping farther and farther away. Beneath the resentment is something else: The misleading statistics that shape our understanding of reality are steering powerful policymakers to make misguided decisions at the federal, state, and local levels alike. And, for most Americans, the results continue to be catastrophic.

There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses and estates, their lives and loves, their foibles and eccentricities. And we entertain the strong suspicion that, while they may be fellow citizens, they are very far from being People Like Us. In Heirs and Graces Eleanor Doughty draws on her unparalleled access to a bewildering range of dukes, duchesses, earls and others to create a vivid picture of who they are and how they tick.

As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker’s fascination is how we think about each other’s thoughts about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk—and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast. Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive—facing an epic journey of his own—Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.

While Covid-19 has brought increased attention to chronic and complex illnesses, these conditions have impacted millions worldwide, long before the pandemic. Covid was not the first exposure to cause long-term disease and disability, nor will it be the last. In Invisible No More, Dr. Ilene Ruhoy aims to empower the long-term patients of chronic and complex diseases, delving into her own harrowing experience as a patient.

Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world – hoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers – ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard – he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth.

In the 1840s, the Fox Sisters—and the legions of mediums they inspired—ignited the Spiritualist movement that swept through Victorian parlors and presidential campaigns alike. Contacting the dead wasn't merely a parlor trick: It was a political statement, a declaration of self that still echoes. Séances attracted suffragists and scientists, skeptics and charlatans, giving women a voice in a society that often refused to hear them. But as Spiritualism surged, it also blurred the lines between faith, fraud, feminism, and financial opportunity.

From licensed educator and TikTok phenom Laura Danger, an insightful and practical guide that will teach you how to recognize unproductive dynamics at home, transform your relationships, find your community—and break free from a life of mediocrity.

Through historical records, revealing interviews, and unflinching statistics, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, hosts of the podcast The War on Cars, and former host Aaron Naparstek unpack the scale of damage that cars cause, the forces that have created our current crisis and are invested in perpetuating it, and the way that the fight for better transportation is deeply linked to the fight for a more equitable and just society.

Nuanced and historically grounded, A. C. Grayling searches for middle ground in an otherwise incendiary debate. Looking at the history of cancellation, from Ancient Greek 'ostracism' through hemlock cups, witch trials, and the House of Un-American Activities, Discriminations is a timely examination of the state of our public culture and the chilling effect it's having on intellectual discourse.

For the first 200,000 years, humanity lived in egalitarian groups and successfully thwarted any individual from ruling permanently. Our ancestors avoided a dominance hierarchy. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change. The global Goliath has incentivised the creation of ever faster and more interconnected systems, all of which exacerbate the severity of our fall. Whether you are worried about climate change, nuclear weapons, or over-extended, just-in-time supply chains, the answer is the same: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or we might face a final collapse.

Acclaimed nature writer Neil Ansell has suffered from progressive hearing loss his whole life. As his world is becoming ever more silent, he suddenly hears something quite unexpected — the haunting call of the great northern diver. It is this extraordinary experience which makes him realise that there might still be remarkable sounds in nature within his reach — if he can only find himself in the right place at the right time. This moving book charts Neil's mission to hear rare and elusive creatures that he had not previously encountered.

The night is a time of darkness and nightmares, fear and vulnerability, especially for women. And, yet, it is another world, full of beauty and possibility, too. After the sun goes down, insomnia and sleep paralysis do threaten. But some have always walked the nocturnal landscapes, with more or less confidence. Others have worked, night shifts and hidden night work: nurses, security guards, sex workers. And some have found solace in the darkness, from queer rave culture to religious pre-dawn traditions.

The term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don’t realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance. P. E. Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City takes listeners from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised.

In a time when communal rituals and cultural ceremonies fail, longtime scholar, storyteller, and ceremonialist Stephen Jenkinson asks what it means to lose cultural inheritance. In examining matrimony and its ritual twin, patrimony, Matrimony contemplates culture-making, building and preserving cultural memory, and the ache of living in a world bereft of meaning and connection. There is a real and palpable consequence to turning away from public ceremony—and not just for the celebrants.