How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks

Office Politics

A fascinating exposé of office culture, in the style of the bestselling Affluenza, from popular psychologist Oliver James

I can't remember the last  time I read such a useful and eye-opening book. But be warned: after reading it, you may never want to go to work again.

Oliver James is excellent at showing why social scientists think that the surge in material affluence can produce the opposite of happiness.

Avner Offer, Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford

Oliver James trained and practised as a child clinical psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture, the bestselling They F*** You Up, Affluenza and Contented Dementia. He is a trustee of two children's charities: the National Family and Parenting Institute and Homestart.

A fascinating exposé of office culture, in the style of the bestselling Affluenza, from popular psychologist Oliver James 
 
The modern working world is a dangerous place, where game-playing, duplicity and sheer malevolence are rife. Do talent and hard work count for nothing? Is politics everything? 
 
In this fascinating exposé, Oliver James reveals the murky underside of modern office life. With cutting-edge research and eye-opening interviews, he highlights the nasty practices that propel people to the top and shows how industries and cultures are fostering this behaviour. 
 
He then divulges strategies and techniques for not only surviving but thriving in these difficult environments. With the right mindset, you can distinguish and deal with toxic and overpromoted colleagues, charm your way through interviews and use office politics to your advantage. 
 
Office Politics will overthrow your perceptions of office life and set you on a new path to success. 
 
Oliver James trained and practised as a child clinical psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture, the bestselling They F*** You Up, Affluenza and Contented Dementia. He is a trustee of two children's charities: the National Family and Parenting Institute and Homestart.

How Not to F*** Them Up

Oliver James - leading psychologist and bestselling author of Affluenza - presents research and clear guidance on how to parent in a way that works best for you and your child

Easily readable, liberating ... a book you can trust.

In a perfect world every parent would have a parenting masterclass before the baby arrives. This is the next best thing!

At last, something for the modern mother! A sane voice amid the shrill cacophony of childcare books

I agree with Oliver James. Caring for a baby or toddler is personal, because you have to tune in to the child's changing needs.

Unlike other books of this sort, How Not to F*** Them Up focuses on the wellbeing of the parent as a starting point for meeting the needs of the child... This is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, and is not afraid to admit his own frailties. As a result his theories come across not as condescension, but as advice from one fucked-up-person to another.

... it is obvious that James is truly on the side of women and creating a society in which parenting and the issues it raises are shared between both partners.

Hugely gripping... it certainly makes you think.

[Oliver James] does a great job of describing some of the problems in modern society and how the demands of the 21st century can affect a person's happiness... [he] uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane.

Advice that focuses on training you - the parents - rather than your kids. A refreshing approach.

As a mother, are you comfortable in your skin? 
Want to know how best to be a stay-at-home or working mum? 
 
Babies have very simple needs, yet many parents are overwhelmed with elaborate advice on how to meet them. In How Not to F*** Them Up, leading child psychologist Oliver James argues that your under-threes do not need training; it's getting your head straight as a parent that's important. 
 
Drawing on extensive interviews and the lastest clinical research, James identifies three basic types of mum: the Hugger, the Organiser and the Fleximum. Outlining the benefits and pitfalls of each, How Not to F*** Them Up shows you how to recognise which style suits you best and outlines simple strategies to reconcile personal ambitions with the needs of your family. 
 
Empowering and provocative, Oliver James will help you make the best choices for bringing up a happy, confident child.

How keeping up with the Joneses has depressed us since 1950

Britain On The Couch

Why we're unhappier compared with 1950, despite being richer - from bestselling author of Affluenza, Oliver James

Vital questions are explored in this stimulating tract for our times, which deserves to be widely read, especially by those who govern us

Well worth reading ... the author has recognised important social phenomena which have escaped less astute or honest observers

Oliver James is a necessary and powerful voice in our culture, and Britain on the Couch is a fabulous exposure of the failure of the neo-liberal project

I think Oliver James and I are getting at the same thing: we are encouraged to believe that we can sort out our problems without any real effort and get pretty fed up when it becomes obvious we can't

I drew heavily on Britain on the Couch

Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level

[James'] calm rationality and the care for precise truth shown in his analysis of available evidence about status and politics (sexual and not) reminded me that this book… is about defining, and then seeking, a changed way of life … his book's time has come

If anything, more relevant now than it was in 1998

Oliver James trained and practised as a child clinical psychologist and, since 1988, has worked as a writer, journalist, broadcaster and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include the bestselling They F*** You Up, Affluenza and Contented Dementia. www.oliver-james-books.com

In the bestselling Affluenza, leading psychologist Oliver James toured the minds of the middle classes in search of an answer to the question: Is it possible to be successful and stay sane? In this seminal work, James brings the focus back to Britain and proves that modern life makes us feel like losers, even if we are winners. 
 
Showing that the way we live now, rather than our genes, induces in our bodies low levels of the 'happiness brain chemical' serotonin, Oliver James analyses the deep-seated emotional malaise that has afflicted Britons since the 1990s. By recognising the role of individualism in raising expectations, increasing discontent, spawning psychopathic behaviour and destroying personal relationships, James puts forward a three-point plan for healing by correcting the chemical imbalance directly - through drugs containing serotonin, taking a complementary course of psychotherapy and, on a political level, by reorganising society on Scandinavian lines. 
 
In this revised and updated edition, Oliver James puts capitalism in the dock like never before and discovers that while it might be good for business, it is bad for mental health.

24-hour Wraparound Care for Lifelong Well-being

Contented Dementia

The paperback of Oliver James's Sunday Times bestselling groundbreaking and practical method for managing dementia and Alzheimer's

an indispensable handbook for anyone coping with the effects of dementia and who wants to keep a sufferer as happy as is humanly possible

a revolutionary new way of treating dementia brings amazing benefits for patients and carers alike

I found myself weeping ... An important book

Explains a revolutionary way to care for dementia patients ... tender techniques that can ease absent minds

I bought it and can confirm that anyone who wants help in caring for the condition will find this excellent work a revelation

remarkably simple ... The resulting well-being can last a lifetime

shows that dementia need not be a nightmare of frustration and embarrassment ... James shows that it is possible to unlock isolation and distress

Oliver James has made a great job of setting out the SPECAL theory and method in this book which I strongly recommend to all care home managers and staff teams

Shows how to minimize that distress and manage the dementia in ways that recall early pioneering work on dealing with madness . . . He writes clearly and plainly, gives good examples of the techniques he suggests, and stays always on the practical side. I expected this book to be depressing; it is exactly the opposite.

Dementia is a little understood and currently incurable illness, but much can be done to maximise the quality of life for people with the condition. Contented Dementia - by clinical psychologist and bestselling author Oliver James - outlines a groundbreaking and practical method for managing dementia that will allow both sufferer and carer to maintain the highest possible quality of life, throughout every stage of the illness. 
 
A person with dementia will experience random and increasingly frequent memory blanks relating to recent events. Feelings, however, remain intact, as do memories of past events and both can be used in a special way to substitute for more recent information that has been lost. The SPECAL method (Specialized Early Care for Alzheimer's) outlined in this book works by creating links between past memories and the routine activities of daily life in the present. 
 
Drawing on real-life examples and user-friendly tried-and-tested methods, Contented Dementia provides essential information and guidance for carers, relatives and professionals.

Origins of Affluenza

The Selfish Capitalist

Oliver James furthers the Affluenza debate with radical new arguments and looks deeper into the origins of the virus in this companion volume

James is charting the new frontiers in psychology

In the bestselling Affluenza, world-renowned psychologist Oliver James introduced us to a modern-day virus sweeping through the English-speaking world. He met those suffering from it and demonstrated how their obsessive, envious tendencies made them twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions than people in other developed nations. 
 
Now The Selfish Capitalist provides more detailed substantiation for the claims made in Affluenza. It looks deeper into the origins of the virus and outlines the political, economic and social climate in which it has grown. James points out that, since the seventies, the rich have got much, much richer, yet the average person's wage has not increased at all. 
 
A rallying cry to the Government to reduce our levels of distress by adopting a form of unselfish capitalism, this hard-hitting and thought-provoking work tells us why our personal well-being must take precedence over the wealth of a tiny minority if we are to cure ourselves of this disease.

Affluenza

The paperback of the Sunday Times bestseller: Oliver James tours the minds of the middle classes in search of an answer to the question: is it possible to be successful and stay sane

Never before have I read a book that so precisely captures the way we are all being emotionally snookered by the demands of 21st-century living... read this book

as Oliver James's very important book demonstrates...he has thought about the problem a lot and he approaches it in a very winning fashion...he is consistently engaging in both his apercus and his occasionally eccentric asides

Oliver James trained and practised as a child clinical psychologist and, since 1987, has worked as a writer, journalist and television documentary producer and presenter. His books include Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture, the bestselling They F*** You Up and Britain on the Couch, which was also a successful documentary series for Channel 4. He is a trustee of two children's charities: the National Family and Parenting Institute and Homestart.

There is currently an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world - an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses - that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions. Over a nine-month period, bestselling author Oliver James travelled around the world to try and find out why. He discovered how, despite very different cultures and levels of wealth, affluenza is spreading. Cities he visited include Sydney, Singapore, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York and Shanghai, and in each place he interviewed several groups of people in the hope of finding out not only why this is happening, but also how one can increase the strength of one's emotional immune system. He asks: why do so many more people want what they haven't got and want to be someone they're not, despite being richer and freer from traditional restraints? And, in so doing, uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane.

Oliver James

Radical but full of hope ... we really can choose our mental health and that of our children

Steve Biddulph, bestselling author of Raising Boys

The real reasons children are like their parents

Professor Robert Plomin, the world’s leading geneticist, said in 2014 of his search for genes that explain differences in our psychology: ‘I have been looking for these genes for fifteen years. I don’t have any’. 
 
Using a mixture of famous and ordinary people, Oliver James drills deep down into the childhood causes of our individuality, revealing why our upbringing, not our genes, plays such an important role in our wellbeing and success. The implications are huge: as adults we can change, we can clutch our fates from predetermined destiny, as parents we can radically alter the trajectory of our childrens’ lives, and as a society we could largely eradicate criminality and poverty. 
 
Not in Your Genes will not only change the way you think about yourself and the people around you, but give you the fuel to change your personality and your life for the better.

Oliver James

Praise for Not In Your Genes

Radical but full of hope ... we really can choose our mental health and that of our children

the nation's shrink

James is charting the new frontiers in psychology

Radical but full of hope ... we really can choose our mental health and that of our children

the nation's shrink

James is charting the new frontiers in psychology

Radical but full of hope ... we really can choose our mental health and that of our children

the nation's shrink

James is charting the new frontiers in psychology

Books by Oliver James

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