William Davies

[An] interdisciplinary masterpiece.

If you read one book about contemporary politics this year, make it this one. William Davies is as acute and accurate on the shifts we are enduring as on the deep roots behind contemporary thinking (or not thinking, I should add).

The roots of our current anxieties are traced in [Nervous States,] an absorbing book fizzing with ideas… Davies is a wonderfully alert and nimble guide and his absorbing and edgy book will help us feel our way to a better future.

Wide-ranging yet brilliantly astute… Davies is a wild and surprising thinker who also happens to be an elegant writer — a wonderful and eminently readable combination. Nervous States covers 400 years of intellectual history, technological innovation and economic development, seamlessly weaving in such disparate intellects as Carl von Clausewitz, Friedrich von Hayek and Hannah Arendt.

We should all read William Davies’s Nervous States, a concise, penetrating exploration of the role played by negative emotions in our recent politics and culture

What makes Nervous States such a fascinating read... is that it is a slickly written and timely intervention in an era when feelings have undoubtedly become more powerful than facts.

An insightful and well-written book that explores the deep roots of the current crisis of expertise. The scientific community has been founded on the basis of separating reason from feeling. But now science itself has exposed this separation as an untenable myth. So where do we go from here?

A useful guide to our times… Nervous States makes a compelling case for paying more attention to the role of feelings, alongside that of reason, in modern life.

These are sparkling insights… [Nervous States] is an ambitious book with plenty to commend it.

[Davies] offers a penetrating analysis of 21st-century politics and culture… A fresh, astute examination of current events and urgent challenges.

An excavation of our age of anxiety, William Davies convincingly argues that declining trust in the authority of experts and the expanding mechanisms of disinformation have produced a world where emotions rule. From the connection between populism and bodily pain to the effects of Mark Zuckerberg’s “attention economy”, this book nimbly draws on the disparate threads of our current time.

[An] alarming but excellent book… a thoughtful analysis.

A book that thinks seriously and deeply about our modern predicament.

Illuminating about the frankly alarming condition of our politics, Nervous States describes how emotion took over from reason in contemporary populism

Davies, a rising star in the world of political thought, has written a much-needed book that provides an original explanatory framework for our current predicament - Brexit and Trump included.

Guardian, 50 of the Biggest Books to Look Out For in Autumn 2018

William Davies brilliantly explains that we can no longer sensibly look for hope in ever more technological achievements, especially those that subjugate nature to our will. As our times slow down we have to confront our fears, our pain and our resentment. We have to redefine hope.

[Nervous States] does a great job of revealing fear’s capacity to mobilise people… [and serves] also as a stepping stone from which to approach the future.

[An] impressively wide-ranging and imaginative analysis gives us a deeper understanding of the gap between fact and popular perception.

Davies’s account is full of acute observations.

How Feeling Took Over the World

A dazzlingly original analysis of how emotions shape the times we are living in by one of Britain’s most exciting thinkers 
 
‘A masterpiece’ New York Times 
 
‘Insightful and well-written’ Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens 
 
How have feelings come to shape the world around us? Why has politics become so fractious and warlike? What might the future hold? 
 
In this bold and compelling exploration of our new political reality, William Davies reveals how feelings have come to reshape our world. Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology and economics, Nervous States is an essential guide to the turbulent times we are living through.

William Davies

Praise for Nervous States

[An] interdisciplinary masterpiece.

If you read one book about contemporary politics this year, make it this one. William Davies is as acute and accurate on the shifts we are enduring as on the deep roots behind contemporary thinking (or not th ...

The roots of our current anxieties are traced in [Nervous States,] an absorbing book fizzing with ideas… Davies is a wonderfully alert and nimble guide and his absorbing and edgy book will help us f ...

[An] interdisciplinary masterpiece.

If you read one book about contemporary politics this year, make it this one. William Davies is as acute and accurate on the shifts we are enduring as on the deep roots behind contemporary thinking (or not th ...

The roots of our current anxieties are traced in [Nervous States,] an absorbing book fizzing with ideas… Davies is a wonderfully alert and nimble guide and his absorbing and edgy book will help us f ...

[An] interdisciplinary masterpiece.

If you read one book about contemporary politics this year, make it this one. William Davies is as acute and accurate on the shifts we are enduring as on the deep roots behind contemporary thinking (or not th ...

The roots of our current anxieties are traced in [Nervous States,] an absorbing book fizzing with ideas… Davies is a wonderfully alert and nimble guide and his absorbing and edgy book will help us f ...

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