General non-fiction
We publish serious non-fiction social commentary and debate for a wide audience. These high quality books are written by academics, professionals and other experts in an accessible way bringing key issues of social, political and cultural significance to a wide readership. These books have an impact: advancing knowledge, raising awareness and encouraging social change.
Woke Capitalism
How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy
This book delves into the corporate takeover of public morality, or ‘woke capitalism’. Discussing the political causes that it has adopted, and the social causes that it has not, it argues that this extension of capitalism has negative implications for democracy’s future.
This Separated Isle
Invisible Britain
This Separated Isle explores how concepts of ‘Britishness’ reveal an inclusive range of understandings about our national character. Featuring a diverse range of photographic portraits and narrative stories from across the UK, this landmark book examines the relationship between identity and nationhood, revealing the ties that bind us together.
The Education Debate
This extensively updated fourth edition by the key author in the field will maintain its place as the most important text on education policy and makes essential reading for all students and anyone interested in education policy more generally.
Justice in a Time of Austerity
Stories From a System in Crisis
Dan Newman and Jon Robins combine investigative journalism and academic scholarship to examine how the lives of people suffering problems with benefits, debt, family, housing and immigration are made harder by cuts to the civil justice system.
The Forgotten City
Rethinking Digital Living for Our People and the Planet
Phil Allmendinger takes a critical approach to the role of ‘smart’ in future cities and the relationship with city development. Considering how technology can support active citizenship, he challenges the commercial drivers of big tech and warns that these, not developments for ‘social good’, may dominate.
What Have Charities Ever Done for Us?
The Stories Behind the Headlines
What Have Charities Ever Done for Us? uses case studies and interviews to illustrate how charities support people and communities, foster heritage and culture and pioneer responses to crucial social, ethical and environmental questions.
The Mutant Project
Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans
An anthropologist visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: whose values are guiding gene-editing experiments, and what are the implications for humanity?
Radical Empathy
Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides
Renowned political scientist Terri Givens calls for ‘radical empathy’ in bridging racial divides to understand the origins of our biases, including internalized oppression. Deftly weaving together her own experiences with the political, she offers practical steps to call out racism and bring about radical social change.
Slow Computing
Why We Need Balanced Digital Lives
Is it possible to experience the joy and benefits of computing in a way that asserts individual and collective autonomy?
Drawing on the ideas of the ‘slow movement’, Slow Computing sets out numerous practical and political means to take back control and counter the more pernicious effects of living digital lives.
School Scandals
Blowing the Whistle on the Corruption of Our Education System
Pat Thomson takes on England’s muddled education system and exposes fraudulent and unethical practices, including the skewing of the curriculum and manipulation of results. She argues for an urgent review of current practices, leading to a revitalised education system that has the public good at its heart.
Race, Taste, Class and Cars
Cars transmit and modify our identities behind the wheel. As a symbol of independence and freedom, the car projects status, class, taste and, significantly, embeds racialisation. Using fascinating research from drivers, Alam unpicks the ways in which our identity is enhanced and driven.
Enemies of the People?
How Judges Shape Society
When newspapers reported a court ruling on Brexit, senior judges were condemned as 'enemies of the people'. But they still ruled that an order by the Queen on the advice of her prime minister was just ‘a blank piece of paper’. Joshua Rozenberg asks how judges can maintain public confidence while making hard choices.