Policy Press

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.

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Showing 37-48 of 124 items.

This Separated Isle

Invisible Britain

Edited by Paul Sng

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.

Policy Press

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.

Policy Press

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.

Bristol Uni Press

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.

Policy Press

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.

Policy Press

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?

Bristol Uni Press

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.

Policy Press

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.

Bristol Uni Press

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.

Policy Press

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.

Policy Press

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.

Bristol Uni Press

The Shame Game

Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative

Drawing on a two-year multi-platform initiative, this book by award-winning journalist and author Mary O’Hara, asks how we can overturn the portrayal of poverty once and for all. Crucially, she turns to the real experts to try to find answers – the people who live it.

Policy Press