Free market capitalism is one of humanity's greatest inventions, and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But it's also on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilising society in its single-minded pursuit of maximising shareholder value. Rebecca Henderson, McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, argues for a new framework; one that can simultaneously make a positive societal impact while also delivering sustained financial performance. 

The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilised politics and disordered knowledge - decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past, but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. 

Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row - a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year - and they're still rising. Case and Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class.

The remarkable inside story of how Instagram became the hottest website on Earth. With astonishing access to all the key players, she recounts the fateful meeting of the Instagram founders in 2010. She explores the company’s unlikely acquisition by Facebook and the internal clashes over whether it could retain its autonomy. And she reveals how when Facebook entered a tailspin brought about by data misuse and fake news, it was Instagram that came to the rescue. But this is not just a Silicon Valley story. No Filter reveals how Instagram has transformed global society.

Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn't need to see any further than Europe and the US to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts. We grew up learning how to 'play the game', and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up and went into retirement with our finances secure. That world - and those rules - are over.

Hard work is irrelevant. Be radically honest. Adequate performance gets a generous severance. And never, ever try to please your boss. These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail-order service into a streaming superpower - with 125 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation bigger than Disney. Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries.

Any ambitious proposal - ranging from fixing crumbling infrastructure to Medicare for all or preventing the coming climate apocalypse - inevitably sparks questions: how can we afford it? How can we pay for it? Stephanie Kelton points out how misguided those questions really are by using the bold ideas of modern monetary theory (MMT), a fundamentally different approach to using our resources to maximise our potential as a society. 

Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years. 

The idea that people are basically driven by individualism and economic incentives and that prosperity and good societies come from top-down leadership has dominated politics for the last 30 years (from some perspectives, much longer). This book shows that the age of homo economicus and centralisation is coming to an end. Instead, Collier and Kay argue that community and mutuality will be the drivers of successful societies in the future - as they are already in some parts of the world.

Uncertainty pervades the big decisions we all make in our lives. How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday? We do not know what the future will hold. But we must make decisions anyway. So we crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. 

The Covid-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask-wearers and the mask-haters. Some businesses, like Amazon and video conference software maker Zoom, woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand. Others, like the restaurant, travel, hospitality and live entertainment industries, scrambled to not become instantly obsolete. But the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends that were already well underway. 

The UK has declared a 'climate emergency' and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. So how do we get there? Drawing on actions, policies and technologies already emerging around the world, Chris Goodall sets out the ways to achieve this. What We Need to Do Now is an urgent, practical and inspiring book that signals a green new deal for Britain.

The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far. 

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. 

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.