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 85-96 of 124 items.

Health Divides

Where You Live Can Kill You

Clare Bambra examines the social, environmental, economic and political causes of health inequalities, how they have evolved over time and what they are like today. Revealing gaps in life expectancy of up to 25 years between places just a few miles apart, this important book demonstrates that where you live can kill you.

Policy Press

The Happiness Problem

Expecting Better in an Uncertain World

The Happiness Problem shows that the illusion of control over our lives is too simplistic and can even be harmful. Sam Wren-Lewis offers an alternative: he proposes that we can connect with, and gain a deeper understanding of, the personal and social challenges that define our time.

Policy Press

Good Times, Bad Times

The Welfare Myth of Them and Us

This revised edition uses extensive updated research and survey evidence to challenge the view of 'skivers versus strivers', showing how much our lives vary not just as we age, but from week-to-week and year-to-year.

Policy Press

Getting By

Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain

Lisa Mckenzie lived on the notorious St Ann’s estate in Nottingham for more than 20 years. Her ‘insider’ status enables us to hear the stories of its residents, often wary of outsiders, to give a unique account of life in poor communities in contemporary Britain.

Policy Press

Generation Share

The Change-Makers Building the Sharing Economy

Generation Share takes readers on a journey around the globe to meet the people who are changing and saving lives by building a Sharing Economy. Through stunning photography, social commentary and interviews, Generation Share showcases extraordinary stories demonstrating the power of sharing.

Policy Press

The Future of Development

A Radical Manifesto

This book explains the origins of development and underdevelopment and offers a new vision for development, demystifying the statistics that international organizations use to measure development and introducing the alternative concept of buen vivir: the state of living well.

Policy Press

From Greed to Wellbeing

A Buddhist Approach to Resolving Our Economic and Financial Crises

The global financial system seems caught in a cycle of boom and bust, instability and scandal. Building on the classic works of E F Schumacher and other kindred spirits, Magnuson provides a Buddhist economics perspective on this recurring pattern and offers new possibilities for change.

Policy Press

Fracture

Adventures of a broken body

Fracturing her arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA leads Ann Oakley on a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture.

Policy 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

For Youth Workers and Youth Work

Speaking Out for a Better Future

This unique and passionate book calls for a cultural revolution within youth work. Doug Nicholls draws on the best of youth work's past to redesign the youth work map for today. No student or practitioner should miss it.

Policy Press

Ferraris for All

In Defence of Economic Progress

In Ferraris for all, Daniel Ben-Ami argues that society as a whole benefits from greater affluence and action is needed to increase and spread global prosperity.

Policy Press

Father and Daughter

Patriarchy, Gender and Social Science

Father and daughter provides an unique ‘insider perspective’ on two key figures in twentieth-century British social science, combining biography of Richard Titmuss and autobiography by his daughter Ann Oakley.

Policy Press