Nervous States

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.

Danny Dorling

Brilliant.

Matthew d'Ancona, Guardian

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?

Yuval Noah Harari

Engrossing.

Alan Ryan, Literary Review

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

[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.

Lilly Markaki, LSE Review of Books

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.

Julian Baggini, Financial Times

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.

Ian O'Doherty, Irish Independent

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).

Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

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.

Suzanne Moore, Observer

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

Ben Collyer, New Scientist

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

Kirkus Reviews

Both compelling and creative.

Hettie O'Brien, Prospect

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

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Evening Standard, **Books of the Year**

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

Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard, **Books of the Year**

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

David Runciman, Guardian Weekly, Book of the Week

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

Paul Gordon, Times Literary Supplement

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

Steven Poole, Guardian, **Books of the Year**

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.

Wired, **Books of the Year**

[An] interdisciplinary masterpiece.

Mark Green, New York Times

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.

Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

Wide-ranging and ambitious.

David Nowell Smith, New Humanist

Davies’s account is full of acute observations.

Malcolm Bull, London Review of Books