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The Good Society
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  • Published: 5 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781847928726
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $65.00

The Good Society

And How We Make It

Formats & editions
EBook
5 Feb 2026
Audiobook
5 Feb 2026
Hardback
5 Mar 2026
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A fairer, healthier, more caring and sustainable society is entirely within our grasp: the renowned co-author of The Spirit Level shows us how

A fairer, healthier, more caring and sustainable society is entirely within our grasp. This book shows us the way.

• How do we ensure that everyone has good health and receives the care they need?
• How do we provide education that allows every child to flourish?
• How do we ensure safety, justice and a sustainable environment for all?

Kate Pickett is a world-leading social scientist whose life’s work has been to identify the underlying causes of society’s most important problems – and the long-term solutions that will actually work.

In this inspiring book, she shows that to make a good society – in which everyone has what they need to be well, and everyone would be better off – we must prioritise the health, care, education and rehabilitation of those who have the least and suffer the most. This means confronting once and for all the fundamental problems of poverty and inequality that lie behind all the others.

Drawing on over three decades of evidence, and an array of proven solutions and real-world success stories from across the globe, The Good Society cuts to the essence of the challenges we face and presents us with a practical, galvanising, perspective-shifting vision for how to tackle them.
  • Published: 5 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781847928726
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $65.00
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About the author

Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York, where she leads the Public Health and Society Research Group.

Her landmark book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, co-written with Richard Wilkinson, was an international bestseller, chosen by the Guardian as one of the 100 most influential books of the century and by the New Statesman as a top ten book of the decade. Their follow-up, The Inner Level, shows how societal inequality has similarly profound effects on individual health and wellbeing.

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Nature and New York Times, and she has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches, including at the United Nations, the European Parliament and within UK government departments.

Kate is the co-founder of the Equality Trust, an academic co-director of Health Equity North, and a fellow of the RSA, the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2023, she received an OBE for services to societal equality.

KP

Also by Kate Pickett

The Inner Level
The Spirit Level
The Inner Level
See all

Praise for The Good Society

Grounded in practical, tried-and-tested solutions from across the world, The Good Society offers real hope that the problems we face are not insurmountable

Jonathan Aldred, author of License To Be Bad

This is what we need. A clear roadmap that makes the case for how things can be better in achievable and realistic ways

Sammy Wright, author of Exam Nation

An electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet warm and immensely readable

Polly Morland, author of A Fortunate Woman

Genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Daniel Chandler, author of Free and Equal

Kate Pickett brings much needed intellect, expertise, experience and empathy to the urgent challenges now facing our society

Melissa Benn

The country desperately needs a new lodestar of hope. The Good Society is the book we have been waiting for

Neal Lawson, Director of Compass

Optimistic and realistic - a brilliant personal account of what a lifetime of world-leading research on health and well-being shows us is possible

Danny Dorling, author of The Next Crisis

Packed with vision, hope and a practical plan – just what these times are crying out for

Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

Building on a long, distinguished career as a researcher on the links between ill-health and inequalities, Kate Pickett has brought the threads together in an elegant call for a Good Society

Guy Standing, author of The Politics of Time

An uplifting vision for solving inequality that benefits everyone

Andy Burnham

Poverty and inequality are at the heart of all our problems. Kate Pickett's book shows through a consistent frame of care and compassion how tackling them must be at the heart of our solutions too

Zack Polanski

Thought-provoking, erudite . . . contains a vital positive message: we can move towards a fairer, healthier, more compassionate and sustainable society . . . Pickett . . . shines a light for hope

Martin Chilton, Independent, Non-fiction Book of the Month****

The Good Society has lots of ideas . . . a whistle-stop tour of the greatest hits of progressive social policy, from Finnish schools to Norwegian prisons . . . [the] section on Universal Basic Income . . . represents a serious and substantive proposal for tackling both inequality and injustice

Jonathan Portes, Guardian

In her new book, the co-author of The Spirit Level gathers jaw-dropping facts about the inequality crisis in the UK – and explores creative ways to address it . . . There was a moment when reading Kate Pickett’s new book that I realised I was underlining something on nearly every page . . . there is nothing small about Pickett’s proposals . . . a clear blueprint for the UK

Aida Edemariam, Guardian