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The Good Society
  • 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
Hardback
5 Mar 2026
EBook
5 Feb 2026
Audiobook
5 Feb 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 is cared for when in need?
How do we provide education that allows every child to flourish?
How do we ensure safety, justice and a healthy environment now and for future generations?
How can we finally solve the problems of poverty and inequality that drive all the others?

Kate Pickett is one of the most renowned thinkers and leaders in social science. Her life’s work has been to identify the underlying causes behind society’s key challenges and how to solve them.

In The Good Society she draws on the deepest insights and the strongest evidence produced by social science over the last three decades to present a roadmap for change.

Ultimately, she shows that solving the fundamental problems of poverty and equality would enhance the quality of life for us all.
  • 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 & Society research group and is Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change. She is an academic co-director of Health Equity North. She is also a Fellow of the RSA and of the UK Faculty of Public Health and the Academy of Social Sciences.


Her landmark book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (co-written with Richard Wilkinson) has sold more than 235,000 copies and was 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. It reshaped the debate on fairness, health and wellbeing. Their follow-up, The Inner Level, confirmed Kate’s status as one of our most rigorous and compelling public thinkers. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Nature, New York Times and the World Economic Forum Agenda; she has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches, including at the United Nations, the European Parliament and within UK government departments. She is the co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust. In 2023, Kate received an OBE for services to societal equality.

KP

Also by Kate Pickett

The Inner Level
The Inner Level
The Spirit Level
See all

Praise for The Good Society

It’s easy to despair at the state of society today. Drawing from evidence from across the world, The Good Society offers hope that the problems we face are not insurmountable - real, grounded hope in the form of practical, tried-and-tested solutions

Jonathan Aldred, author of License To Be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us

This is what we need. A clear, hopeful roadmap that makes the case for how things can be better in achievable and realistic ways. If only we could be bold enough to follow it!

Sammy Wright, author of Exam Nation

What an electrifying book: audacious in its range, blistering in its analysis and yet, for all that, warm and immensely readable. A bold and hopeful act in itself

Polly Morland

A much-needed tonic for hard times — clear-eyed about the challenges we face yet suffused with a gentle and galvanising sense of hope. Kate Pickett offers ideas that are both practical and genuinely transformative, grounded in rigorous evidence and focused on what really matters: improving the foundations of everyday life, from care and health to education and crime. A powerful and deeply humane vision

Daniel Chandler

In this, her latest book, Kate Pickett brings much needed intellect, expertise, experience and empathy to the urgent challenges now facing our society

Melissa Benn