Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World

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?

[W]ide-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. .... bring[s] to mind the roving approach of Marshall McLuhan or Bruno Latour.

Davies is a wonderfully alert and nimble guide and his absorbing and edgy book will help us feel our way to a better future. After all, it is only through understanding our anxiety and acknowledging our pain that a different world can be made. Psychotherapists call this “the work” and Davies is doing some of the heavy lifting and probing for us.

Brilliant 

A penetrating analysis of 21st-century politics and culture in the U.S. and the U.K... A fresh, astute examination of current events and urgent challenges.

I wouldn’t call it a manifesto for hope but it’s a call for action at least – a form of slow populism, perhaps.

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.

An interdisciplinary masterpiece ... Davies seamlessly blend[s] psychology, biology, economics, philosophy, advertising and religion - from Hobbes to Freud - to illuminate how centuries of unreason have spawned our current president. 

Nervous States ... sits at the intersection of ongoing debates about post-truth, the assault on reason, the privileging of personal feelings and the rise of populism. Nervous States stands out for its sincere attempt not simply to lament these trends but to understand them. [Davies] makes a compelling case for paying more attention to the role of feelings, alongside that of reason, in modern life.

Illuminating about the frankly alarming condition of our politics

Davies's impressively wide-ranging and imaginative analysis gives us a deeper understanding of the gap between fact and popular perception.

We should all read William Davies's Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World, a concise, penetrating exploration of the role played by negative emotions in our recent politics and culture.

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 slowdown we have to confront our fears, our pain and our resentment. We have to redefine hope