Social & ethical issues

In June 1969, police raided New York gay bar the Stonewall Inn. 'Pride' charts the events of that night, the days and nights of rioting that followed, the ensuing organisation of local members of the community - and the 50 years since in which activists and ordinary people have dedicated their li...

Can it be acceptable in 2021 that there are no ethnic minority chief constables, no CEOs in the top 50 NHS Trusts and no permanent secretaries in the civil service? Nazir Afzal knows what it's like to break the glass ceiling, challenge prejudice and shake up predominantly white institutions. Born...

Racism is ever present today, and it has become common now to refer to a variety of racisms, from biological to cultural, colour-blind, and structural racisms. Ali Rattansi explores the history of racism and illuminates contemporary issues in this controversial subject, from intersectionality to ...

Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. 'Making connections' means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and ...

Part memoir, part commentary on masculinity, 'Raven Smith's Men' isn't so much for men, as about them. Raven has been trying to distil what it is about men that has kept him intrigued his whole life. It boils down to three things. Firstly, he loves them. Secondly, he can see how endlessly problem...

Spanning a hundred years of British history, from 1903, with the formation of the militant Suffragette group, this book traces a thread through anti-fascist resistance during World War II to Greenham Common and the Miner's Strikes, to struggles for LGBTQ+ rights, racial equality and disability ri...

Patrick Radden Keefe's work has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US to the Orwell Prize in the UK for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. 'Rogues' brings together a do...

In March 1972, four young black men were arrested by a specialist pickpocket squad at Oval Station and charged with theft and assault of police officers. Sentenced to two years in prison, the case seemed straightforward and credible to the judge and jury who convicted them. But these young men we...

Margate is in the grip of a heatwave when David Whitehouse stumbles across the mysterious story of a local woman who lived on the ground floor of Saltwater Mansions, a block of flats not far from the sea. On paper, Caroline Lane was unremarkable. She paid her mortgage every month. She always paid...

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. 'Sex Is a Spectrum' offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawi...