Recent years have been tough on optimists. Hopes that the Internet might bring people together have been crushed by the ills of social media. Is there a way back?

Chris Anderson, the head of TED, believes that we can turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity? Consider:

• how a London barber began offering haircuts to people experiencing homelessness - and cata...

Laws and rules are in place to protect us. They are what keeps our societies from descending into madness and chaos. Without them, how we would know our right from wrong, how would we improve our communities and how could we be better neighbours to one another without rules telling us what to do?

Cindy Skach feels differently. After years spent in some of the most complex corners of the world, reading and writing constitutions, trying to create order where it did not exist, she has come to re...

Meet the most powerful leader in the world.

Chinese premier Xi Jinping graces our television screens and news headlines on a regular basis. But even after a decade in power, he remains shrouded in mystery.

From growing up with a father purged in Mao's Cultural Revolution and his mission to eradicate poverty, to his persecution of Uyghur Muslims and paranoia about being likened to Winnie-the-Pooh, Xi Jinping is a man obscured by caricatures. In this short, essential primer, historian and write...

A major reappraisal, by the Nobel-prizewinning economist, of the relationship between capitalism and freedom

Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world. By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society - and is therefore morally better.

But, in The Road to Freedom Stiglitz asks, wh...

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'Galvanizing and uplifting' The Guardian

'Bernie Sanders has changed US politics forever' Owen Jones

It's OK to be angry about capitalism. It's OK to want something better. Bernie Sanders takes on the 1% and speaks blunt truths about a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed, and rigged against ordinary people. Where a handful of oligarchs have never had it so good, with more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes, and the vast ...