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Start giftingNervous States
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Learn moreIn this sweeping and provocative work, political economist William Davies draws on a four-hundred-year history of ideas to reframe our understanding of the contemporary world. He argues that global trends decades and even centuries in the making have reduced a world of logic and fact into one driven by emotions—particularly fear and anxiety. This has ushered in an age of "nervous states," both in our individual bodies and our body politic.
Eloquently tracing the history of accounting, statistics, science, and human anatomy from the Enlightenment to the present, Davies shows how we invented expertise in the seventeenth century to calm the violent disputes—over God and the nature of reality—that ravaged Europe. By separating truth from emotion, scientific, testable facts paved a way out of constant warfare and established a basis for consensus, which became the bedrock of modern politics, business, and democracy.
Informed by research on psychology and economics, Davies reveals how widespread feelings of fear, vulnerability, physical and psychological pain, and growing inequality reshaped our politics, upending these centuries-old ideals of how we understand the world and organize society.
William Davies is a political economist at Goldsmiths, University of London, the author of Nervous States and The Happiness Industry, among other books, and a contributor to publications including the Atlantic and the New York Times. He lives in London.
Chris MacDonnell is a classically trained actor who graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA) in 1973. He has an excellent reputation in the U.K. for playing leading and supporting roles in theater, television, radio drama, and films. His theater credits include London's West End and the Royal National Theatre. He's also featured in British TV shows, BBC radio-drama, commercials, and films. In the U.S. he's voiced many commercials, promos, games, and animations. He's also a featured character in the historical drama set against the backdrop of the American War of Independence, Courage, New Hampshire for PBS, in which he plays Merry Pugwell. He came to narration in 2013, and since then he's recorded over twenty titles in a variety of genres, including epic fantasy, thrillers, historical romance, and biography. Chris now lives and works in Southern California, where his forty-year career continues to flourish.