Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk: the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment—a drop in temperature, the crack of a branch—was essential to our survival as a species.

Since then, the world has evolved—but we, for the most part, haven’t. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to “force quit:” to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeon-hole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none. In our modern, interconnected world, it might seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we face—that living with a binary brain is like trying to navigate a teeming city center with a map that shows only highways.

In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn’t be able to play the game.

Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three “super categories”—fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong—and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better.

DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE teaches readers how to create the job they want—without necessarily leaving the job they already have.

“Increasingly, it’s up to workers to define their own happiness and success in this ever-moving landscape,” they write, and chapter by chapter, they demonstrate how to build positive change, wherever you are in your career.

A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.

Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it’s not. Rather, it’s the apex of a certain thought process — a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It’s the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to think like one.

In Future-Proof Your Business, applied futurist Tom Cheesewright will reveal industry techniques and tools to help you:

You want to go freelance. You want to make your career work for you, on your terms and determined by your own definition of success. You want autonomy, flexibility and variety.

But where do you start?

In The Freelance Bible, award-winning entrepreneur and freelancer, Alison Grade, guides you through absolutely everything that you need to know to start your successful self-employed life.

It has never been a more challenging time for managers and leaders to maintain a happy, healthy workforce. The pace of change and increasing uncertainty in most industries has resulted in a rapid increase in stress and anxiety in the workplace, and most organizations are poorly equipped to respond to these challenges in a meaningful and supportive way.

There’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market
Globalization isn’t making the world richer
We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet
Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones
Higher paid managers don’t produce better results

We don’t have to accept things as they are any longer. Ha-Joon Chang is here to show us there’s a better way.

From the author of The Blind Side and Moneyball, The Big Short tells the story of four outsiders in the world of high-finance who predict the credit and housing bubble collapse before anyone else. The film adaptation by Adam McKay (Anchorman I and II, The Other Guys) features Academy Award® winners Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo and Marisa Tomei; Academy Award® nominees Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling.

What if the best was yet to come? Recent studies show that our happiness levels peak at age 82, and that our decision-making skills improve as we age. As more of us live past the age of 80, in this ground-breaking book, Dr Daniel Levitin uses cutting-edge research from neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate the benefits of getting older.

Packed with engaging interviews with individuals who thrived far beyond the conventional age of retirement, this book also reflects on challenges many readers will recognize. Levitin offers a realistic personal plan full of practical, cognitive enhancing tricks for everyone to follow over the years.

Is it possible to create real change? How can we as individuals help to solve some of the biggest issues of today? How can we overcome injustice and inequality wherever we are? Where does power sit, and how can we get it?

In a world where everyone is trying to monetise their side hustle and the five-to-nine is as valuable as the nine-to-five, building your brand is a necessity. But how can you work out what your brand is? How can you make it relevant, and how can you give it real longevity?

This indispensable, step-by-step guide will help you understand all the key considerations as you build solid foundations for your brand to thrive and grow. Complete with creative tasks and shared personal insight from two creative strategists who have worked with some of the world’s most renowned brands, How to Build It will set you on the road from nowhere to everywhere.

Introducing the new How To series from #Merky Books: unlock your potential with our short, practical guides.

Designed to inspire and encourage listeners to unlock their potential and provoke change, the How To series offers a new model in publishing, helping to break down knowledge barriers and uplift the next generation.

Imagine if Occupy and Extinction Rebellion actually won.

In Another Now world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis shows us what such a world would look like. Far from being a fantasy, he describes how it could have come about – and might yet. But would we really want it?