With this marvellous book, Ruby Wax has confirmed her position as one of the most readable, inspirational and engaging writers in the field of human mental health, happiness and fulfilment.

A three way encounter between a Monk, a neuroscientist and Ruby Wax sounds like the set up for a joke. Instead it's produced one of the most fascinating, intriguing and informative books about minds and bodies and brains and mindfulness I've ever encountered. A triangulation on what it means to be human. Utterly readable and surprisingly wise.

Ruby has beautifully fused neurology and spirituality and given us a means to cope with operating both a mind and a brain. If this mental upgrade works then all other books will become defunct as we repose in bliss.

How to Be Human is, without exaggeration, a lifeline; wise, practical and funny, it is a handbook for those in despair. It is actually for everyone alive, for the curious, or disillusioned or muddled or just plain happy. Ruby, the Monk and the Neuroscientist are today's Magi.

Ruby Wax is a stitch. And this stitch can make you laugh while showing you some exceedingly useful things to heal and transform your life. What she is pointing to is way too serious to take too seriously. Seriously!

As I expected its funny and thoroughly readable but what I hadn't expected was that it would change the way I think about how I think. Remarkable work from Miss Wax

Ready to laugh and cry as you dive deeply into what it means to be human? Guiding us across evolution, from the far past into the present and even preparing us for the future, Ruby Wax and her neuroscientist and meditating monk colleagues provide us with a science-informed, practical, and humorous guide that is as hysterical as it is profound. Be prepared to feel your way into well-being with this magnificent blending of entertainment and education into the nature of our minds' thoughts, feelings, and identity as you explore and expand who really you are.

Ruby Wax has spent a lifetime trying to be human.... with this book, she's so very nearly there...

This is a present for your head and your heart. Do yourself a favour and read it, you'll love it

A guide to mindfulness that's as hilarious as it is useful

A wonderful book full of passion and verve

Enchanting, educational, enlightening

How to Be Human reveals how to banish the devil on your shoulder and feel truly human again

This fascinating book, by the doyen of behavioural genetics, provides a superb introduction to the genetics of who we are. It is beautifully written and very challenging, but it is a challenge that we all need to reflect on

Robert Plomin's research has been educating us about environmental and genetic influences on psychological characteristics for decades. This is an accessible and pacy summary of the field's accumulated results, with provocative future-gazing on the uses of genetic material for prediction about people's lives

Robert Plomin's engaging book, drawing on his 35 years of research experience, makes the complex field of behavioural genetics accessible for a non-expert reader. An important work, Blueprint calls for a society-wide conversation to debate the ethics of this new knowledge and our responsibilities, as this shouldn't just be left in the hands of geneticists

If anyone is going to write a book that challenges deeply held beliefs about who we are, it is Plomin: a psychologist with 45 years' experience in research, but with an undimmed passion for his subject.

Plomin finally finds himself at the crest of the wave as cutting edge research begins to back what have long been theories and hypotheses.

Dahl explains what awkwardness feels like, what makes a situation awkward, and how to use awkwardness like a superpower for moving through the world.

In a delightful romp through all manner of researches, Dahl explores the ‘odd little emotion’ to which each of us is prey.

In writing about her experiences, Wang puts a face to the silent suffering of millions of people. Her searing honesty coupled with the strength of her writing make The Collected Schizophrenias a remarkable look into a little-understood part of the human condition

An illuminating, breathtaking look into the underexplored world of schizophrenia, with the rare perspective of someone who's actually been there

Wang . . . eloquently balances personal narrative and empirical research to offer a powerful series of insights into a woefully misunderstood world.

This beautifully written work will expand your thinking about severe mental illness and mental illness in general

The Collected Schizophrenias is illumination and important--not only because it educates and challenges--but because it forces us to consider how much we still have to work to undo historical and systematic damage, to challenge our own broken, misguided partiality towards what it means to be healthy and sane

[The Collected Schizophrenias] organizes the confusion, terror and complexity of [Wang's] experience into an imperfectly cohesive, profoundly illuminating whole.

Penetrating and revelatory.

This mesmerizing collection of essays has achieved the rarest of rarities--a meaningful and expansive language for a subject that has been long bound by both deep revulsion and intense fascination

A brilliant guide to the complexities of thinking about illness, and mental illness, in particular. It will bring hope to others searching to understand their own diagnoses

A masterful braiding of the achingly personal and the incisively researched. . . . This book is a vital, illuminating window onto the world we all already live in, but find all too easy to ignore

You won't find any pity-baiting, sensationalism, or false positivity here; Wang is so candidly aware that I'd trust her over my own diary

Esmé Weijun Wang offers us an all-access pass to her beautiful, unquiet mind. . . Rarely has a book about living with mental illness felt so immediate, raw, and powerful

The Collected Schizophrenias is at once generous and brilliantly nuanced, rigorous and bold. It had me rethinking what it is to be well or ill.

Esmé Weijun Wang sends out revelatory dispatches from an under-mapped land, shot like arrows in all directions from a taut bow of a mind. . . . Her work changes the way we think about illness - which is to say that it changes us

A remarkable book - intelligent, impassioned, consistently moving - that can’t help but make readers revisit the sharpest spikes of life, where nurses often are. Christie Watson looks directly at the fragility of human existence, and the importance of what we choose to value. I can't think of many better uses of writing, nor of writing more likely to make me a better person

I defy anyone to finish this without weeping and giving thanks to the NHS ... An important book that should be on every reading list

Christie Watson’s book brings home the incredible strength and determination that nurses working in our critically underfunded NHS must possess – and how wildly underappreciated they are

Gripping and tender

A remarkable reflection on care, empathy and compassion ... packs massive emotional impact ... I urge you to read it

This tender, truth-telling memoir will break your heart into little pieces ... This book is a salient reminder that at some point we are all going to need care and we can only hope we'll get someone like Christie who understands the need for "sympathy, compassion, empathy" in our most vulnerable moments

The award-winning novelist writes about her 20 years as a nurse, taking us from life to death of the wards in a moving account

As Watson observes, the ability to step into another’s shoes is essential for both nurse and novelist. So too is an eagle eye, and it is the details that prove so unforgettable ... I found myself compelled to go back, and freshly moved and humbled

A highly emotional and eloquent retelling of different patients, staffers, experiences and departments ... A much-needed human voice

[Watson] writes with such considered awareness of medical procedure and resources, human frailty and resilience, that you know she dug deep for this book ... You are also privy to an extraordinary world and appreciate Watson's lasting belief: that most of us are inherently kind - and the better for showing it

The Language of Kindness is teeming with humanity ... [It] puts other memoirs to shame, by narrating an ordinary working life which nevertheless confronts the dark, the sublime, the transcendental

Her book makes harrowing, heart-rendering reading.

An engaging and authentic portrait of modern care ... Through Watson’s inclusion of relevant statistics and historical facts, as well as her meticulous observation skills, readers will better understand the value of nurses

Hypnotic prose ... quiet brilliance ... This is a wake-up book in the best possible way, a study in-the-round: amusing, hilarious even, enthralling and sad, and definitely an indictment of our time

We hear far less often from nurses and therapists… It’s time we heard their side of the story. And who better to tell it than this nurse-turned-award-winning literary novelist.

Anecdotal story-telling wrapped up in hypnotic prose… This is a wake-up book in the best possible way, a study in-the-round: amusing, hilarious even, enthralling and sad, and definitely an indictment of our time.

A remarkable book. I learned more in chapter 3 than I have in all the other books I’ve read this year. Watson illustrates why a nurse has a harder job than 99 per cent of lawyers (I am one) and deserves to be paid more. Absolutely brilliant!

The Language of Kindness flows so beautifully, and naturally. Christie adds real warmth to very factual, and medical information … I urge all of you to read this book

[Watson] beautifully describes the life-affirming impact of nurses doing and saying the right thing

[Watson] tells us things we need to know

[The Language of Kindness is] a tender and beautifully written account of how this process – learning how to be kind – challenges, teaches, sometimes harms, and then completes a person

At the heart of Christie Watson’s philanthropic memoir…lies a remarkable thesis on life, death and the kaleidoscopic narratives…that weave us together

This stunning read reminds us that nurses are human after all

Christie Watson's memoir of 20 years as an NHS nurse is completely absorbing. The best books tell us about life as well as lives and I've read nothing recently that I found so moving and, even in its descriptions of suffering and death, so uplifting. Watson has an eye for detail that is practical, compassionate and very often funny

Christie captures life as a nurse in the humblest manner, and anyone in or considering nursing is encouraged to read it

Watson’s prose…fizzes with real life, each story and encounter containing its own epic narrative sweep

This brilliant and profound book left an indelible mark on me this year

Moving and compassionate…The Language of Kindness… is a sensitive, perceptive and blunt account of a nurse’s journey

An astounding account of life as a nurse

The Language of Kindness exerts the power of a gripping novel threaded with science, philosophy, history and ethics. Like poetry, it resists paraphrase. A quick summary is out of the question, this brilliant life-changing book has to be experienced.

Watson evokes the topography of each arm of nursing in vivid detail.

I defy anyone to finish this without weeping and giving thanks for the NHS… An important book that should be on every reading list.

The Language of Kindness could not be more compelling or more welcome. It's about how we survive, and about the people who help us do so

[A] powerful account of her life as a nurse… reading her memoir is a truly uplifting experience.

A nurse’s voice has never really been heard before on this scale. Now’s the time for it to ring loud.

[Watson] is an elegant, eloquent writer who brings an immediacy to her work. You are right there beside her all the way as she provides a fascinating insight into the trails and triumphs of life in an NHS hospital… a rallying call for kindness and compassion that every one of us should embrace.

Through Watson, we are taken on an absorbing, all-seeing tour through the doors of the hospital