Books by Noreena Hertz

A radical call to arms and a bold new vision of how we must act, fast, to reconnect society at individual, government and business level, from a global economist hailed by the Observer as 'one of the world's leading thinkers'.

The way we are governed is changing. Government has less and less power to influence how we live our lives, while the private sector has more power than ever to control what we do and what we think. Based on the author's experience as a consultant to businesses and governments, t...his book this book aims to help us understand this issue.
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From an economist hailed as one of the world's leading thinkers, (The Observer) comes an eye-opening vision for how to address the growing loneliness crisis, the most urgent social issue of our time. Disconnection is the defining trait of the twenty-first century, says bestsellin...g author and thought leader Noreena Hertz. Social isolation is at unprecedented levels across ages, genders, and income brackets. Nearly half of adults in the U.S. report feeling lonely, and over twenty percent of millennials say they have no friends at all. While it's tempting to blame our addiction to our screens, technology is only a small part of the story. All around us, the fabric of community--once the antidote to loneliness--is unraveling, due to the dismantling of civic institutions, the radical reorganization of the workplace, mass urban migration, social media culture, and decades of neoliberal policies that place individual freedom above the collective good. This is not just a mental health crisis. Loneliness increases our risk of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and other life-threatening diseases. Statistically, it's as bad for us as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It's also an economic crisis, costing over $6.7 billion annually. And it's a political one, as alienation and marginalization fuel anger and extremism in the U.S. and all over the world. In The Lonely Century, readers accompany Hertz to the front lines of the war on loneliness as she rents a friend in Manhattan, is interviewed for a job in London by a machine, attends a how to read a face class at an Ivy League university, encounters nursing home residents in Japan who knit bonnets for their robot caregivers, and more. But she also highlights bright spots to light a path forward. From compassionate AI to new models for urban living to renewed investments in the public sphere, The Lonely Century offers a hopeful vision for how to heal our fractured communities and reconnect with each other.
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