The paperback is out! Updated and ready for deployment to keep you sane in an election year. Politics, A Survivor’s Guide is about the infuriating toxicity of politics, how it got that way and how to resist the slide into cynicism and pessimism that are so corrosive of democracy. It’s also about identity, migration, nationalism (and how it is different to patriotism), the forces of belonging and trust that bind us to a political system, the feelings of dread and exile that spread when the bonds break down and how to recover.

You can order Politics, A Survivor’s Guide from Amazon, or if you prefer Waterstones. But your local independent bookshop will also be grateful for the custom.

The Guardian has called it “a masterful account of contemporary malaise“. The Observer says it is written with “elegance and honesty … a voice of reason in a polarised world.” The Irish Times says “astute” and “packed with insight” by “one of the finest modern political journalists,” which is the kind of compliment I’ll take in full confidence that I don’t deserve it. “Thoughtful, wide-ranging” by “a lucid writer,” according to The Times Literary Supplement.

There are chapters about ideology, Europe, Brexit, culture wars, conspiracy theory, polarisation, radicalisation, the way those forces are accelerated by digital technology, the ways political journalism fails to meet the challenges of populism. It’s also about the need to keep those things in some historical perspective; everything you need to know about, in fact, plus, neuroscience, some jokes and a dose of cardiology.

Some of the nice things people have said about Politics, A Survivor’s Guide:

Rory Stewart: “A great work of political analysis.”

David Baddiel: “If you want to understand what turned British politics toxic there is no better guide – or antidote.”

Nigella Lawson: “A must-read. Quite apart from the subject matter, Rafael Behr is such an elegant writer.”