Cal Flyn, Deputy Editor

To reach your full potential you must put as much effort into building mental resilience as you do into work or training, advises high-performance psychologist Dr Michael Gervais. Here, he selects five titles to help you find the right mindset—whether you dream of sporting stardom, artistic achievement or business success.

Biography is booming, says the longtime book critic and biographer Elizabeth Taylor. Here she highlights the five fantastic books shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle 2019 biography award, and how historical lives provide insight into contemporary culture.

Overwhelmed, exhausted, yet unable to relax when you have the chance? You are not alone. Josh Cohen, psychoanalyst and author of Not Working: Why We Have to Stop, discusses the symptoms and causes of burnout—and why relentless activity is at the source.

An increasing diversity of voices and willingness to experiment has heralded a new golden age of autobiography, says literary critic Laurie Hertzel. Here she highlights the very best: the six memoirs recently shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.

If you are fed up and burnt out, it’s time to take concrete steps towards building a better life, based on a job you love. Bestselling business author Emma Gannon tells Five Books about the career advice books that have inspired her most.

It’s a difficult task: to identify the very best nonfiction books of the year. But the Baillie Gifford Prize aims to do just that. The chair of the prize’s 2018 judging panel Fiammetta Rocco talks to us about the six fascinating titles that made the shortlist.

Author, journalist and Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn looks back on her favourite books read this year.

2018 has been a year full of alarming political developments, but it has also proven fodder for an excellent crop of political books. Stephen Bush, special correspondent at the New Statesman, selects five of the best politics books.

There has been a rash of books about epiphanic incursions into wilderness—but the best nature writing digs too into the complexities of our relationship with the natural world, says Charles Foster, the bestselling author of Being A Beast. Here, he discusses the best nature books of 2018.

Many of the current controversies over trans rights and identities derive from false beliefs, explains the author and academic Susan Stryker. Here she selects five excellent contemporary trans titles with depth, complexity and heart, to help us reframe what has all too often become a toxic debate