Cal Flyn, Deputy Editor

Systems thinking is key to figuring out how relationships work, says Mira Kirshenbaum, psychotherapist and clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute. She chooses the best books to help us understand modern relationship therapy.

The term ‘eugenics’ elicits queasiness amongst those who associate it with the Nazis. But Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Margaret Sanger were among its many proponents in the interwar period. Why? Philippa Levine, professor of history at the University of Texas, explains.

Writing about her life in memoirs and a newspaper column allowed the author Bryony Gordon to “join the dots” to see the true face of her own mental illness. Here, she chooses five books to help with depression, books in which she has found solace and a sense of community among those who suffer from depression.

Video games have never been more popular – or more intricately designed. But we haven’t yet developed the vocabulary to analyse a game’s impact the way we do a film’s, says professor of computational media Katherine Isbister. Here, she chooses five of the best books that explore the art of video game design, and the subcultures that grow up around them.

The way we deal with psychological trauma is outdated and overly focused on the individual. Matthew Green, author of Aftershock, picks books that could help us, as a society, heal soldiers and others who have been through more than they can cope with.

Editor of the website China Dialogue, Isabel Hilton says the evidence of environmental disaster in China is dramatic. She discusses six of the most influential books on environmentalism in China.

Leading British spy writer Charles Cumming found his vocation at 25 after he was approached by MI6. He says that experience, brief but interesting, was crying out to be dramatised

The award-winning writer selects five books on India and says that the Mahabharata, eight times the length of the Bible, is one of the great works of literature of mankind – and every bit as good as it’s made out to be

The Director of the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands and Islands talks to us about the history of the Highland Clearances in Scotland. Interesting reading on 19th Century Scottish history

The investigative journalist says when he started out reporting PR copy was a real rarity. If you were writing about crime, you’d call the police station and speak to an officer.