On Kindness

What is kindness? Does it make us happier? And does it have a place in a selfish world? Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor present an elegant, thoughtful and concise analysis of kindness in history, in life and in the modern world. Suggesting that acts of kindness occur when we are at our most open and honest, they ask why it is that our faith in kindness has been shaken - and why we are all too ready to believe that antagonism has taken its place.

Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of twelve previous books, all widely acclaimed, including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored, Going Sane and most recently Side Effects. Barbara Taylor is a historian who has published several well-known books on the history of feminism, including an award-winning study of nineteenth-century socialist feminism, Eve and the New Jerusalem, and an intellectual biography of the pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.