Book of the Month: All the Rage - Why Anger Drives the World by Josh Cohen

Josh Cohen is a long-experienced psychoanalyst and author of books on the subject, and also, for many years, a professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. Crossing between the quiet introspection of the analyst's consulting room and the clamour of the modern university campus, he is clever, funny, thoughtful and very much attuned to the modern world.

All The Rage: Why Anger Drives the World is his latest book, focusing on on the phenomenon of increased anger and its expression in society. He unpicks the different types of anger, and how discharging it doesn't necessarily take away its power. He uses composites of clients' experiences to show that even when it's suppressed, anger is often the emotion that brings people to seek help from a therapist in the first place. There is something in their life they can no longer tolerate.

For most of us anger is an unpleasant emotion that we wish we could stop in its tracks. But it's also a powerful tool in the wrong hands. In the political and public sphere anger has become much more acceptable, and by ramping up online rage, politicians and influencers have built huge followings in recent decades. Sharing their anger seems to unite people.

From the overwhelm of climate crisis to racism, from misogyny to the daily niggles on Nextdoor, while name-dropping everyone from Diogenes and Hulk to Putin and Trollope, Cohen spreads the subject of rage and our potential for aggression on the dissecting table for inspection. All The Rage is no self-help quick read, but it is, as author Richard Beard wrote, "an indispensable primer for our times."

We felt this book was a worthy winner for this month as it dug into an uncomfortable, powerful emotion, and deftly explained its relationship to aggression. While it covers a range of things that prompt anger in the world, it also finds where it can be found in all of us.

Josh Cohen is the author of All the Rage, our Welldoing Book of the Month for October 2024