The paperback books you should be reading this week: Dan Ariely, Sarah Ogilvie, Charles

MISBELIEF by Dan Ariely (Heligo Books £10.99, 352pp) 

In July 2020, Professor Dan Ariely received an email from a woman he had helped with a work project. To his surprise, her tone was hostile, and she included links to websites claiming that his work on Covid-19 proved he was a member of a global elite conspiring to rule the world.

When Ariely tried to reason with other online accusers, his social media platforms were flooded with hateful comments, including death threats.

As a social scientist and the Author of bestselling books on irrationality, his job is to study human behaviour, so he set out to understand the phenomenon he calls ‘Misbelief’. His persuasive and compassionate book explores how anxiety, stress, loneliness and other pressures can drive rational people to outlandish ideas.

THE DICTIONARY PEOPLE by Sarah Ogilvie (Vintage £10.99, 384pp) 

In 2014 , Sarah Ogilvie made a farewell visit to the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, where she had worked as an editor. Opening a dusty box, she discovered the address book of James Murray, who became the dictionary’s editor in 1879. The dictionary was (and remains) a crowdsourced enterprise, and Murray’s address book listed thousands of contributors. Sarah Ogilvie’s fascinating account, appropriately in alphabetical order, reveals the stories of these unsung lexicographical heroes. Some were eccentric, some insane (Ogilvie’s chapter L is for Lunatics), while three murderers and a cannibal made useful contributions.

Vivid, elegant and passionate about language, this is a compelling journey into the unexpectedly colourful world of dictionary-making.

SOLDIERS DON’T GO MAD by Charles Glass (Bedford Square £10.99, 352pp) 

The battlefields of the First World War shattered men’s minds as well as their bodies. But soldiers who had suffered unbearable mental trauma were often accused of malingering. In 1916, Craiglockhart War Hospital opened at a former Scottish spa.

A trio of remarkable physicians, Major William Bryce and psychiatrists Dr Arthur Brock and Dr William Rivers, shared an innovative approach to treating mental illness, based on empathy and talking therapy.

Among the patients in their care were the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon: both were outstandingly brave in action .

Charles Glass’s powerful account of healing the broken minds of the Great War contains a haunting echo of the mental struggles of more recent veterans.