The Human Survival Guide

Nobody gives you the adult manual. Apparently, you were just supposed to work it out.

Being an adult means navigating work, money, relationships, ageing, family, technology, grief, decisions and other people, often while appearing to know what you are doing.

The Human Survival Guide is a practical, funny and clear-eyed field guide to the parts of ordinary adult life that rarely come with instructions.

Why can two honest people remember the same event differently? Why do pointless systems survive when everybody knows they are pointless? Why does more money so quickly become normal? Why can a relationship argument about the dishwasher have very little to do with the dishwasher? Why does a number on a screen acquire so much authority? And what happens when work, ageing, illness, technology or loss changes the person you thought you were?

Drawing on psychology, research, history and the strange situations human beings repeatedly create for themselves, Martin Rothery explores the machinery underneath everyday life without turning it into another self-help programme.

Along the way there are field stories, field tests, practical experiments and useful questions. Some problems can be solved. Some have to be decided. Some need another person. Some need grieving. And some become considerably easier once you can see what is actually happening.

There is also a children's edition of The Human Survival Guide, written for younger readers. This is the companion field guide for the people who were supposed to have everything figured out by now.

No ten-step transformation. No promise of a perfect life. Just better instructions for the confusing business of being human.