“An extraordinary work that will change the way you think about your body, your friendships, your family and mankind as a whole. Science is beautifully explained alongside often hilarious anecdotes and stories: it reads as much like a novel as a work of scholarship.” Chris van Tulleken, doctor, scientist and TV presenter

In a radical new book, The Social Edge, launched November 5th 2018, Professor Anthony Costello shows how sympathy groups have guided the course of human history, hidden in plain sight, from hunter-gatherer societies to the present day. The sympathy group is the smallest social unit outside the family. He describes the key elements of sympathy groups through his work in the mountains of Nepal, the villages of Bangladesh, the forest tribal communities in India and the hamlets of Malawi.

In this fascinating, amusing and important book, he explains why we need a new science of cooperation and dares to suggest twenty two social experiments for 21st century problems, to find ways to:
• Help millions of lonely elderly people.
• Prevent diabetes, mental ill-health and cardiovascular disease
• Improve company productivity
• Tackle antisocial behaviour, prison reform and rehabilitation
• Find local solutions for our climate crisis
• Change the culture of money to stop another financial crash
• ‘Take back control’ by creating a more relational state

Our twenty first century world is facing a series of unprecedented crises. Pandemics of loneliness, obesity and diabetes. Spiralling inequality. Financial meltdowns. Environmental destruction. We’re obsessed with finding big, complicated, technological solutions to these modern ills. But what if the solutions lie not in techno fixes, but in harnessing the power of one of the oldest and simplest human units – the sympathy group?
“In Africa and Asia our teams helped women’s groups to solve their own problems in pregnancy and childbirth through regular meetings to discuss health and nutrition” says Anthony Costello. “They slashed death rates of mothers and newborn infants, and WHO have endorsed this as global policy. Now more than 150,000 groups are active in India. More recently men’s and women’s groups have cut the risk of diabetes in Bangladesh by a staggering two thirds.”
“Why can’t we use similar methods to tackle loneliness in old age, prisoner recidivism, long term medical conditions, stress in motherhood, hospital service delivery, business performance, whether management consultancy works, strategies to tackle climate resilience, and how to release, or at least lubricate, government gridlock and cut corruption? My book shows how people can feel empowered in their everyday lives and benefit from a return to mutual help”.