Few life skills are as neglected, yet as important, as the ability to remain calm.

Our very worst decisions and interactions are almost invariably the result of a loss of calm Ð and a descent into anxiety and agitation.

Surprisingly, but very fortunately, our power to remain calm can be rehearsed and improved. We don't have to stay where we are now: our responses to everyday challenges can dramatically alter. We can educate ourselves in the art of keeping calm not through slow breathing or special teas but through thinking.

This is a book that patiently unpacks the causes of our greatest stresses and gives us a succession of highly persuasive, beautiful and sometimes dryly comic arguments with which to defend ourselves against panic and fury.