This study of political emotion hits a nerve

Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed believes that late capitalism depends on us all developing and casting off identities at increased rates GETTY

NON-FICTION: Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World, By William Davies, Jonathan Cape, €17.95

A decade before founding BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti described the difficulty of fostering identities that defy what he termed “the logic of commodification”. Late capitalism, he wrote in a 1996 article in the academic journal Negations, depends on us all developing and casting off identities at increased rates, imagining ourselves anew through consumption.

As Peretti imagined it, the end ...