Injustice, By Daniel Dorling

Along with Wilkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level, Injustice has become the guide and gospel for UK activists against rising inequality and what social geographer Dorling enumerates – updating Beveridge – as the five new giants of elitism, exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair.

On his home turf, tracing an abysmal gap between rich and poor in Britain on all measures of health and happiness, his book makes salutary, shocking reading. Disparities of wealth now match the Hard Times 1850s. Yet he bubble-wraps the research in such a thick coating of moralistic rhetoric that Injustice will lose impact outside its comfort zone.

On history, ethics, philosophy, it sounds naïve. Inequality matters too much to become the focus of this sort of cosy group hug.