| 1st January, 2026 | | Non-fiction
Tara Zahra came of age amidst a cacophony of rage: her father suffers from Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), as does she. Classified as an “impulse-control” disorder, IED at once centers on, but is distinguished from outbursts of garden-variety anger. It afflicts a much larger percentage of the population than one might imagine and largely goes undiagnosed. When Zahra decided to start her own family, she sought to discover how much was hereditary, environmental, cultural, or caused by something else.
Anchored in the relationship between a father and daughter, Explosive People entwines rigorous research, science, and reporting to explore the role of explosive anger not only in our lives and society, but in how we understand mental health at large.
Winner of the Laura Shannon Prize for Contemporary European Studies & The George Louis Beer Prize
“Lively and ambitious... relevant and absorbing; Zahra plaits her narrative strands together with such deliberation and skill that nothing is out of place.”
Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times on AGAINST THE WORLD
“Erudite and exciting... [C]ombines analytical depth with an impressive breadth of personal human stories.”
Financial Times on THE GREAT DEPARTURE
“[A] fascinating book... an important contribution to the growing literature on Europe’s reconstruction after World War II...”
The New Republic on THE LOST CHILDREN
“[A] superb history... one of the best and most timely works of global history of the past few years.”
The New Statesman on Against the World
Tara Zahra is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.
She is the author of Against The World and the award-winning books, Kidnapped Souls and The Lost Children. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Zahra is currently based in New York.
US: HarperCollins