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Short, lively ebooks by some of Yale's top authors, addressing important issues in an accessible format. Yale's short ebooks are priced at 99p (r.r.p.)

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Punching Below Our Weight

How Inter-Service Rivalry has Damaged the British Armed Forces

By Frank Ledwidge (available 18 June 2012)

In this 5,000-word e-book, the author of the bestselling Losing Small Wars looks at the problem of rivalry between the top ranks of the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. He argues that senior generals, admirals and air marshals have focused more on empire-building within their own services rather than on the needs of the UK armed forces as a whole, with enormously damaging results. In particular, the UK involvement in Libya was hampered by a total lack of aircraft carriers - sacrificed to preserve the Typhoon, a fighter jet designed for Cold War combat that never happened.

Written with Ledwidge's trademark insight and panache, this is an incisive condemnation of the British armed forces at the very top, and ending with some pertinent suggestions for how the UK could reorient its military priorities.

The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning

Why We Are So Unhappy

By Iain McGilchrist (available August 2012)

In this 10,000-word essay, written to complement Iain McGilchrist's acclaimed The Master and His Emissary, the author asks why - despite the vast increase in material well-being - people are less happy today than they were half a century ago, and suggests that the division between the two hemispheres of the brain has a critical effect on how we see and understand the world around us. In particular, McGilchrist suggests, the left hemisphere's obsession with reducing everything it sees to the level of minute, mechanistic detail is robbing modern society of the ability to understand and appreciate deeper human values.

Accessible to readers who haven't yet read The Master and His Emissary as well as those who have, this is a fascinating, immensely thought-provoking essay that delves to the very heart of what it means to be human.