Most parenting manuals end up gathering dust on my bedside table, but Melinda Wenner Moyer’s Hello, Cruel World! isn’t one of them.

Hello, Cruel World!

The unfortunate thing about parenting books is that, in my experience, once you become a parent you are too time-poor and exhausted to read them. As a result, my bedside table is stacked with parenting manuals of which I’ve read the first five pages a dozen times before passing out. If this sounds like you, the latest book by science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer should be top of your pile.