Sixty international, prize-winning artists put a fresh visual spin on the many facets and values of friendship in this quirky, contemporary combination of pictures and words. Each artist has chosen and illustrated a quotation they find particularly inspiring and personally meaningful, resulting in a selection of lesser-known quotes and surprising sayings, from Chilean novelist Roberto Bolano to Senagalese feminist and writer Mariam Ba, sports announcer Ed Cunningham, Mark Twain, Muriel Barbery, Ethel Barrymore, and many others. The art styles range from sweet to graphic, abstract, cartoon, graphic novel, representational, collage, and more. In a beautiful gift package, with a foreword by Lydia Denworth, author of the acclaimed book Friendship, the honest, heartfelt-with-attitude approach of You & Me Are So Nice Together is the perfect antidote to the overly sentimental odes to the enduring and never-more-important gift of friendship. Two pull-out postcards featuring art from the book are included as a bonus feature.

The phenomenon of friendship is universal. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship, science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of the biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations of this important bond. She finds that the human capacity for friendship is as old as humanity itself, when tribes of people on the African savanna grew large enough for individuals to seek meaningful connection with those outside their immediate families. Lydia meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research, and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immune systems; its opposite, loneliness, can kill. With insight and warmth, Lydia weaves past and present, biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship, and how this is changing in the age of social media. Blending compelling science, storytelling, and a grand evolutionary perspective, she delineates the essential role that cooperation and companionship play in creating human (and non-human) societies. Friendship illuminates the vital aspects of friendship, both visible and invisible, and offers a refreshingly optimistic vision of human nature. It is a clarion call for putting positive relationships at the centre of our lives.