Our reading list for fall 2024

The first pumpkins with carved motifs are on the doorstep, the asphalt is covered in leaves and the company's own range of tea is expanding for very unknown reasons. That can only mean one thing: Autumn is here! 🎃🍂 Without the right reading, we can't release you into the season of bookworms and have put together the right reading list for you again this year 😉 We hope you enjoy browsing! 📚

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Yuval Noah Harari: Nexus
— A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

At least since Sapiens, is Yuval Noah Harari one of the most important public intellectuals of our time — and when he speaks up, people are listened to. Perhaps we will open accordingly with an almost obvious recommendation, but that does not diminish the food for thought that Harari wrote in his latest book nexus It also reveals the contemporary relevance of this.

Completely the historian, Harari reflects on the current tipping point of our world today on the basis of a preliminary statement about human history itself: Over the last 100,000 years, we as humanity have cultivated an astonishing influence over our environment. Progress that is due not least to various methods of information flow that we have invented over time — from the Stone Age to the AI revolution that is currently accompanying us.

In fact, information is the key to gaining power — and, according to Harari, control of this flow is increasingly slipping away from us. Politicians exploit the use of false information for their own campaigns — false information that the Internet is intended to reproduce for a few clicks — and the most advanced, machine-neural network of all time hallucinates and absorbs our tendencies without the underlying algorithm being able to provide transparency about it. Information is a double-edged sword — and with the vast amounts of this we consume day in and day out, it may be time to go on a diet.

According to Harari, information is therefore not the raw material of truth — but neither is it a mere weapon. Where is the middle of this? nexus is a search for human unity in the eye of the storm of an ever more complicated 21st century.

Jonathan Haidt: The Anxious Generation
— How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Fortunately, mental health is now an important and recognized issue, both within and outside the workplace. Nevertheless, a new low was identified in the 2010s: depression, anxiety disorders and the like have doubled in some cases among adolescents. A terrifying trend, but why is that?

In The Anxious Generation Is dedicated to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt exactly this problem. It takes a look at the role of childhood in this causality, the importance of playing and exploring, and its contribution to the transition to adulthood. Activities that are less and less present in modern childhoods, not least because of the excessive integration of smartphones and the like. The technology of our time naturally plays a central role here, also in the form of social media, where Haidt, for example, explains to what extent young women are affected even more harshly by this.

Above all, however, is The Anxious Generation In a sense, a call for how we can solve this collective activity problem. Haidt provides four steps to this end and encourages people to release childhoods from smartphones and cultivate more understanding, but also prevention, of the mental health of future generations.

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‍Kate Conger & Ryan Mac: Character Limit
— How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

Public opinion about Elon Musk now seems to be divided into two dedicated camps. Some stick to the image of the tech visionary who will carry us into the future or to Mars — an image that he was still trying diligently to cultivate in the early 2010s — and others see Musk as arguably the most powerful toddler in the world. For better or worse, one thing cannot be denied: Musk is one of the most relevant figures of the 21st century and in particular the acquisition of Twitter, which took place almost exactly two years ago, remains a contemporary phenomenon and spectacle: One of the worst deals that the public eye has been able to witness for quite some time, the decay of an already crumbling reputation and, of course, the swan song of a social network that has been has already been accepted in the mainstream for many years. It all had a bit of a traffic accident, as they say so unpleasantly: You didn't really want to look at things, but you still had to — and now that Twitter, or X, is just keeping itself alive with a ventilator, you ask: How could it actually come to this?

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac — two tech reporters from the New York Times — spoke in Character Limit dedicated precisely to this fascination and took an investigative look at the events that enabled Musk's takeover of the platform and its eventual loss of identity. Using exclusive interviews — within and close to the company —, disclosure of previously unpublished documents and more, the journalist duo not only provides a professional, speculative verdict on the Twitter deal, but also the truthful, definitive presentation of the events. An important book in itself, it reveals the quintessence of the acquisition idea itself: Who controls the narrative — the money, the reach, or the ultimate fact?

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‍Amanda Jones: That Librarian
— The Fight Against Book Banning in America

It certainly goes without saying that books are a matter close to our hearts — we don't curate these reading lists onlybecause it's fun. Accordingly, we can give you the memoir of Amanda Jones, That Librarian, by no means withheld. That Librarian It is in fact much more than simply retelling one's own reality of life; it is in particular a manifesto for and appeal for freedom of reading, at a time when more and more books seem to end up on black lists. Especially in schools.

Amanda Jones is a librarian; responsible for one of many literary institutions, which provides young and old with both suitable access to education, culture and self-discovery. Jones is particularly concerned with the latter: that books enable young people to fathom and confirm their own identity, in a phase of life when all of this is terribly confusing. Books not only show us who we are, they also show us who we are can. The outrage that came over Jones when various American schools were asked to remove various books from their shelves is completely understandable. These texts have no place in the school curriculum, it was said. LGBTQ+, anti-racist and what else about woke Be that all of this would poison or brainwash a political, anti-Christian agenda that is trying to corrupt American youth. Demands that Jones has been fighting ever since.

That Librarian Not only does the librarian's moral principles — core values based on equity and inclusion — it also illustrates the importance of fighting against literary censorship and calls for support for this. An undertaking which, of course, entails its own risks. Jones makes no secret of the defamations that followed her activism: death threats, attacks, and general allegations of perversion from strangers and friends alike. Jones won't let that get him down, as this memoir wonderfully shows. The proclamation is not to be tolerated by any book censorship, in line with the credo: “Books and Ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson

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Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita

In the name Spooky Season Of course, we don't just want to dismiss you with non-fiction books! 👻 Obviously, the right material is still needed to create an appropriate atmosphere during shower time and we have in the form of Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita A true classic for you. 😊

The devil comes to Moscow in the thirties — and with him the colorful entourage of one of the most macabre character teams that can be found in the literary canon. Witches grace Russia's night sky, vampires would rather lament not wanting to be, Woland invites you to a party in the theatre and a talking black cat with a penchant for chess and vodka is also there.

Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita is not only a creative tour de force and the highest performance of fictional literature, it is above all an appeal to freedom — in the breath of what has just been presented That Librarian, Bulgakov writes so beautifully: Manuscripts don't burn — and on top of that, perhaps the most bizarre love story you could ever come across. An absolutely fantastic book for autumn, whose journey is always full of new surprises. And it all starts with the little bit of chaos in everyday life that some spilled oil and a tram that might have preferred to be late can cause.

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