It's time to learn about the main pillars of society, world politics, and different cultures. 

Society & Politics

The best microbooks of the week, selected by our team. Stay tuned to the latest trends in the world of literature and knowledge.

Radar 12min

Build a solid career, learn how to run your business and inspire other people to do the same.

Career & Business

The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran is not just a military conflict. It is an economic earthquake that is changing the price of everything, from diesel in Italy to cooking gas in India. This Radar maps what has already gotten more expensive, what will get more expensive next, which countries are most vulnerable to collapse, and what to do with that information before the impact reaches your life.

Who Pays the Price of War? Spoiler: Check Your Wallet

Cuba hasn't received an oil shipment in over three months. Blackouts last twenty hours a day, hospitals are postponing surgeries, airlines have canceled flights, and more than a million Cubans have left the island since twenty twenty-one. Meanwhile, Havana is negotiating with Washington for the first time in years, opening its doors to exile investment, and releasing prisoners with Vatican mediation — while Trump talks about "taking" the island. This piece traces six decades of tension and breaks down the most critical moment Cuba has faced since the revolution.

Cuba and the United States: The Communism That Went Dark

From the beginning of 2020, countries worldwide have started taking action to prevent the spread of the novel Coronavirus. In addition to fighting against the disease, U.S. medical experts had to fight against the government’s and the CDC’s denial that COVID-19 poses a threat to American society. ‘’The Premonition’’ reveals what a small group of brilliant, extraordinarily dedicated, and conscientious people could have done to help the country respond to the COVID-19 pandemic better if they had support from the Trump administration and the CDC.

The Premonition

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” a classic analysis of how the electronic media have reshaped our world, American educator Neil Postman wonders whether Aldous Huxley’s dystopia from “Brave New World” hasn’t already been realized in our TV-dominated and image-centered culture. Spoiler alert: it has, as television has become a global pleasure drug, and humans have gladly accepted to be oppressed by their addiction to entertainment.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

After the 2008 financial collapse, a large group of people had to give up traditional ‘’stick and brick’’ homes their low-wage jobs could not pay for and move into vans, RVs, and trailers. In ‘’Nomadland,’’ award-winning journalist Jessica Bruder documents the struggles of these people who are traveling from one place to another in pursuit of seasonal jobs and affordable rent.

Nomadland

New products, new technologies. See the future with the eyes of ingenuity.

Technology & Innovation

Did you know that the world adds 51 tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year? To avoid a climate disaster, we need to reduce this amount to zero. Even though this is a daunting task, Bill Gates thinks we can keep climate bearable for everyone and preserve the planet for generations to come. In ‘’How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,’’ he reveals all the work we must do to make this happen.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

In ‘’Blowout,’’ a renowned television news program host, Rachel Maddow, explores the connection between multiple events, such as Oklahoma earthquake swarms, Project Rulison, Michael Jackson's memorabilia auction, and the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. At first glance, these events seem unconnected. However, Maddow reveals their common denominator - the most powerful and the least-well-governed industry in the history of mankind: oil and gas.

Blowout

Take a sneak-peek into the private lives of people who left a mark in world history.

Biographies & Memoirs

“A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes of memoirs by Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. Spanning 768 pages, the book provides an honest account of Obama’s rise to political stardom, from his early years through his successful campaigns and inauguration and all the way to May 2011 and the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land

How did we get here? See which ideas shaped the course of history, and how philosophy played a significant role in human evolution.

History & Philosophy

First translated into English in 2016, “Homo Deus” by Yuval Noah Harari is a broad-stroked exploration of how humans evolved to become the planet’s dominant species, and a tentative account of how our future may unfold. As in “Sapiens,” Harari reminds us once again who we are and how we got here, but this time he deals with yet another question: where are we going?

Homo Deus

Jerry Heimans and Henry Timms’ book titled ‘’New Power’’ explores how advancements in technology have changed the power distribution in a contemporary world. In a traditionally governed world, power was available only to the minority. Now, however, every individual has the ability to change things - remember the global movements such as #MeToo and the Ice Bucket Challenge. Heimans and Timms reveal how we can shape our behavior to navigate this new power and achieve desired goals.

New Power

Understanding the science behind your decision making and behavior is a great asset in the battle to a more fulfilled life.

Psychology

Love and friendship are the backbone of happiness, and no one could argue otherwise.

Sex & Relationships

In “Everybody Lies,” aspiring polymath Seth Stephens-Davidowitz harnesses the four powers of Big Data – while drawing on numerous relevant studies and experiments – to demonstrate the gulf between what we say we like and dislike and how we actually live and think about the world and our day-to-day affairs.

Everybody Lies

The best microbooks on Emotional Intelligence to make you overcome obstacles in your personal and professional life.

Emotional Intelligence

Robert Greene’s debut book – “The 48 Laws of Power” – is a practical manual for anyone interested in gaining power or arming themselves against it. Drawing from the philosophies of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Baltasar Gracián, and many others, the book doesn’t merely explicate the laws but also illustrates them through real-world historical examples that reveal the consequences of both their observance and violation.

The 48 Laws of Power

Totalitarian regimes, sadly, are not confined to the history books. Current leaders like Trump and Putin are worryingly similar to totalitarian governments of the 1930s and 40s. History can teach us how to deal with these modern threats. Timothy Snyder has drawn 20 lessons from the past to help us resist tyrants today.

On Tyranny

Feminism has been held up to a level of perfection that no movement led by flawed humans can achieve. That is why Roxane Gay calls herself a bad feminist: she knows she is not perfect, but she still believes in gender equality. In her essays published in “Bad Feminist,” she explores the marginalization of women, particularly women of color, in contemporary politics and popular culture.

Bad Feminist

GDP, Trade balance, foreign capital. Everything about global trade is here!

Economics

Globalization brought us free trade and faster communication. It also brought us lost jobs in the developed world, however. In “Aftershock,” Robert B. Reich proposes a new deal with the middle class: a government to make sure rich people employ workers with pretty good salaries so that people can become consumers and save the economy from collapse.

Aftershock

Between April 2018 and September 2019, John Bolton served as national security advisor for U.S. President Donald Trump. A detailed chronicle of these 17 months, “The Room Where It Happened” presents an account of Trump’s shady dealings with several foreign leaders, and paints the president as a “not fit for office” ignoramus, willing to put his own interests before those of his country.

The Room Where It Happened

Richard V. Reeves in “Dream Hoarders” identifies the upper-middle-class privileges as a problem in maintaining the American dream accessible to everyone within the class-defined society of the 21st century. While vertical mobility is possible for some, the others only get meritocracy without mobility. Reeves has several ideas on how to change this.

Dream Hoarders

In “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” French economist Thomas Piketty revealed that laissez-faire capitalism inexorably increases inequality. In the 1000-page “Capital and Ideology,” he offers an economic, intellectual, and sociopolitical history of the ways inequality was justified and structured throughout history. The book covers the four dominant ideologies of the modern age (ternary, ownership, social democratic and hypercapitalist) and offers an alternative: participatory socialism.

Society & Politics

Most Read

Everybody Lies

The 48 Laws of Power

On Tyranny

Bad Feminist

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Aftershock

Homo Deus

The Room Where It Happened

Dream Hoarders

Capital and Ideology

Newest

Who Pays the Price of War? Spoiler: Check Your Wallet

Cuba and the United States: The Communism That Went Dark

The Premonition

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Nomadland

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Blowout

A Promised Land

Homo Deus

New Power