Hope

Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way—and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization—from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy—was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.

Vom Autor von „Utopien für Realisten“: ein revolutionäres Argument dafür, dass die angeborene Güte und Kooperationsbereitschaft des Menschen der größte Faktor unseres Erfolgs gewesen sind. Wenn ein Grundsatz dem Denken des Bestsellerautors Rutger Bregman als Fundament gedient hat, dann dieser: Jede fortschrittliche Idee – ob die Abschaffung der Sklaverei, die Einführung der Demokratie, das Frauenwahlrecht oder die rechtliche Anerkennung der Ehe für alle – galt in der öffentlichen Mehrheitsmeinung ihrer Zeit einst als radikal und gefährlich. Mit „Im Grunde gut“ wendet er diese Haltung gegen eine unserer fest verankertesten Vorstellungen: nämlich dass Menschen von Natur aus egoistisch und eigennützig seien. Indem Bregman eine neue historische Perspektive auf die vergangenen 200.000 Jahre der Menschheitsgeschichte bietet, will er beweisen, dass wir evolutionär eher auf Kooperation als auf Konkurrenz ausgerichtet sind und dass unser Instinkt, einander zu vertrauen, eine solide evolutionäre Grundlage hat, die bis zu den Anfängen des Homo sapiens zurückreicht. Bregman widerlegt systematisch unser Verständnis des Milgram-Experiments mit elektrischen Schocks, des Zimbardo-Gefängnisexperiments und des „Zuschauereffekts“ im Fall Kitty Genovese. An deren Stelle stellt er wenig bekannte wahre Geschichten: die Geschichte von Zwillingsbrüdern auf gegensätzlichen Seiten der Apartheid in Südafrika, die gemeinsam mit Nelson Mandela Frieden schufen; von sechs schiffbrüchigen Kindern, die anderthalb Jahre auf einer unbewohnten Insel überlebten, indem sie zusammenarbeiteten; und von einer Studie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, die ergab, dass nur 15 % der amerikanischen Soldaten tatsächlich in der Lage waren, auf den Feind zu schießen. Das letztliche Ziel von „Im Grunde gut“ ist zu zeigen, dass weder Kapitalismus noch Kommunismus für sich allein als funktionierendes Gesellschaftssystem erwiesen sind, es aber eine dritte Möglichkeit gibt: „Bürgerinnen und Bürgern sowie Fachleuten die Mittel zu geben (links), ihre eigenen Entscheidungen zu treffen (rechts).“ Eine Neuausrichtung unseres Denkens auf positive und hohe Erwartungen an unsere Mitmenschen, so Bregman, wird dauerhaften Erfolg bringen. Mit seinem unverwechselbaren Witz und seiner Offenheit macht Bregman Geschichte, Sozialwissenschaften und Wirtschaftstheorie erneut für ein breites Publikum zugänglich und unterhaltsam.

In a world that seems so troubled, how do we hold on to hope? Looking at the headlines—a global pandemic, the worsening climate crisis, political upheaval—it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed. In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, the world's most famous living naturalist and Doug Abrams, internationally-bestselling author, explore—through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue—one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. In The Book of Hope, Jane focuses on her “Four Reasons for Hope”: The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit. Told through stories from a remarkable career and fascinating research, The Book of Hope touches on vital questions including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope in our children? Filled with engaging dialogue and pictures from Jane’s storied career, The Book of Hope is a deeply personal conversation with one of the most beloved figures in today’s world. And for the first time, Jane tells the story of how she became a messenger of hope: from living through World War II, to her years in Gombe, to realizing she had to leave the forest to travel the world in her role as an advocate for environmental justice. She details the forces that shaped her hopeful worldview, her thoughts on her past, and her revelations about her next—and perhaps final—adventure. There is still hope, and this book will help guide us to it.

Hilarious, profound, and achingly true-to-life, Jonas Karlsson’s novel explores the true nature of happiness through the eyes of hero you won’t soon forget A passionate film buff, our hero’s life revolves around his part-time job at a video store, the company of a few precious friends, and a daily routine that more often than not concludes with pizza and movie in his treasured small space in Stockholm. When he receives an astronomical invoice from a random national bureaucratic agency, everything will tumble into madness as he calls the hotline night and day to find out why he is the recipient of the largest bill in the entire country. What is the price of a cherished memory? How much would you pay for a beautiful summer day? How will our carefree idealist, who is content with so little and has no chance of paying it back, find a way out of this mess? All these questions pull you through The Invoice and prove once again that Jonas Karlsson is simply a master of entertaining, intelligent, and life-affirming work.

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Originally published in 2004, now with a new foreword and afterword, Solnit’s influential book shines a light into the darkness of our time in an unforgettable new edition.