News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff
Dispatches | Michael Herr | Non-fiction | Books to read
2026
Everyone was scared, but no one talked about it.
Dispatches is a classic work of Vietnam War literature—part journalism, part memoir, part literary experiment. An early and outstanding example of the New Journalism, Herr’s rendering of his experiences as a Vietnam War correspondent are immersive and subjective. He writes in a fast, almost hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness style. Not about military strategy but about the experience–masculinity, violence, brotherhood. Raw, personal and morally unsettled.
Herr later co-wrote Apocalypse Now, a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
The anxious generation | Jonathan Haidt | Psychology | Books to read
2026
The book argues that today’s surge in anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal among young people—especially Gen Z—is largely driven by how childhood changed in the 2010s. Its central thesis: childhood shifted from being play-based and independence-rich to phone-based and safety-obsessed, and that shift rewired kids’ social, emotional, and cognitive development—particularly during adolescence.
Why we’re polarised | Ezra Klein | Political science | Books to read
2026
Published in 2020, the book analyses the deepening political polarisation in the United States. Core ideas: identity as the root of polarisation, historical realignment (Civil Rights Act of 1964), structural loops (political institutions, media, psychology, social sorting), and polarised politics ‘by design’.
Klein suggests that almost all political conflict today is identity-driven rather than rooted in restrained policy disagreement. His book helps explain why political debates feel less about policy and more about who we are.
The crisis of democratic capitalism | Martin Wolf | Political science | Books to read
2026
Democracy under strain.
Wolf argues that democratic capitalism is in a systemic crisis, not because markets or democracy are inherently flawed, but because the balance between them has broken down.
Wolf is especially concerned with authoritarian populism, which he sees as a symptom rather than the root problem. When democratic capitalism fails to deliver security and fairness, voters turn to leaders who promise protection—even at the cost of liberal norms. Economic disfunction feeds cultural and political fracture (polarisation).
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson | Abundance | Political Science | Books to read
2025
Scarcity is a choice
From journalists Ezra Klein (New York Times) and Derek Thompson (The Atlantic), Abundance is a call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life. The book examines the reasons behind the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States, including those related to affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.
Copy ©Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson (book’s back cover) and (in part) Wikipedia.
Dr Seuss | The Lorax | A contemporary fable | Books to read
2025
The Lorax is a children-adult book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, the main character, who “speaks for the trees” and confronts the Once-ler, a business magnate who causes environmental destruction. Part philosophical tale, part political manifesto, part moral lesson, its message is frightfully prescient.
Thanks to Luigi Mangione.
Copy ©Wikipedia (in part)
Jon Fosse | Morning and Evening (Morgon og kveld) | A novella | Books to read
2025
A 2000 novella by the 2023 Norwegian Nobel Prize in Literature that reads like a Biblical prayer: “pared down, circuitous, and rhythmic prose skilfully guides readers through past and present. A hypnotic meditation on life and death”. Totally brilliant.
Thanks to Pete Buttigieg.
Copy ©Wikipedia (in part)
Marlene Dumas | Solo exhibition | Cycladic Museum | Athens, Greece
5 June 2025 – 3 November 2025
The abstracted, anthropomorphic marble figurines known as Cycladic Art, were produced on the islands of the Aegean Sea from around ca. 3300 to 1100 B.C.E. Its enduring importance has been brought to the fore by the Museum of Cycladic Art by bringing these ancient works into dialogue with the paintings and works on paper of contemporary South African artist Marlene Dumas.
Image: ‘Cycladic Blues’ (2020) ©Marlene Dumas. Copy: ©Artnews.
Anselm Kiefer | Retrospective | Van Gogh Museum + Stedelijk Museum | Amsterdam
Mar 7 until Jun 9, 2025
“Where have all the flowers gone” (Sag mir wo die Blumen sind) – For the first time in their history, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum are joining forces to stage a major exhibition of one of the most important artists of our time: Anselm Kiefer.
At the Van Gogh Museum, key works by Vincent van Gogh are combined with that of Kiefer. At the Stedelijk, all the Kiefers from the Stedelijk’s collection are on display together for the first time.
Image: ‘Innenraum’, 1981, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam ©Anselm Kiefer. Copy ©Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
American Photography | Retrospective | Rijksmuseum | Amsterdam
7 February to 9 June 2025
The more than 200 works on display in American Photography reflect the rich and multifaceted history of photography in the United States. The exhibition presents the country as seen through the eyes of American photographers, and shows how the medium has permeated every aspect of our lives: in art, news, advertising and everyday life.
Image: ‘America seen through Stars and Stripes’, New York City, ©Ming Smith / Copy @Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
