$50 for your first 3 months Get the print edition and steer from crisis to recovery
Add this topic to your myFT Digest for news straight to your inbox
After lurching from naive optimism to despairing dystopianism, is the internet now entering a ‘third stage’ of civic minded realism?
The spy fiction master ventured well beyond the shadows of espionage to become one of the most perceptive and enduring writers of his age
Books about reading — indeed, about books themselves — are perfect for our troubled times in that they offer delight and the sense of possibility
The Pope, Ivan Krastev and Fareed Zakaria on processing the pandemic
Two books consider the influence French thinkers have had on scholarship, politics and campus culture in the English-speaking world
Two books look at the hard graft of gathering intelligence and our enduring fascination with spookery
As Black Lives Matter confronts colonialism, historians are reassessing older, more benign accounts of imperial rule
Three books shed light on the historical forces driving Beijing’s mission for superpower status — and what it means for Asia and beyond
The prince came to power with the bold promise of transforming Saudi Arabia. Two fine books examine MBS’s breathtaking gamble
Two new books from Noreena Hertz and James Suzman examine our changing relationship with what has always been more than just a job
The pandemic once again has us questioning the wisdom of urban living. But four new books help explain its appeal
Two biographies look beyond the composer’s reputation as a tragic genius to explore a story of patrons, lovers, hard work and luck
A new book examines the long US history of harnessing technology to predict behaviour and win ‘hearts and minds’
As profession-based privilege supplants hereditary privilege, three new books champion essential blue-collar skills
Globalisation has, for many, undercut wages and jobs — and fuelled populism. Can three new books unpick an issue that so divides us?
The final season in the series completes this affecting chronicle of our uneasy times
Three books offer different answers to why innovation is so maddeningly difficult to achieve
Martin Wolf reviews two important new books on Trump, strongmen leaders and the most disturbing political development of our times
As calls for inquiries intensify, three leading science writers set the tone of the debate
Revolution and hope were followed by depression and dictatorship — but today’s wave of nationalist populism is not necessarily a rerun of those times
Decades on, full female equality is still elusive — so what should women be doing about it?
A new book looks at why global conflicts owe more to divisions within countries than between them
Gideon Rachman consider three books on America in the world over the past century
Three new books show how science is pushing at the limits of our mortality
First came Beijing’s ‘panda diplomacy’. Now there’s a fan-backed drive to host the ‘Olympics of SF’
International Edition