The “books” listed here are mostly lengthy articles from various Internet sources, including newspapers and magazine articles. They are formatted as PDFs with a font size of 32 pt and little or no margin. Titles are usually 48 pt and comments, notes etc 24 pt. I have started preparing those “books” about 10 years ago and there have been some changes in the formatting.
There are some recurrent categories in the documents below, e.g. languages, religion/spirituality without god, Xi’ s surveillance paradise, imminent financial and ecological disasters, history s.l. etc. If anyone “out there” should be interested, I could add a column with categories. But this would actually make sense only if the table were sortable based on columns. This does not seem to be feasible with the technology I am currently using.
Full source of each document is given in the document. If there should be some copyright issues, kindly let me know. I’ll remove the offenders immediately!
| Number | Language | Title | Author(s) | Year of publication | Genre & comments | Download link | Other |
| 1 | ENG | Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | 1899 | An early classic of anti-colonial literature | Darkness | Although this is not mentioned in the book, the action takes place in the Belgian Congo |
| 2 | FRA | La conquête du pain | Pierre Kropotkine | 1892 | Pain | ||
| 3 | FRA | L’Entraide, un facteur de l’évolution | Pierre Kropotkine | 1902 | Entraide | ||
| 4 | ENG | Grand technological challenges | National Academy of Engeneering, US | 2005 | Engineering challenges for the 21st century | Challenges | Sometimes very naive |
| 5 | FRA | Faut-il prendre l’effondrement au sérieux? | Hubert Guillaud | 2015 | Effondrement | ||
| 6 | FRA | Hoax climatique | Stéphane Foucart | 2015 | Hoax | Un petit inventaire de légendes urbaines qui avaient cours en 2015 | |
| 7 | FRA | Limites de la croissance | Matthieu Auzanneau | 2015 | Cette fois, le loup est là | Limites | |
| 8 | ENG | The end of capitalism has begun | Paul Mason | 2015 | Capitalism | ||
| 9 | ENG | The real big one | Kathryn Schulz | 2015 | An eartquake will destroy a sizeable part of the NW (US) | Quake | |
| 10 | FRA | Au-delà de l’écosocialisme | Jason W Moore | 2015 | Une théorie des crises dans l’écologie-monde capitaliste | Ecosocialisme | |
| 11 | ENG | Cyberwar | Steve Ranger | 2017 | A guide to the frightening future of online conflict | Cyberwar | |
| 12 | ENG | Te Evolutionary Argument Against Reality | Aman?a Gefer | 2016 | Our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions | Evolution | |
| 13 | ENG | Kim’ s bomb | Earl Lane | 2012 | Bomb | It wasn’t quite sure in 2012 if Kim’ s bomb was real | |
| 14 | ENG | The EU and the World | Antonio Missiroli, editor | 2016 | A contribution of the EU Institute for Security Studies | Missiroli | |
| 15 | ENG | Is Beijing Adopting an Ethnonationalist Foreign Policy? | Harry Krejsa and Anthony Cho | 2017 | China | In 2017, some people were still asking the question… | |
| 16 | ENG | China’s Return to Strongman Rule | Minxin Pei | 2017 | The Meaning of Xi Jinping’s Power Grab | Xi | |
| 17 | ENG | The seven megatrends that could beat global warming | Damian Carrington | 2017 | The tide is finally turning, thanks to innovations ranging from cheap renewables to lab-grown meat and electric airplanes | Megatrends | Well… that was 2017. |
| 18 | ENG | Do civilisations collapse? | Guy D Middleton | 2017 | Collapse | The idea that the Maya or Easter Islanders experienced an apocalyptic end makes for good television but bad archaeology | |
| 19 | ENG | China’s Cover-Up | Orville Schell | 2017 | Rewriting history in China | Rewriting | It’ s all part of the game |
| 20 | FRA | Les 32 bons métiers de la Cité de Liège | Asssembled from multiple sources | Around 2020 | Fèvres, charliers, cherwiers et les autres | Métiers | |
| 21 | ENG | An Indian Nightmare | Milan Vaishnav | 2010 | Is New Delhi Ready for the Twenty-First Century? | India | |
| 22 | DEU | Sieben Tage babylonisch | Alexander Lenard | 2018 | Sieben exotische Sprachen | Babilonisch | |
| 23 | ENG | The New Age of Sail | Dmitry Orlov | 2006 | Keep a sailing boat in your survival kit! | Sail | |
| 24 | ENG | Understanding China’ s rise under Xi Jinping | Kevin Rudd | 2018 | A comprehensive overview | Rudd | Comprehensive and biased, of course |
| 25 | ENG | Could an Industrial Prehuman Civilization Have Existed on Earth Before Ours? | Steven Ashley | 2018 | Prehuman | This is NOT a stupid question | |
| 26 | ENG | Reflections on How We Live out Lives | Walter G. Moss | 2018 | Life | ||
| 27 | ENG | How Nations Stay Together | Andreas Wimmer | 2018 | Nations | Indeed, relatively few fall apart | |
| 28 | FRA | Taoïsme économique ou nouvel impérialisme ? | Vivien Fortat | 2017 | Les nouvelles routes de la soie de Xi Jinping | OBOR | |
| 29 | ENG | When China Rules the Web | Adam Segal | 2018 | Technology in the service of the State | Xinternet | |
| 30 | ENG | The unreality of luck | Steven Hales | 2020 | Does luck even exist? | ||
| 31 | ENG | Financial crisis | Several authors | 2016-2018 | Documents from Foreign Affairs | Crisis | |
| 32 | ENG | Hiding in Plain Sight | Jonathan Cook | 2018 | Why we cannot see the system destroying us | Plain-sight | |
| 33 | ENG | How to adapt to the end of the world | Christopher Flavelle | 2018 | Researchers are thinking about social collapse and how to prepare for it | eow | And the winner is … climate, of course. |
| 34 | ENG | Mysterious and Mortiferous Clouds | Timothy P. Newfield | 2018 | The Climate Cooling and Disease Burden of Late Antiquity | Mortiferous | |
| 35 | ENG | When the state is unjust, citizens may use justifiable violence | Jason Brennan | 2018 | Violence | ||
| 36 | FRA | Interview sans fards de Lavrov | Radio Komsomolskaïa Pravda | 2018 | Lavrov | That was well before the Ukraine war… | |
| 37 | ENG | There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought | Steve Ayan | 2018 | An interview of Peter Carruthers | Consciousness | |
| 38 | ENG | The New Revolution in Military Affairs | Christian Brose | 2018 | War’s Sci-Fi Future | SciFi-war | Frankly, we don’ t see much of that in Ukraine |
| 39 | ENG | In defence of disorder | Alan Lightman | 2019 | We need disorder to flourish | Disorder | |
| 40 | ENG | The Self-Destruction of American Power | Fareed Zakaria | 2019 | Sometime in the last two years, American hegemony died | USPower | Source: Foreign Affairs |
| 41 | ENG | Climate change and poverty | UN Human Rights Council | 2019 | HumanRight | The right to development is a human right | |
| 42 | ENG | The collapse of civilizations | Malcolm H. Wiener | 2018 | The collapse of civilizations is BAU | Collapse | A historian’ s perspective |
| 43 | DEU | Vier Lehren über Italiens Populismus | Georg Seeßlen | 2019 | Politische Clowns, Mafiosi, Faschisten und Populisten | Italien | … und Salvini! |
| 44 | ENG | Little Ice Age Lessons | Dagomar Degroot | 2018 | Adaptation has been painfull before | LIA | |
| 45 | ENG | Donbas in flames | prometheus.ngo | 2019 | Includes good historical overview | Donbas | |
| 46 | ITA | Il grande abisso | Peter Engelund | 2010 | Uno Svedese in Finlandia nella 1a guerra mondiale | Abisso | |
| 47 | FRA, ESP | D’où viennent les coronavirus ? | Sonia Shah | 2020 | Contre les pandémies, l’écologie | Pandémie | |
| 48 | ENG | It’s hard to fool a nose | Ann-Sophie Barwich | 2020 | Our nose is an underrated sensor | Nose | |
| 49 | FRA, ENG | Data geopolitics | Various sources | 2017-2020 | Data | Un petit livre de lectures | |
| 50 | ENG | COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries | Jonathan Kay | 2020 | COVID | Learn about ballistic transmission of viruses |
| Number | Language | Title | Author(s) | Year of publication | Genre & comments | Download link | Other |
| 51 | ENG | Who was Jack Tar | Stephen Taylor | 2020 | About the history of ordinary seamen | JackTar | Jack Tar was the nickmname or plain sailors |
| 52 | ENG, DEU | Covid-19 disinformation made in China and Russia | Assembled by Wergosum from different sources | 2020 | MoreXiDisinfo | ||
| 53 | ENG | Is a Long-Dismissed Forgery Actually the Oldest Known Biblical Manuscript? | Jennifer Schuessler | 2021 | Shapira | Reads like a spy story… | |
| 54 | ENG | We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic | Antone Martinho-Truswell | 2020 | Ritual | Please be seated. It’s dinner time in St Paul’s College, Sydney… | |
| 55 | FRA | Santé publique dans le Japon Meiji | Hashino Yukinori | 2020 | Deux textes sur l’ origine de la santé publique au Japon | Korori | |
| 56 | ENG | The Looming Bank Collapse | Frank Partnoy | 2020 | The U.S. financial system could be on the cusp of calamity | USBanksBye | The collapse of the global financial system is the most forecast collapse on the web |
| 57 | ENG | Fiona Hill on Trump, Putin and populism | Julian Borger | 2020 | Fiona Hill was the White House’s top Russia expert catapulted to fame by Trump’s impeachment | Fiona | A knowledgeable, respectable and respected expert |
| 58 | DEU | China gräbt halb Asien das Wasser ab | Arne Perras | 2020 | China has a long history of not giving a damn about their neighbours… | Wasser | Want a proof? They are not eben members of the Mekong River Commission |
| 59 | ENG | Is India a military superpower or a Paper Tiger? | Alex Gatopoulos | 2021 | After decades of underinvestment, India’s military forces have been in decline… | India military | … but it isn’t all bad news for the country. |
| 60 | ENG | Ten computer codes that transformed science | Jeffrey M. Perkel | 2021 | From Fortran to arXiv.org… | Codes | |
| 61 | ENG | Soil Carbon Storage | Todd A. Ontl & Lisa A. Schulte | 2021 | A completely underrated and neglected option for carbon storage | Soil Carbon | If only CoP delegates knew anything about science… |
| 62 | ENG | The Tyranny Of Time | Joe Zadeh | 2021 | The clock is deeply political, benefitting some and marginalizing others | Clock | This is amply covered elsewhere in this blog |
| 63 | ENG | The snitch | Jordan Michael Smith | 2021 | A true story of cops and snitches | Snitch | How can one be sure of the loyalty of snitches? |
| 64 | ENG | Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House | Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh | 2021 | Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere in US democracy | Kremlin | … as if Trump were not enough to undermine US democracy! |
| 65 | FRA | La femme la plus recherchée de Grande- Bretagne a blanchi un milliard de livres sterling et a disparu dans la nature | Lydia Spencer-Elliott | 2021 | The story of Sarah Panitzke | Sarah | Unfortunately, she was arrested in June 2022. See the story on The guardian |
| 66 | FRA | Gestion du Covid 19: deux clans, deux visions antagonistes | Bernard Sellier | 2021 | Petit survol synthétique des nouveaux conflits créés par la COVID | Sellier | Du bon et du n’ importe quoi |
| 67 | ENG | The metapolitics of the noosphere | William Irwin Thompson | 2016 | Metapolitics | Some people cast their net so wide that they catch mostly thin air | |
| 68 | ENG | The Brain Doesn’t Think the Way You Think It Does | Jordana Cepelewicz | 2021 | Brain | ||
| 69 | ENG | Pro-PRC Influence Campaign Expands to Dozens of Social Media Platforms, Websites, and Forums | Ryan Serabian, Lee Foster | 2021 | PRC | The Chinese try to control people also outside of China. | |
| 70 | ENG | A theory of my own mind | Stephen M Fleming | 2021 | Self-awareness is not necessarily straightforward… | Mind | |
| 71 | ENG | The World’s Most Famous Private Detective Makes No Apologies | Simon Shuster | 2021 | The world’ s most famous detective is called Jules Kroll | Kroll | You will be forgiven if you grew up believing the most famous detective was Belgian |
| 72 | ENG | Peter Thiel’s Origin Story | Max Chafkin | 2021 | A Silicon Valley Guru with an ideology | Thiel | Whether you like him or not makes no difference! |
| 73 | ENG | Slavery en famille | Emma Rothschild | 2021 | Slavery | Divisions between social categories can be porous | |
| 74 | ENG | How to pray to a dead god? | Ed Simon | 2021 | God remains dead. But our need for transcendence lives on | Dead god | |
| 75 | ENG | How disruptions happen | David Potter | 2021 | Major disruptions in world history follow a clear pattern | Disruption | Is the pattern relevant for future disruptions ? |
| 76 | FRA | L’erreur avec le lit de soins intensifs | Michael Schilliger | 2021 | COVID, encore! | Erreur | Le titre dit erreur mais on aurait pu dire horreur |
| 77 | FRA | A lieu de nous acharner, apprenons à nous contenter d’être des amateurs | Xenia Hanusiakis | 2022 | Amateurs | ||
| 78 | ENG | Evolution ‘Landscapes’ Predict What’s Next for COVID Virus | Carrie Arnold | 2022 | The method hints at how the pandemic might progress | Landscape | Don’t be fooled: this is old ecological thinking that applies well beyond current fashions |
| 79 | ENG | Cracking the Cretan code | Ester Salgarella | 2022 | Can linguistic analysis unlock the meaning of Linear A? | LinearA | Interesting reading, burt don’ t expect a breakthrough |
| 80 | ENG | China’s Surveillance State | Isabelle Qian, Muyi Xiao, Paul Mozur and Alexander Cardia | 2022 | A Times investigation based on over 100,000 government bidding documents | Xispying | Xi is obviously far more ambitious than Google |
| 81 | FRA, ENG | Une approche philosophique du deuil peut être source de consolation | Michael Cholbiis | 2022 | La tristesse ou le chagrin qui sont au cœur du deuil sont probablement nécessaires | Deuil | |
| 82 | ENG | Why religion without belief can still make perfect sense | Philip Goff | 2022 | Religion is about more than just belief | Belief | |
| 83 | ENG | Silphion | Taras Grescoe | 2022 | Can an old Roman spice be resurrected? | Silphion | Possibly a case of de-extinction |
| 84 | FRA | Rhododendron | Field Museum | 2022 | Rhododendrons treat pollinators well | Rhododendron | |
| 85 | ENG | Longtermism | J Oliver Conroy | 2022 | How longtermists see the future… | Longtermism | … and what they want to do with it. |
| 86 | ENG | Yuri Knorozov: The Maverick Scholar Who Cracked The Maya Code | Coilin O’Connor | 2022 | A very likeable genius! | Knorozov | and I like his cat too… |
| 87 | FRA | Spinoza et le Dieu qui peut tout | Alain Gervais Ndoba | 2020 | Le Dieu de Spinoza suit les lois de la nature… | Spinoza | … ce qui le différencie des hommes de pouvoir. |
| 88 | ENG | Alexander von Humbold | Tom Niziol | 2020 | I started admiring A von Humbold and his linguist brother when I was a teenager… | Humbold | … and I still do! |