INTELLIGENCE: In the United States, 18 different U.S. agencies at the government level are engaged in intelligence activities. In 1996 there were 6 million decisions to declassify material – by 2016 this had grown to 55 million!
SHAME: The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has noble motives for her outbursts against the establishment, but she is also part of a modern trend where shame and shaming have become part of everyday politics and the often dystopian debate on social media. This book takes a closer look at shame.
USA: Donald Trump broke down established norms and led democracy astray, but he would never have reached this far, if the groundwork had not been laid by others – this new tradition of imprecise wording, secrecy and dodgy methods.
CARE: If you think reading 1800th-century British novels has little to do with the current political situation, you are wrong. Talia Schaffer shows how our thinking about care, help and health work already existed in the middle of the Victorian era.
MESSIAN THOUGHT OF VIOLENCE: From Jewish identity in New York to messianic racism in the West Bank: The controversial rabbi Meir Kahane, whose thoughts live on with certain radical settlers in the West Bank, is the subject of a new and thorough biography.
DIPLOMA: The Soviet Union and the Eastern European satellite states gained influence in the world through a so-called gift diplomacy that spawned strings of architectural beauties. By Hans Henrik Fafner
FREEDOM: Mary Wollstonecraft wanted a whole new society. Her demands for women's rights were only a consistent part of this. She put her trust in the French Revolution, and went on a red-hot attack on Edmund Burke, a former comrade-in-arms.
Cultural history: It is necessary to relinquish ownership of colonial loot. The treasures of European museums have been stolen. And what about the Cultural History Museum in Oslo – which is also on the list of museums that have Benin's stolen bronze sculptures?
BUILT NORWAY: Nazi Germany's plans for Norway were extensive. We were to become part of the Great Germanic Empire. In the years 1940–1945, large parts of Norway were a construction site.
EGYPT 10 YEARS AFTER: Walter Armbrust has written about the time after the first eighteen days of the revolution: If one considers the revolution on Tahrir Square in Cairo as a rite of passage, there are several good reasons why it went wrong.
SUNNI AND SJIA: The religious contradictions between the two main directions of Islam are not so great. But in conflicts between countries and groups, they are used for everything they are worth.
paternalism: Sunstein advocates active social manipulation to help us make smarter choices. In the book On Freedom, he questions whether free choice actually promotes human welfare.
GEOLOGY: Everyone can and should learn more about geology, says Marcia Bjornerud. However, her well-intentioned attempts to bring the subject's insights to life are on the rise.