GAZA: Morten Strøksnes has chosen an unconventional and gifted approach by describing the first 366 days of the war in the form of a long series of roughly chronologically arranged bullet points, which together become a representation of the war's architecture.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The main message of Annie Jacobsen's book is to demonstrate how terrible a nuclear war would be. A nuclear war would destroy the indispensable anthropological basis for any form of high culture and technology.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Sci-fi could help us see our own times, but now we are sci-fi. Computer screens are icons of our time. Inga Strümke just received the Brage prize for this year's non-fiction book.
CAPITALISM: 'Techno-feudalism' is a global expansion with an all-consuming, limitless development of non-material phenomena. Here, social democracy can no longer make any difference, according to Yanis Varoufakis in this book.
FRIZZ: What began in the 1950s and 60s as converted cruise ships, adapted oil platforms, anti-aircraft bases, floating radio stations and abortion clinics has gained new relevance with digital technology. For the liberalist idea of being 'free', new technology is essential: smart cities, continuous online, use of crypto-currency and direct elections.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The experts say the danger of nuclear war has never been greater than right now. The danger of accidents, nuclear weapons going astray, cyber infiltration and misunderstandings has increased. Here comes a deep dialogue with the nuclear weapons philosophy, where intellectuals have tried to get a grip on the incomprehensible: the threat of the annihilation of the world. And what does Sergej A. Karaganov, foreign policy and military strategic adviser to Putin's government, say? Is the only thing we can do is to postpone the apocalypse, to avert it again and again?
INTERNET: Johann Hari points out in the book that the 'focus crisis' is directly dangerous for democracy and can contribute to forming totalitarian regimes.
PHILOSOPHY: Both the outer and the inner world are today being 'colonised'. What is the connection between the destruction of the mental landscape and the natural landscape, of the inner and outer environment? We look at this in the light of Jonathan Crary and philosophy – including Martin Heidegger.
FUTURE: Environmental disasters, global warming, crisis of civilization and planetary apocalypse have given rise to ideas about the doom of the earth and the end of time. Through a radical anthropology, a couple of authors make an attempt to restore our faith in the world.
AUTHORITARIAN: What happened after the height of freedom ideals, the fall of the Iron Curtain and Bill Clinton's fusion of liberal politics with market forces? Today, the Chinese's mastery of original Western technology and surveillance seems limitless.
Venice: This year's Art Biennale in Venice feels like the end of a human-centered era, a time where man with his invulnerability, self-sufficiency, the white man as the center of the world is under attack. Now it is the woman's turn to ask the big questions, about the sanctity of life, about connectedness, about man and technology, about what comes after "man".
ESSAY: Today, the extreme state is different than in the post-war period, when Sartre and Heidegger wrote about anxiety and authenticity. The existential threat today lies primarily in an uncertain planetary future.
INTERNET: In 2017, two-thirds of Americans received large portions of their daily news dose via social media. The coincidence of financial capitalism and information technologies creates, according to Joseph Vogl, "resentment-driven echo chambers."
WORK: Why are some "incompetent" employees deliberately set to do meaningless tasks? And are all the leaders as important as their high salaries suggest?