News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff

2026

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky follows Rodion Raskolnikov, a destitute student in St. Petersburg who murders a pawnbroker, believing himself morally justified. Consumed by guilt and paranoia, he unravels psychologically while evading suspicion. Encounters with others—especially the compassionate Sonya—push him toward confession. Ultimately, he admits his crime and is sentenced to Siberia, where suffering opens the possibility of moral redemption and spiritual renewal.

2026

In Lectures in Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov criticizes Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as melodramatic and philosophically crude. He dismisses Rodion Raskolnikov as an unconvincing intellectual and rejects the novel’s moral-religious framework as heavy-handed. Nabokov values aesthetic precision over psychological or ideological depth, arguing Dostoevsky sacrifices artistic control for sensationalism. He prefers authors like Leo Tolstoy, seeing Dostoevsky’s popularity as rooted more in emotional excess than true literary craftsmanship.

2026

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond argues that global inequalities arose from environmental differences, not racial superiority. Eurasia’s east–west axis, domesticable plants and animals, and dense populations enabled early agriculture, technology, and immunity to diseases. These advantages led to guns, germs, and steel—tools of conquest that allowed Eurasian societies to dominate others. Geography, rather than innate human differences, shaped the uneven development of civilizations.

2026

Flesh (2025) by David Szalay traces the life of István, a taciturn Hungarian man whose impulsive decisions carry him from troubled youth and poverty to unexpected wealth and social status in London. Despite outward success, he remains emotionally detached, shaped by trauma, instinct, and physical experience. Sparely written and episodic, the novel explores masculinity, alienation, class, and the limits of language in capturing inner life.

2026

A collection of linked stories about American soldiers in the Vietnam War. It explores not only the physical items they carry—like weapons, letters, and photos—but also emotional burdens such as fear, guilt, love, and trauma. Blending fact and fiction, the book examines memory, storytelling, and the psychological impact of war, showing how soldiers struggle to make sense of their experiences both during and after combat.

2026

Assembly by Natasha Brown is a short, sharp novel about a successful black British woman navigating corporate finance, wealth, race, and power in contemporary Britain. As she prepares to attend her boyfriend’s elite family gathering, she reflects on the personal costs of assimilation, ambition, and structural inequality. The book blends social critique with intimate self-examination, questioning success, belonging, and what it means to live within systems built to exclude you.

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).

penguin.co.uk

2026

[The soldier] was crying, trying to look away while I tried not to look. Michael Herr, Dispatches. 

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. Exceptionally brilliant.

Herr later co-wrote Apocalypse Now, a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

panmacmillan.com

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.

simonandschuster.com

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.

penguin.co.uk