New year is reading time. We asked our readers about their favorite books in 2021.
The “Welt” journalist Robin Alexander describes in an exceptionally precise report the agony of the last Merkel years, the wooing of the epigones who jumped too short for power, the chaos that the spider queen registered calmly with her kitchen cabinet.
The author describes the last years of the Chancellor as a driven woman who would have loved to stop in 2017, but stayed because of all the unreasonable demands of Donald Trump. And then there was also the Corona cause. Alexander’s résumé: “There has never been so much state, but also never so much state failure.” The glorification of their era will certainly follow.
From 2015 to 2020, she reported from Tehran as a correspondent for ARD – until the Federal Foreign Office issued a travel warning for Natalie Amiri. It feared that the German-Iranian could be taken as a political hostage. That did not prevent Amiri from doing her work. In her book “Zwischen den Welten” (Between the Worlds) she wants to give the people of Iran a voice, wants to tell of everyday life in a country between forbidden parties and US sanctions, of resigned Iranians whose corrupt ruling elite have a dissolute lifestyle while complying with pseudo-Islamic regulations be shackled. A brave book by a brave woman.
From technological progress
Azeem Azhar: exponential.
Random House Business
New York 2021
352 pages
24.65 euros
Technological advances are increasing, both at work and in everyday life. Keeping up is not always easy for the human mind – and consequently also for companies, jobs and democracy. That’s the exponential divide that entrepreneur and investor Azeem Azhar writes about. In “Exponential” he explains how technologies have changed human existence and describes an integrative, sustainable system that can close this gap. The book was named Book of the Year by the Times and Financial Times.
The gateway to success: With your head through the wall
Alex Banayan: The gateway to success.
Finanzbuch Verlag
Munich 2021
352 pages
18.99 euros
For seven years, Alex Banayan interviewed successful people like Bill Gates and Lady Gaga to ask them about their recipes for success. Banayan is not a reporter or businessman, but a simple medical student who was consistently two-minus in school. The normal against the elite – “The Gate to Success” lives from this contrast as well as from Banayan’s amusing, personable, and annoying persistence. The most important lesson from his loving book of success is: The easiest way through the door is seldom the most successful. Sometimes you have to push your head through the wall.
Timelessly irrational
Gustave Le Bon: Psychology of the Masses.
Translation: Rudolf Eisler
Alfred Kröner Publishing House
Stuttgart 2021
198 pages
12 euros
First published in 1895, the Alfred Kröner Verlag granted Gustave Le Bon’s work a new edition. It is considered the cornerstone of mass psychology. Its effect on posterity was great – scientifically on Sigmund Freud and Max Weber, politically especially on National Socialism. Adolf Hitler is said to have aligned his propaganda strategy accordingly. But, according to reader Stefan Lohr: “If everyone had read this book, they would have recognized how they were manipulated. A timeless work. ”It can be applied to almost all mass phenomena – and probably also explains how the anti-vaccination campaigners managed to gain so many followers.
Plea for equality
Bernardine Evaristo: girls, women etc.
Translation: Tanja Handels.
Tropen Verlag
Berlin 2021
512 pages
25 euros
Twelve women who could hardly be more different and who have a lot in common. Last but not least, their skin color. Bernardine Evaristo, herself dark-skinned, draws a subtle, multi-layered portrait of each of these women and thus holds up a mirror to western society in terms of equality, self-determination and humanity. “Evaristo’s exploration of modern society is done with a gentleness and with the understanding that misunderstandings do not always involve hostility,” writes reader Susanne Koch. “In Evaristo’s worldview we find a tolerance that is unfortunately missing in many debates today.”
Powerful family novel
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads.
Translation: Bettina Abarbanell
Rowohlt Publishing House
Hamburg 2021
832 pages
28 euros
Even the elaboration of the characters is a pleasure: Russ and Marion Hildebrandt, he evangelical pastor in a liberal US suburb, she with an ominous life of her own, are facing the end of the marriage. Her eldest son, Clem, who is actually a pacifist, wants to go to war. His sister Becky, a crush on boys, drifts into the musical culture of the era, and her younger brother Perry, gifted, sells drugs to seventh graders but wants to be a better person. Actually, says Jonathan Franzen, he doesn’t plan his novels exactly, many things come about spontaneously. Maybe that’s exactly what makes Crossroads great.
Management as a science
Adam Grant: Think Again.
Translation: Ursula Pesch.
Piper Publishing House
Munich 2021
368 pages
22 euros
The US organizational psychologist Adam Grant is convinced: Modern managers have to think scientifically. Set up hypotheses, use data as a basis for decision-making and, if in doubt, discard ideas and rethink – just “think again”.
The first managers like Merck boss and physician Belén Garijo are already living according to this new credo. And they should be more successful, according to Grant, than the old type of Polter boss, whose blood pressure was always a little too high. A must-have for every CEO bookshelf – with a smile guarantee. The book will also be available in German from the end of January.
Humanity in motion
Parag Khanna: Move.
Translation: Norbert Juraschitz, Karsten Petersen.
Rowohlt Berlin
Berlin 2021
448 pages
24 euros
Man is not made to be permanently settled. That seems to have been forgotten, especially in times of lower mobility due to Corona. The Indian-American political scientist Parag Khanna recalls this in “Move”. His thesis: people will – have to redistribute themselves on earth in the coming decades. Climate change, demographic imbalances, different speeds of modernization: according to Khanna, these factors will cause mankind to move again. Khanna explains how this can work.
Appeal to your own motivation
Wolf Lotter: Make an effort!
Ecowin Publishing House
Salzburg 2021
128 pages
18 euros
We don’t learn for school, but for life! Who hasn’t heard this saying before ?! Wolf Lotter goes one step further: Because we do not learn for just any life, but for ours. “Give your best. Do it for yourself! ”He writes. In order to achieve top performance, everyone should encourage themselves – even if it seems easier to work according to the instructions of others. Lotter proclaims motivation and personal commitment to be the core competencies of the future. The co-founder of the business magazine “Brand Eins” only needs 128 pages to get rid of an appeal that is dead.
Keep a Cool Head
Sebastian Purps-Pardigol: Living with a Brain.
Campus publishing house
Frankfurt 2021
248 pages
22 euros
Turning on your head can never hurt. However, it is not always easy to keep a clear head in tricky situations, including at work. For his new book, author and coach Sebastian Purps-Pardigol spoke to people about how they can direct their thoughts so that they stay calm even in difficult situations. These are not talks with scientists, but with people from the field: a hostage negotiator from the police, peace mediators from the United Nations and a Buddhist monk. Purps-Pardigol deduces from this how it can work with a fulfilled, self-determined life.
Three words for success
Bodo Schäfer: I can do it.
Dtv publishing company
Munich 2021
256 pages
20 Euros
Bodo Schäfer knows how to write bestsellers. With “The Path to Financial Freedom” he even achieved a global success more than 20 years ago. The German-language edition alone sold more than two million copies. “A Dog Called Money,” the children’s version, was even at the top of the sales list in China. Even then, Bodo Schäfer emphasized that a lot depends on personal attitudes. He continues this in his new book “I can do that”. Three words that, according to Schäfer, lay the foundation for the self-confidence of every individual. However, his optimism is so great that it appears a bit suspicious to the reader.
Climate crisis as a real-time thriller
Frank Schätzing: What if we just save the world?
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Cologne 2021
336 pages
20 Euros
Strictly speaking, the latest creation by the successful author Frank Schätzing belongs to the genre of non-fiction. If you take a closer look, the almost 340-page book on climate change is a colorful mixture of reference work, personal essay, crime thriller and play – a real-time thriller, and we’re all right in the middle of it. Much of this has been heard over the past two years. But instead of writing down the facts dryly, Schätzing succeeds in a surprisingly relaxed and, above all, sarcastic tone, in bringing tension to a topic that is simply beyond grasp for many people outside of studies.
Three families, three cultures
Daniel Bacon: Jaffa Road
Fischer paperback
Frankfurt 2021
672 pages
16.99 euros
Nina, an archaeologist from Berlin, her Jewish aunt Joëlle from Paris and Elias, a Palestinian the two women have never heard of, are sitting in a villa in Palermo. He claims to be the son of Nina’s grandfather Moritz. And so the three of them begin to work through their German-Jewish-Palestinian family history. “Jaffa Road” is a history lesson full of lightness with which Daniel Speck picks up on his previous novel “Piccola Sicilia”, in which he introduced the now deceased Moritz Reincke. “The two best books I’ve read in the last few years,” writes reader Andreas Siemek.
More: Reading material for the end of the year: These eight books are worthwhile