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  • Published: 10 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781911717096
  • Imprint: Fern Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $45.00

Nexus

A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI




From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world

From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive?

NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.

  • Published: 10 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9781911717096
  • Imprint: Fern Press
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $45.00

About the author

Yuval Noah Harari

Prof Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in World History. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has become an international phenomenon attracting a legion of fans from Bill Gates and Barack Obama to Chris Evans and Jarvis Cocker, and is published in over forty-five languages worldwide. It was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller and was in the Top Ten for over nine months in paperback. His follow-up to Sapiens, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow was also a Top Ten Bestseller and was described by the Guardian as ‘even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens’.

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Praise for Nexus

Tremendous, thought-provoking and so very well reasoned. Harari gives us a vision of a rapidly approaching future that is at one and the same time thrilling and chilling. If there is one book that I would urge everyone to read – our political, corporate and cultural leaders most especially – it is Nexus

STEPHEN FRY

Harari has a unique ability to unite both history’s finest details and its grandest megatrends in a single view. This deeply important book comes at a critical time as we all think through the implications of AI

MUSTAFA SULEYMAN

Harari is one of the most remarkable intellects of our generation – bold, original, erudite, provocative and entrancing. His latest book reimagines everything from literacy to AI and – like all his books – fundamentally shifts one’s view of the world

RORY STEWART

[Harari] sticks the world together in a gleaming shape that inspires and excites

TELEGRAPH

[An] always rewarding, often alarming book

LITERARY REVIEW

Engrossing . . . A diagnosis and a call to action . . . If [Nexus] sells anywhere near as well as Sapiens did, we’ll be that bit better equipped as a species to deal with the rise of the machines

OBSERVER

Harari's narrative is engaging, and his framing is strikingly original

ECONOMIST

A superb narrative writer

GUARDIAN

[Harari] connects past and future in a way that’s both enlightening and a little eerie. Nexus isn’t just a critique of technology; it’s a reflection on how we’ve always been vulnerable to those who control information. It’s a wake-up call in the gentlest, most urgent way

YOTAM OTTOLENGHI

An illuminating and troubling book

FINANCIAL TIMES, *BOOKS OF THE YEAR*