‘Nexus’: PRH Announces New Work By Yuval Noah Harari
On September 10, Penguin Random House will publish “Nexus”, a new work by Yuval Noah Harari, in all its markets worldwide. Harari is the author of the global bestseller “Sapiens.” In “Nexus,” the historian looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has made, and unmade, our world.
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller “Sapiens,” has announced a new book that looks back at human history and examines how the sharing of information has both made and unmade our world. Penguin Random House will publish “Nexus. A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI” in all its markets worldwide on September 10. This was announced yesterday in New York by Nihar Malaviya, CEO of the Bertelsmann book subsidiary.
The original English-language edition “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI” is published in the United States by Random House, an imprint in the Random House Publishing Group. PRH will also publish “Nexus” in Canada, the UK, India, South Africa, Australia, Spain, Latin America, Brazil and Portugal. The German-language edition will be published by Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, and as an audiobook by Hörverlag.
In “Nexus,” Harari draws on a fascinating range of historical examples from the Stone Age, through the Bible, to early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, to give us a revelatory framework with which 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 and impose order, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face today.
Says Harari: “We are living through the most profound information revolution in human history, but we can’t understand it unless we understand what has come before. History, after all, isn’t the study of the past–it is the study of change. It teaches us what remains the same, what changes, and how things change. History is not deterministic, however, and ‘Nexus’ doesn’t argue that understanding the past enables us to predict the future. My goal is to show that by making informed choices, we can still prevent the worst outcomes. Because if we can’t change the future, then why waste time discussing it?”
Penguin Random House CEO Malaviya adds: “‘NEXUS’ is the perfect book for the age in which we are living, and the precarious place in which we find ourselves right now. Yuval Harari gives us a brilliant historical framework to understand this moment and, crucially, to think about what we might do, before it’s too late. It’s clear, urgent, and compelling–a major work from one of our foremost thinkers, and a book that will stand the test of time.”
Britta Egetemeier, Executive Publisher of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, says: “‘Nexus’, like Yuval Noah Harari’s world bestseller ‘Sapiens’ gives a completely new perspective on history. The question of how we, humankind, obtain information and with whom we share it is not only a key to better understanding our present, but also crucial for our future, especially for the future of democracies worldwide. We are very excited to significantly enrich the debate on how we as a society intend to deal with artificial intelligence with the publication of ‘Nexus’.”
Prof. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the global bestselling author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,” the graphic adaptation series “Sapiens: A Graphic History,” and “Unstoppable Us,” his first series of books for children. His books have sold over 45 million copies in 65 languages, with “Sapiens” alone selling 25 million copies since it was first published in 2013. A New York Times and Sunday Times #1 bestseller, “Sapiens” has spent over 220 weeks on the “New York Times” bestseller list, and its success continues unbroken on Germany’s “Spiegel” bestseller lists, where “Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit” has been going strong for 350 consecutive weeks.
