Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today

An electrifying, thought-provoking exploration of how the digital era is reshaping our world, by bestselling, Women's Prize-winning writer Naomi Alderman.

What's the most useful thing you could know about your own life?

In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns to a question that affects us all—how do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we're living through?

The internet has flooded us with more knowledge, opinions, ideas, and opportunities, as well as verbal attacks and misinformation, than ever before. It lets us learn more quickly and also spread falsehoods more quickly; it brings us together and also divides us in countless new ways. There is no going back. But we have been here before. In fact, this is humanity's third information crisis.

The first, the invention of writing 5,000 years ago, and the second, the invention of the printing press 600 years ago, drastically reshaped our perceptions, interactions, and mental landscapes in ways that feel acutely familiar. Overwhelmed by information, people become afraid and angry, unsettled and distressed, as well as more knowledgeable, educated, and curious.

By looking at those previous information crises, both the turmoil and the advances, Alderman asks what we can learn from the past to better understand our present, and how this might help us chart a way forward (once again) through the turbulent seas of information overload.