review
Klein’s detailed three-part exploration of human behaviour in the face of disaster – whether it is climate change, AI or the ageing global population – pairs scientific findings and historical examples to illustrate how humankind has not always acted in its own best interests.
Stefan Klein is one of Germany’s foremost cognitive science writers and has already made a name for himself in the English-speaking world. Two prominent examples of his translations into English are: Survival of the Nicest: How Altruism Made Us Human and Why It Pays to Get Along published by The Experiment and The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy – and What We Can Do to Get Happier published by Balance. Other titles have been published by Penguin and Hachette.
His latest foray into human behaviour looks at both positive and negative examples of how people behave in crisis situations. The main section of A New Dawn follows what Klein calls ‘the seven illusions of progress.’ Klein offers historical anecdotes that provide accessible summaries of centuries of scientific research into human behaviour, dissecting and expanding on these illusions. Innate human tendencies, such as cognitive dissonance, predictive coding, the mere-exposure effect, and the impact of repetition are explored as possible reasons meaningful collective action is thwarted time and again.
The strength of Klein’s book lies in his ability to apply theories, such as those of the mathematician John Nash, to demonstrate that free individuals acting in a free market will not necessarily act in their own best interests. Citing the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ from game theory, in which two individuals are asked to either cooperate or betray one another, Klein shows that because neither prisoner knows how the other will act, each chooses not to cooperate to minimize personal loss. Klein then extends this thought experiment to the topic of climate change, an issue on which we must act collectively and where individual effort may appear futile.
Stefan Klein’s prose is in the tradition of the best English-language non-fiction writers, such as Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker and Michael Pollan. His latest book is not a doomscroll through the future: instead, by analysing the drivers of human behaviour and showing that current tendencies are not the exception but the rule, he proposes a potentially effective way forward for modern societies. In doing so, this accessible book sheds some light on the more confounding aspects of humanity’s behaviour.
Sold in Korea (ACROSS).
Find out more: https://www.fischerverlage.de/verlag/rights/book/stefan-klein-aufbruch-9783103976137
All recommendations from Spring 2025