Wageningen Young Academy Book List 2025

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Science and universities

“Another science is possible. Manifesto for Slow Science” by Isabelle Sprengers (2017). Fast science is quick, shallow, and has a bit of a dirty taste. Slow science takes more time, makes more progress, and is more adventurous. The manifesto stimulates you to think differently about what good science is.

“Dark Academia: How Universities Die” by Peter Flemming (2021). The book critiques the neoliberal transformation of universities into corporate entities, where market logic erodes academic freedom and meaningful scholarship. The book explores how this shift fosters burnout, alienation, and the decline of intellectual life in higher education.

“When we cease to understand the world” by Benjamin Labatut (2021). The book interweaves the inscrutability of the universe and the existential consequences of scientific advancements with personal sacrifice and madness on behalf of those that wander into the unknown. The novel blends fiction and reality to produce a kind of fever-dream similar to his previous book “The MANIAC”.

AI and intelligence

“A brief history of intelligence” by Max Bennett (2023). Written by an outsider that became an insider, this book is about evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs that made our brains! Ever wondered why there is no robot (yet) that can fill your dishwasher? Read the book and you will find out more amazing things about our brains and how these have developed over time.

“21 Lessons for the 21st century” by Yuval Noah Harari (2018). A book to reflect on the current developments across the globe including the developments in biotechnology and AI. Will liberalism survive the 21st century? Why are we on earth? Will we become cyborgs? How do we tackle the big global issues of our time? Curious?! Read the book and you may find more questions… and certainly some good anecdotes and facts about humanity.

“Nexus” by Yuval Noah Harari (2024). A reflection on the power and flows of information and how different information technologies (stories, print, internet, AI) have affected societies. What is needed for a democracy or centralized autocracy to function? And how can we expect AI to affect this?

"From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds" by Daniel Dennett (2017). Not the quickest read, but very interesting in the debate about what intelligence is and how smart/dumb AI is, or perhaps, how our "intelligence" may not be that differentfrom an LLM pattern recognition machine after all. A humbling and cautionary thought.

“The Feel of Algorithms” by Minna Ruckenstein (2023). This book draws out how political and economic dimensions of algorithms are experienced in the everyday. It offers different perspectives on studying emotions, whilst also reconceptualizing the politics of algorithmic knowledge in embodied, relational terms.

Historical accounts and novels

“Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories” by Amitav Ghosh (2024). The book uncovers the history of how opium shaped the world, where colonialism, unequal trade and imperialism play an important role. While these topics can be somewhat dense, the book is very well written and thus quite engaging, particularly because Amitav Gosh blends macro developments with individual histories of how different people were affected by the trade of this drug.

“Segu” by Maryse Condé (2017). Timeless and epic novel about how different religions (Christianity, Islam) sweep over the African continent. Different cultural values, racism, colonialism all made very tangible in the fates of a noble Bambara family.

“An inventory of Losses” by Judith Schalansky (2021). The book is a poetic and reflective collection of twelve essays, each mourning a lost place, object, or cultural artifact. What echoes do what we lost in the past generate in the present? Blending fact and fiction, the book meditates on memory, absence, and the ways we reconstruct what is gone through storytelling.

“Into the Silence” by Wade Davis (2012). This book explains the fascinating history of British mountaineers trying to climb the Mount Everest shortly after World War I. Three expeditions were launched. George Mallory died during his third attempt to reach the peak, did he die before or after he reached the top?

‘What-if?’ futures

“Captured futures” by Maarten Hajer and Jeroen Oomen (2025). In this radical age, environmental politics ‘as we know it’ cannot deliver. To change this, a new, cultural approach to environmental politics is suggested, which focuses on inspiring ideas about the future that liberate environmental politics.

“Die Hungrigen und die Satten” (English: The Hungry and the Fat) by Timur Vermes (2018). Satirical novel situated in the near future about the way EU/German society deals with migration from Africa. Just like his first and famous book, “Er ist wieder da” (English: Look who's back; Dutch: Daar is hij weer), it's full of humor and sharp observations of German society. Also interesting to reflect on the responses of different countries in the light of the historical events of the past few years.

“This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein (2015). The book argues that the climate crisis is rooted in unchecked capitalism and market-driven policies. The book calls for systemic change, advocating bold, collective action to confront both ecological breakdown and economic injustice.

“Imagination: A Manifesto” by Ruha Benjamin (2024). The manifesto diagnoses contemporary society as experiencing a ‘crisis of imagination’: the tyranny of dominant imaginaries makes it hard to imagine futures that are radically different from the present. The book seeds alternative futures, grounded in solidarity and interdependence.