Aaron's Books of 2025

Name: Aaron's Books of 2025
Brand: Novara Media
Price: 67.5 GBP
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Save 10% with this book bundle, curated by Aaron Bastani
All proceeds directly fund our people-powered, independent journalism
100% recyclable packaging sourced from Kite Packaging, a worker-owned, carbon-neutral certified company

Aaron Bastani’s top literary picks of 2025 probe China’s ‘engineering state’, the underbelly of AI, and the gripping history of British euroscepticism that formed the undercurrents behind Brexit. All writers have been interviewed on Novara Media’s own Downstream, offering a platter of astute political and economic analysis interrogating moments and themes that are set to define the 21st century. Don’t just take it from us, but in Aaron’s own words:

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future - Dan Wang

As recently as 1997, as Hong Kong was returned to China, Britain manufactured more cars than the Asian power. Fast forward to today, and the latter is the world’s leading exporter of vehicles and is producing some of the world’s most impressive EVs. In a growing number of industries, from renewables to robotics, it is the global number one. That success, combined with a sense of political and economic inertia across much of the West is, for the first in over half a century, raising questions about the advantages of various economic systems. Is China creating a successor model to that of the free market? Is it actually ‘communist’? And, even if it isn’t, what might we learn from Beijing to help solve the great challenges of our time?

Empire of AI - Karen Hao

Journalism is the first draft of history. Hao’s book goes beyond that, however, with her previous coverage of OpenAI, and a burgeoning AI sector in the United States, augmented here by dozens of interviews from OpenAI staff - both past and present. She also speaks to hundreds of people across the tech industry. Hao studied with the object of her study at MIT, and brings authority as not only a wise observer, but someone deeply familiar with the ideals and presumptions of those people remaking our world: Silicon Valley. Who are these masters of the universe, really?

Between The Waves - Tom McTague

Brexit happened in 2016 - and it finally became real after 2020. But the political and intellectual currents behind it were decades in the making. In this gripping history of British euroscepticism, McTague examines the thinkers, events and ideas that led to the country’s departure from the European Union. And it all starts in Algiers, in 1943 - with Jean Monnet, Harold Macmillan, Charles De Gaulle and Enoch Powell all being in the North African city at the same time.

Author bios

Aaron Bastani is a co-founder, Director and Contributing Editor at Novara Media. He holds a PhD from the New Political Communication Unit, University of London, examining social movements in the digital environment which fail to correspond to the traditional logic of collective action. His research interests include new media, social movements, asymmetric strategies and post-scarcity political economy. He has written for Vice, London Review of Books, Guardian and Open Democracy.

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series. She was formerly a tech reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Dan Wang is a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University. He was previously a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, working in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. Dan is the author of an annual letter from China and has published essays in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, New York Magazine and the Atlantic.

Ethical policy

All of our packaging is from Kite Packaging, a worker-owned company committed to minimising their impact on the environment at every step of production.

To make it as easy as possible to reuse or recycle the packaging once your order arrives, everything is packed in recyclable materials which can be recycled in standard council-issued recycling bins. Our void filling packaging is either recyclable cardboard or reused bubble wrap from previous orders.

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