Readings

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Pearson France, November 2024, 632 pages, €29.90. Translated from English by Christophe Jaquet. Original title: *Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity* (PublicAffairs, May...

France's Social Debt, 1974–2024 by Nicolas Dufourcq

Nicolas Dufourcq dirige Bpifrance depuis sa création en 2013. Polytechnicien (X 1983), diplômé de l'ENA, il a occupé des postes de direction à la Caisse nationale d'assurance maladie (CNAM), chez Cap

In Bluebeard's Castle by George Steiner: When Culture Did Not Prevent Barbarism

The Dark Enlightenment: Neoreactionary Thought at the Heart of American Power

Arnaud Miranda, a researcher specializing in radical ideologies, publishes with "The Dark Enlightenment" a detailed mapping of neoreactionary thought.

Progress by the Numbers: Anatomy of Steven Pinker's *Enlightenment Now*

In a media landscape dominated by decline narratives, Steven Pinker's *Enlightenment Now* presents a provocative defense of modernity's founding ideals through 75 charts and massive statistical documentation. The cognitive psychologist argues that reason, science, and humanism have driven measurable improvements in human welfare worldwide, though critics challenge his selective optimism and interpretation of data.

Johan Norberg's *Peak Human*: Seven Golden Ages to Understand Our Own

Johan Norberg is a Swedish liberal and a researcher at the Cato Institute in Washington. He published *Progress* in 2016, *Open* in 2020, and *The Capitalist Manifesto* in 2023. Each book defends the same central thesis: open societies that welcome foreign ideas, trade, and intellectual freedom prosper.

Book Review: *Abundance* by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Ezra Klein is an opinion columnist for *The New York Times* and host of *The Ezra Klein Show* podcast. Derek Thompson is a staff writer at *The Atlantic* and author of *Hit Makers* (2017). Together, they published an essay in March 2025 that dominated American political debate for months. Their thesis can be summarized in one sentence: the American left has regulated so much that it no longer knows how to build...

Hannah Ritchie's First Generation: Environmental Optimism Armed with Data

CO₂ per capita has decreased in 30 countries since 2005. Solar power is 99% cheaper than in 1976. Indoor air pollution has fallen by 45% since 1990. Hannah Ritchie compiles this data in First Generation and asks a simple question: why does environmental fatalism persist in the face of facts?