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Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today
In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns her boundless curiosity and incisive thinking to explore the epoch we’re living through, an epoch she calls the "Information Crisis." The internet has flooded us with more knowledge, opinions, ideas, and opportunities as well as verbal attacks, disinformation, 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 new ways. It is now the lens through which we perceive and understand the world.
There is no going back, but we have been here before: 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 prepare for our future.
There is no going back, but we have been here before: 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 prepare for our future.
145 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 13, 2025
48 people are currently reading
908 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Alderman
42 books4,539 followersNaomi Alderman (born 1974 in London) is a British author and novelist.
Alderman was educated at South Hampstead High School and Lincoln College, Oxford where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She then went on to study creative writing at the University of East Anglia before becoming a novelist.
She was the lead writer for Perplex City, an Alternate reality game, at Mind Candy from 2004 through June, 2007.[1]
Her father is Geoffrey Alderman, an academic who has specialised in Anglo-Jewish history. She and her father were interviewed in The Sunday Times "Relative Values" feature on 11 February 2007.[2]
Her literary debut came in 2006 with Disobedience, a well-received (if controversial) novel about a rabbi's daughter from North London who becomes a lesbian, which won her the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers.
Since its publication in the United Kingdom, it has been issued in the USA, Germany, Israel, Holland, Poland and France and is due to be published in Italy, Hungary and Croatia.
She wrote the narrative for The Winter House, an online, interactive yet linear short story visualized by Jey Biddulph. The project was commissioned by Booktrust as part of the Story campaign, supported by Arts Council England. [3]
Alderman was educated at South Hampstead High School and Lincoln College, Oxford where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She then went on to study creative writing at the University of East Anglia before becoming a novelist.
She was the lead writer for Perplex City, an Alternate reality game, at Mind Candy from 2004 through June, 2007.[1]
Her father is Geoffrey Alderman, an academic who has specialised in Anglo-Jewish history. She and her father were interviewed in The Sunday Times "Relative Values" feature on 11 February 2007.[2]
Her literary debut came in 2006 with Disobedience, a well-received (if controversial) novel about a rabbi's daughter from North London who becomes a lesbian, which won her the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers.
Since its publication in the United Kingdom, it has been issued in the USA, Germany, Israel, Holland, Poland and France and is due to be published in Italy, Hungary and Croatia.
She wrote the narrative for The Winter House, an online, interactive yet linear short story visualized by Jey Biddulph. The project was commissioned by Booktrust as part of the Story campaign, supported by Arts Council England. [3]
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 23, 2025
Don't Burn Anyone at the Stake Today is a short book that's really more of a long opinion piece. It might have helped if I'd read some of Naomi Alderman's other writings before diving into this, or maybe if I'd read it as a physical book rather than an audiobook. Unacquainted as I was with the author or her usual writing style, her narration came off kind of smug. Not burning her at the stake for saying so - god forbid! - but it did get sort of grating after a while.
Delivery notwithstanding, I admire what Alderman tried to do here. The way she articulated her ideas absolutely resonated with me, and I do hope the term "information crisis" as a descriptor for our current age catches on. I just thought there were one too many moments were she overstepped her bounds. While parts of this book were thought-provoking, others were frustratingly ill-realised, almost sketchy, yet broadly sweeping. Others still were delivered in a factual tone that belied their speculative origins. ("Forms" of the printing press existed in China and Korea, but it was phonetic alphabets that "really" revolutionised writing technology? Okay...)
Regardless, reading (or listening to) this book is probably worth your time if these are issues you care about. But maybe borrow it from your local library - you know, those institutions whose models Alderman wishes tech companies would integrate into their products, but whose existence she doesn't defend anywhere near as ardently as the BBC.
My thanks to Penguin Audio and Libro.fm for the ALC.
Delivery notwithstanding, I admire what Alderman tried to do here. The way she articulated her ideas absolutely resonated with me, and I do hope the term "information crisis" as a descriptor for our current age catches on. I just thought there were one too many moments were she overstepped her bounds. While parts of this book were thought-provoking, others were frustratingly ill-realised, almost sketchy, yet broadly sweeping. Others still were delivered in a factual tone that belied their speculative origins. ("Forms" of the printing press existed in China and Korea, but it was phonetic alphabets that "really" revolutionised writing technology? Okay...)
Regardless, reading (or listening to) this book is probably worth your time if these are issues you care about. But maybe borrow it from your local library - you know, those institutions whose models Alderman wishes tech companies would integrate into their products, but whose existence she doesn't defend anywhere near as ardently as the BBC.
My thanks to Penguin Audio and Libro.fm for the ALC.
November 16, 2025
Such a fascinating read, sad it came to an end! Naomi offers us a guide on how to keep sane during an age of information crisis. It puts you off social media for sure!
December 20, 2025
An interesting and relevant read for today. Naomi posits that we would benefit from knowing the name of our 'era' historians will one day use to describe these times, so that we might ajust accordingly. She puts her money on 'The Informtation Crisis', though this is, in fact, the third such crisis we have dealt with. First came the written word. And then came the printing press. And now we have the dawn of the internet, social media and generative AI.
Naomi disusses how our access to information reshapes our perceptions and interactions of one another at a very basic level. Where once letters were symbols representing the people behind them, we have somehow flipped it, and the people are now mere symbols presented by the letters we write about them. It is easier to hate an anonymous face on the other side of the screen than to face it head on.
She touches on history, misinformation, conspiracy theories and the radical adoption of 'cancel culture' that boxes people up from a young age and refuses to let them grow, adapt or change.
Ultimately, Naomi talks about the power of coexisting. The power of accepting that someone might have a different interpretation of a really old book, and not condemning them to a horrifically painful death because of it. Given recent news here in Australia, this seems like an important lesson for everyone to learn.
Naomi's writing is engaging, humourous and even self deprecating. She has a powerful mind and her ability to look behind to see ahead is something we should all aspire to.
Naomi disusses how our access to information reshapes our perceptions and interactions of one another at a very basic level. Where once letters were symbols representing the people behind them, we have somehow flipped it, and the people are now mere symbols presented by the letters we write about them. It is easier to hate an anonymous face on the other side of the screen than to face it head on.
She touches on history, misinformation, conspiracy theories and the radical adoption of 'cancel culture' that boxes people up from a young age and refuses to let them grow, adapt or change.
Ultimately, Naomi talks about the power of coexisting. The power of accepting that someone might have a different interpretation of a really old book, and not condemning them to a horrifically painful death because of it. Given recent news here in Australia, this seems like an important lesson for everyone to learn.
Naomi's writing is engaging, humourous and even self deprecating. She has a powerful mind and her ability to look behind to see ahead is something we should all aspire to.
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January 13, 2026I'm glad this was short, it ran the risk of becoming quite repetitive.
An interesting read, but the feeling of 'oh my god, I should delete all my socials' was quickly overridden when my friend sent me a meme about skycards so...
An interesting read, but the feeling of 'oh my god, I should delete all my socials' was quickly overridden when my friend sent me a meme about skycards so...
November 16, 2025
Thought-provoking, gentle, observant, a book for our times which helps us breathe a little and think. I loved it.
January 9, 2026
Never been quite so motivated to write a review lol
To preface, when I saw this book in the shop I got Naomi Alderman and Naomi Klein confused at first but when I realised my mistake I was like okay great, I read The Power when i was a teenager and thought it was a great feminist book so this should be a good read.
It does not engage in any feminist ideas at all, not that it had to and that was my mistake but i don’t think you CAN discuss the information crisis without at least ALLUDING to the unique experiences we have with the internet … but this approach is very one-fits-all. It’s literally called Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today and it doesn’t talk about women’s unique experiences? Right….
It did cause me to revisit The Power and 9 years later I wouldn’t describe it as feminist at all, more of a tale of what would happen if the patriarchy fell and women simply stepped into their power dynamics without reordering anything other than man vs. woman. Not saying every book a woman writes has to be a feminist one but you can’t avoid it if the topic you want to write about is so central to how patriarchy operates in the 2020s (then again… isn’t everything.)
Again, when I was a teenager someone said or I read somewhere about the internet being unregulated like “the wild west” and i thought it was really profound and have since been engaging with these sort of ideas, as I’m sure a majority of us have. I wouldn’t say this book brought anything new to that conversation other than prompting me to google the author and realise why she wrote a book about people not cancelling others for what they said online 10 years ago lol…..
In sum, very surface level but I probably wouldn’t turn to this author for books with an intersectional approach anyway
To preface, when I saw this book in the shop I got Naomi Alderman and Naomi Klein confused at first but when I realised my mistake I was like okay great, I read The Power when i was a teenager and thought it was a great feminist book so this should be a good read.
It does not engage in any feminist ideas at all, not that it had to and that was my mistake but i don’t think you CAN discuss the information crisis without at least ALLUDING to the unique experiences we have with the internet … but this approach is very one-fits-all. It’s literally called Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today and it doesn’t talk about women’s unique experiences? Right….
It did cause me to revisit The Power and 9 years later I wouldn’t describe it as feminist at all, more of a tale of what would happen if the patriarchy fell and women simply stepped into their power dynamics without reordering anything other than man vs. woman. Not saying every book a woman writes has to be a feminist one but you can’t avoid it if the topic you want to write about is so central to how patriarchy operates in the 2020s (then again… isn’t everything.)
Again, when I was a teenager someone said or I read somewhere about the internet being unregulated like “the wild west” and i thought it was really profound and have since been engaging with these sort of ideas, as I’m sure a majority of us have. I wouldn’t say this book brought anything new to that conversation other than prompting me to google the author and realise why she wrote a book about people not cancelling others for what they said online 10 years ago lol…..
In sum, very surface level but I probably wouldn’t turn to this author for books with an intersectional approach anyway
November 29, 2025
Rating: 3.5 stars
I think this book captures a lot of our anxieties about the present quite well. Alderman is clearly a very captivating writer. I like how matter-of-factly her tone is, even when expressing an opinion. It feels like a very informed take overall.
However, I do believe that near the end, around chapter 10 maybe, it enters into an interesting mode of "both-sides-ism" which feels errily centrist. By recounting the anecdotal story of her friend who "has disagreed with her over a hot-topic cultural war issue for eight years" (paraphrasing), she makes a point about not abandoning people you might disagree with. Even that having the difficult conversations might actually be a way out of this information crisis. I don't know what to make of this.
On one hand, it is clear that whatever the issue is, both Naomi and her friend seem like sensible people who are invested in clean, intellectual discussion. But as someone who grew up in conservative spaces and continues to inhabit them often, not all people have the capacity to have it be so. A lot of time, taking account of the emotions of people who "disagree" with you is exhausting because unlike Alderman's friend... the other party often doesn't. I still think her overall takes on navigating these discussions are worth considering. I just feel like she may have a tunnel-vision perspective from her specific life scnerios.
Anyways, this is a book worth reading if the topic interests you.
I think this book captures a lot of our anxieties about the present quite well. Alderman is clearly a very captivating writer. I like how matter-of-factly her tone is, even when expressing an opinion. It feels like a very informed take overall.
However, I do believe that near the end, around chapter 10 maybe, it enters into an interesting mode of "both-sides-ism" which feels errily centrist. By recounting the anecdotal story of her friend who "has disagreed with her over a hot-topic cultural war issue for eight years" (paraphrasing), she makes a point about not abandoning people you might disagree with. Even that having the difficult conversations might actually be a way out of this information crisis. I don't know what to make of this.
On one hand, it is clear that whatever the issue is, both Naomi and her friend seem like sensible people who are invested in clean, intellectual discussion. But as someone who grew up in conservative spaces and continues to inhabit them often, not all people have the capacity to have it be so. A lot of time, taking account of the emotions of people who "disagree" with you is exhausting because unlike Alderman's friend... the other party often doesn't. I still think her overall takes on navigating these discussions are worth considering. I just feel like she may have a tunnel-vision perspective from her specific life scnerios.
Anyways, this is a book worth reading if the topic interests you.
January 18, 2026
At around 150 pages, a short book but one that packs a lot of ideas in.
I'd say there are two intertwined aspects of this book - one, the parallels between previous "information crises" - the inventions of writing and printing, and the evolution of the internet - along with how these differ from oral cultures. Secondly, we have a lot of discussion about how we might better navigate the internet and social media - the current information crisis.
Alderman is by no means anti-technology - she in fact embraces technology but can see the problems it can cause, even if only by tiny, imperceptible degrees that alter the way that we interact with society and look at ourselves. And the comparisons with those two earlier innovations in communication help to understand this.
I think there's a lot for us to learn and think about in here - even those of us who think ourselves internet savvy and too clever to fall into the traps of trolls and culture wars. None of us are as clever as we like to think.
This book will be going onto my bookshelf next to Jeanette Winterson's 12 Bytes - which I read a few years back and promised myself I'd read about five years hence to see how it's ideas stood up to where technology had ended up. I'll do the same with this.
I'd say there are two intertwined aspects of this book - one, the parallels between previous "information crises" - the inventions of writing and printing, and the evolution of the internet - along with how these differ from oral cultures. Secondly, we have a lot of discussion about how we might better navigate the internet and social media - the current information crisis.
Alderman is by no means anti-technology - she in fact embraces technology but can see the problems it can cause, even if only by tiny, imperceptible degrees that alter the way that we interact with society and look at ourselves. And the comparisons with those two earlier innovations in communication help to understand this.
I think there's a lot for us to learn and think about in here - even those of us who think ourselves internet savvy and too clever to fall into the traps of trolls and culture wars. None of us are as clever as we like to think.
This book will be going onto my bookshelf next to Jeanette Winterson's 12 Bytes - which I read a few years back and promised myself I'd read about five years hence to see how it's ideas stood up to where technology had ended up. I'll do the same with this.
December 3, 2025
Loved this short read from Naomi Alderman, ‘Don’t Burn anyone at the stake today.’ With an engaging writing style she explores the chaotic and stressful world many of us are currently experiencing. Alderman defines the current reshaping of human communication and society as the ‘Third Information Crisis.’ Providing a label to what we’re all experiencing gives us agency to step back and reflect. To think about how we might do things differently in navigating increased misinformation, polarisation, and loneliness.
We can also draw parallels from the two previous information revolutions, the invention of writing, and, the invention of printing press.
Alderman highlights
“We live in a tidal wave of data, coming at us constantly. We don't have the social and informational structures in place yet to manage it…
It's affecting everything else that's going on because it's about how we find out what's going on. This is the lens through which we see everything else. Understanding that lens, knowing the name of our own era, might be the most useful thing we could know about our whole lives.”
For those with limited time the BBC Radio 4 series, ‘The Third Information Crisis’, on which Alderman’s book is largely based is still available for listening.
We can also draw parallels from the two previous information revolutions, the invention of writing, and, the invention of printing press.
Alderman highlights
“We live in a tidal wave of data, coming at us constantly. We don't have the social and informational structures in place yet to manage it…
It's affecting everything else that's going on because it's about how we find out what's going on. This is the lens through which we see everything else. Understanding that lens, knowing the name of our own era, might be the most useful thing we could know about our whole lives.”
For those with limited time the BBC Radio 4 series, ‘The Third Information Crisis’, on which Alderman’s book is largely based is still available for listening.
January 17, 2026
Very interesting! Naomi Alderman helps the reader to zoom out and look at the current media/tech landscape through the lens of historical turning points such as the invention of the printing press. Any such turning point comes with similar psychological and communal shifts. We can learn from history without stopping the present.
One of my favorite highlighted sentences about how to maintain a functioning community when living through an information crisis: “Managing that disagreement, agreeing to treat people well even when we disagree with them, is how we stop ourselves from becoming lonely, isolated and afraid.“
One of my favorite highlighted sentences about how to maintain a functioning community when living through an information crisis: “Managing that disagreement, agreeing to treat people well even when we disagree with them, is how we stop ourselves from becoming lonely, isolated and afraid.“
January 18, 2026
I enjoyed reading this book. I think it encapsulates some of struggles of our current epoch through framing it as an information crisis, providing examples from history to demonstrate that there is some chaos and foreboding at the advent of any technological change. It’s not too teccy or dystopian, and has helped me reflect on social media conflict, the quest for more open dialogue with people who disagree with me, as well as the importance of human interaction for all.
January 1, 2026
Very thought provoking. I have now deleted all my social media accounts. Love the references to other books and podcasts. Don’t love the constant reference to “technology billionaires”. Technology companies would be a better phrase perhaps - I reckon 😜
January 8, 2026
What is the best thing a person can know about their life ? It is what the name of the era you are living through is called. Ours is the information crisis. A fascination read by a very imaginative lady. A guide to the information crisis we are living through. Highly recommended.
November 14, 2025
end individualism forever
December 6, 2025
Thoughtful and very useful little book regarding the 'information crisis' that we currently live though. I highly recommend.
December 24, 2025
Thought provoking book - are we at the start of a third information crisis?
December 30, 2025
A really thought provoking short book about the state of the world at the moment. More hopeful than it sounds. Some really good stuff in here.
January 3, 2026
Timely and insightful
January 3, 2026
It was fine but could have been an opinion piece or a blog post.
The world is moving fast, don't go mad.
The world is moving fast, don't go mad.
January 4, 2026
easy read and interesting thoughts from both sides
January 8, 2026
insightful and interesting
January 15, 2026
it's going to be an interesting* decade or two
*terrifying
*terrifying
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews