Microlearning App Blinkist Saw A 60% Rise In Political Reads This Year
This year has seen an upswing in the publication of tell-all political titles. And as supply has increased, demand has risen to meet and exceed it. Bookstore Barnes and Noble reported a 57% increase in sales of political books in 2018 alone, reflecting an across-the-board trend.
Forbes recently reported that Blinkist, a microlearning app that offers condensed versions of the latest nonfiction titles, has seen the consumption of political reads increase by 60% this year.
In order to become informed citizens, people are starting to look beyond the headlines. Nonfiction books provide both up-to-date information as well as more considered, nuanced insights on what’s happening in our world.
Nonfiction books let you look beyond the headlines
Recently published titles like What Happened, Hillary’s Clinton’s account of her 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Wolff’s explosive sellout Fire and Fury, and Factfulness by Hans Rosling which has been lauded by Bill Gates as a way to open our eyes to real truths through rigorous research, have been three of the most popular political titles in the Blinkist app. Fear by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, which shifted 1.1 million units on publication, and James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty also feature on the app’s most-read list.
According to Sarah Moriarty, Director of Brand Marketing at Blinkist, “People are realizing how crucial it is to look beyond their social media bubbles, news headlines, and politicians’ — sometimes misleading, un-fact-checked — statements. Gaining insights from these headline-hogging books helps people to gain a broader picture that allows them to better understand the implications of current affairs. We’ve also seen an increase in the number of people reading historical, philosophical, and political classics from the back list that offer wider historical and cultural context.”
True or False?
When journalism is branded fake news, advertisements are sold as fact, and the 24-hour news cycle serves up a constant stream of fearful events, it can be easy to feel that the world is in a terrible state. However, everything may not be as bad as it seems. That’s why Bill Gates has been so eager to promote books like Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature— which shows how we’re actually living at the least violent time in history — and more recently, Hans Rosling’s Factfulness, which Gates called “an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.”
Factfulness is a perfect example of a vital nonfiction book because it challenges common misconceptions and offers us tools to question the information we’re being fed. Take for example the levels of extreme poverty around the world. Over the last 20 years, do you think it’s doubled, stayed the same, or been cut in half? If you guessed that it had been halved, you’d be one of the few who answer this question correctly. In the U.S., only 5% of people got it right.
“Forming your worldview by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot.”— Hans Rosling, author of Factfulness
Or do you feel like there’s a lot more violent crime happening these days? According to Rosling, you’re likely to have that perception due to the fact that crimes like these are being reported much more frequently now than they used to be. The truth is that rates of violent crime in the U.S. have been steadily declining since 1990.
Factfulness
- 12 min reading time
- audio version available
Books like Factfulness are a brilliant way to arm yourself against the barrage of misinformation that we’re each being faced with on a daily basis. If you’re tied for time, but care about ideas like the ones in Factfulness, maybe it’s time you got familiar with the Blinkist app.
Stay informed by reading the right books with Blinkist
The Blinkist app lets you read or listen to the key ideas from a nonfiction title in a matter of minutes, instead of hours or days. When a new nonfiction book becomes a bestseller, Blinkist has a fast-track process that makes sure you can read the main points of that title within days of publication. Whether or not you agree with the politics of an author, it’s vital to know what their books claim in order to make sure you’re asking the right questions.
That’s why we have a stringent content process run by a team of experts that carefully choose each title, extract only the most important insights, and write and narrate 15-minute explainers that provide just the essence of the writer’s main ideas. These titles are then added to a library of over 2,500 others across a broad range of categories. With 10 new titles being added each week, you can get a speedy, comprehensive overview of a book’s main points before you decide whether or not you want to read it in full. Thus, the Blinkist app is the ideal companion for curious people who care about the truth.
So, if you want to stay informed and discover answers to questions you may never have thought to ask, download the Blinkist app, now.
