Klaus Brinkbäumer & Samiha Shafy: Love Is Everything. A Journey Around the World in Search of Lasting Happiness

Whether in New York, Saudi Arabia or the Andes – they capture profound encounters and weave them into a grand narrative about true love. A wise, cosmopolitan book full of warmth and psychological depth, which shows how closeness develops and what keeps us together for a lifetime.

Klaus Brinkbäumer, born in 1967, is an author, presenter and podcaster. He has had close ties with the USA for thirty years. Ever since studying at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he has visited the country regularly, observing its political and cultural life with both fascination and a critical eye. In 2007, his lifelong dream came true and he moved to New York as a correspondent for *Der SPIEGEL*. There, he experienced the famous crisis years and the Obama years at first hand. From 2015 to 2018, Klaus Brinkbäumer was editor-in-chief of *Der SPIEGEL* and publisher of *SPIEGEL ONLINE*. Among other honours, he won the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize, the Henri Nannen Prize and the German Reporter Prize, and was named Editor-in-Chief of the Year in 2016. In 2019, he was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. From 2021 to 2024, he was Head of Programming at MDR. Together with Samiha Shafy, he published the bestseller *Das kluge, lustige, gesunde, ungebremste, glückliche, sehr lange Leben* (The Clever, Funny, Healthy, Unrestrained, Happy, Very Long Life). His most recent book is *Der amerikanische Albtraum* (The American Nightmare).

Samiha Shafy, born in 1979, is an editor in the politics department of *Die Zeit* and reports from Berlin on German foreign policy and international affairs. Prior to this, she worked at *Der Spiegel* for 13 years, initially as a science editor, then in the foreign affairs department and most recently as a correspondent in New York. She completed her studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and Lausanne with a Master of Science in Environmental Sciences; in 2011, she went to Harvard on a one-year scholarship. Together with Klaus Brinkbäumer, Shafy published the bestseller *Das kluge, lustige, gesunde, ungebremste, glückliche, sehr lange Leben* in 2019.