The beginning of the new year is an opportunity to look back on the old and out on the new. In his editorial, Editor-in-Chief Neville Compton highlights achievements, sets the record straight, and announces plans for the development of Angewandte Chemie in general and in the International Year of the Periodic Table in particular. We also introduce new members of the Editorial and International Advisory Boards; the former is chaired by a woman for the first time: Annette Beck-Sickinger.

M. A. Majewski and M. Stępień review synthetic approaches to curved aromatic molecules. In Minireviews, F. R. Wurm et al. analyze the impact of biodegradable polymers on the environment, Ł. Albrecht et al. discuss breaking aromaticity with aminocatalysis, and E. V. Anslyn et al. summarize tunable orthogonal reversible covalent bonds as a means of dynamic chemical control. J. C. Fontecilla-Camps contributes an Essay on geochemical continuity and catalyst/cofactor replacement in the emergence and evolution of life. The Highlight deals with the history, state of the art, challenges, and applications of directed evolution and phage display, the theme of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (U. Schwaneberg et al.).

In the Communications section, Y.-H. He et al. combine concurrent asymmetric reactions, photocatalysis, and enzyme catalysis to directly and enantioselectively synthesize 2,2-disubstituted indol-3-ones from 2-arylindoles (see picture). D. Margulies et al. devised a molecular secret sharing scheme. J. Hunger et al. observed specific ion effects on an oligopeptide: bidentate binding matters for the guanidinium cation.

Last but not least, R. Schlögl puts the sun in the tank and discusses future developments in sustainable energy systems in a Viewpoint.

• Angewandte Chemie 1/2019: Happy New Year,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58 (1).