Glenn Harlan Reynolds (Encounter Broadside, $12.99, 46 pages) Glenn Harlan Reynolds, founder of InstaPundit, has written a short, stark warning, Seductive AI in which he argues that artificial intelligence presents a threat to human beings well short of an extinction-level event. He says that superhuman, sentient, artificial general intelligence (AGI) could “conquer the world” through “cuteness, or sexiness, or simply friendliness” because [...]
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass: 25th Anniversary Edition Theodore Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, $26.50, 225 pages) British psychiatrist and author Theodore Dalrymple (real name Anthony Daniels) published Life at the Bottom a quarter century ago and a new edition was warranted, not just because Rob Henderson (Troubled) writes the foreword, but because the baneful worldview Dalrymple identified 25 years [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth (Thesis, $42, 348 pages) Paul Kingsnorth, a former Wiccan-practicing environmentalist who became a rural-living conservative has written an important book looking askance at what most people would consider progress. Against the Machine is a critique of techno-optimism, an expose of the soul-destroying aspects of technology and modern sensibilities. Kingsnorth, [...]
Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling, Jonathan D. Cohen (Columbia Global Reports, $27.95, 185 pages) Jonathan D. Cohen, senior program officer for American Institutions, Society, and the Public Good at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, writes, “There have always been Americans driven to ruin by gambling. But never have so many been driven to ruin so easily, and [...]
Review: Making Sense of Suffering, by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press, $17.95 USD, 215 pages) Ignatius Press has re-released Peter Kreeft’s 1986 book Making Sense of Suffering and although the causes of our suffering might have changed, mankind’s reaction to suffering has not. It was, and remains, one of the main arguments against God: how could an all-powerful, all-good being allow innocent people to [...]
Selected Letters of John Updike: Edited by James Schiff (Penguin Random House, $73, 912 pages) John Updike is perhaps the preeminent example of what is called a man of letters – the author of short stories, novels, critical essays. A number of his letters are collected in a large volume, Selected Letters of John Updike. At 912 pages, one might remark that [...]
Modern Monsters: Political Ideologues and Their War against the Catholic Church: George Marlin (St. Augustine’s Press, $45.50, 227 pages) Version 1.0.0 George Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA, has written an accessible examination of a dozen or so intellectuals whose ideas have, in his estimation, greatly harmed society by attacking the Catholic Church and the Christian view [...]
Pornocracy: Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel (Polity, $36, 183 pages) In their introduction, Jo Bartosch, a journalist, and Robert Jessel, a human rights campaigner, argue that pornography defines our culture, calling our society a “pornocracy” which they define as, “A society in which political power, culture, relationships and identity are shaped or dominated by the purveyors of pornography.” Bartosch and Jessel continue: [...]
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist David Bather Woods (Chicago, $39, 294 pages) Arthur Schopenhauer has been described as a miserable philosopher who saw human life swing between pain and boredom, suffering that is relieved only partially through aesthetic contemplation and the renunciation of desire: “the world and life can afford us no true satisfaction.” The only antidote [...]
Sarah Stilton, Review: The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant (Notre Dame University Press, $37.95, 219 pages) Leah Libresco Sargeant, an author and speaker, provocatively argues in her brief The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist that it is not women who form families by choosing marriage and motherhood that betray the sisterhood, but rather radical feminists who ignore or hide [...]
Digital Currency or Digital Control: Decoding CBDC and the Future of Money Nicholas Anthony (Cato Institute, $21.95, 160 pages) Version 1.0.0 Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are being researched and developed by central banks and policymakers, and author Nicholas Anthony warns it is nothing less than “an attempt to reinvent money as we know it.” CBDCs are inspired by cryptocurrencies [...]
Priscilla West (Encounter, $12.95, 62 pages) If you think the war on woke is winning, especially in education, as some excesses are reversed, you must read The New Face of Woke Education. Priscilla West illustrates how Social Emotional Learning is rampant throughout schools, “weaponiz(ing) empathy, using emotional appeals to smuggle radical ideology into classrooms under colorful banners of compassion.” West exposes an [...]
Jean M. Twenge (Atria, $26 pb, 215 pages) Jean Twenge delivers on the subtitle of her book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World which is “How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives.” The ubiquity of smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices made it practically inevitable that parents and schools would [...]
The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters Diane Coyle (Princeton, $41, 306 pages) Economist Diane Coyle argues that traditional economics metrics like Gross Domestic Product and the System of National Accounts, important as they were in helping policy-makers and economists understand material well-being, are inadequate to measure complex modern economies and thus economists are unable to answer the vital question: “Are things [...]
Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $56 hc or $38 pb in August, 531 pages) Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys have written a remarkable biography of a poet, Constantine Cavafy, who lived, in their own admission, an unremarkable life, by writing it thematically rather than linearly. Cavafy was born into a Greek family in Alexandria, [...]