A brilliant takedown and exposé of the great con job of the twenty-first century–the metaverse, crypto, space travel, transhumanism–being sold by four billionaires… Read more
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Historian Brokaw debuts with a penetrating analysis of how the Twilight Zone (1959–1964) exposed the dark underbelly of Cold War America. Examining key episodes, Brokaw argues that creator Rod Serling “sought to… reframe popular portrayals of white Americans’ wish-fulfillments as nightmares rather than aspirational dreams.” Read more
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Every few years, an academic work arrives that transcends genre, combining unparalleled research skills with engaging storytelling. The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America is undoubtedly one such book. Read more
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Brinkley is a writer whose versatility knows no boundaries. He can make you laugh, cry, contemplate life’s deepest questions, remember what it was like to be a child, and feel the warmth, or chill, of your own family history. Tapping into the sticky stuff of humanity, each story is a gift of the highest quality, reminding us that we are all both in the audience and on life’s stage, even if we don’t know it. Forever the witness and the witnessed. Read more
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Smart, self-aware, fun, creepy, and strange, The Beast You Are is even better than the outstanding Growing Things — and it further cements Tremblay as one of the finest voices in modern horror fiction as well as a dazzling innovator of the short form regardless of genre. Read more
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An efficient, fast-paced cyberpunk story . . . The novel’s speculations about human agency resonate in the current moment, when American tech C.E.O.s oscillate between issuing sonorous warnings about the existential risks of the A.I. systems they’re developing and breathless hype about brain-computer interfaces. The book imagines the imminent emergence of companies run by artificial intelligence—companies as intelligence, a fusion of technology and economic logic that will definitively outrun humanity. Read more
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…it’s a pleasure to encounter Dan Schreiber’s “The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird,” a willfully miscellaneous survey of the bizarre beliefs that people have held over the centuries: the kind of random, strange-for-the-sake-of-strange compendium that’s seldom published anymore. Read more
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Erudite, seemingly emotionless, haughty, absolutely unrepentant, and elusive, Macarthur evaded easy analysis. The resulting picture of the killer is seen as if through a proverbial dark glass—and it’s as chilling, in the end, as any Hitchcock film. A superb study of real-life crime and punishment, to say nothing of sociopathy in action. Read more
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She never wallows in loathing, self- or otherwise. Instead, she lets us all in on the joke. And what a joke it is … Calling Quietly Hostile a collection of essays is a bit limiting. These 17 pieces are more like essays crossed with stand-up bits, and that punchline-driven rhythm serves the book spectacularly well … Irby dexterously plays both sides: the awkward people-pleaser and the snarky cynic. Like a cartoon character in a tennis match against herself, she races back and forth between self-deprecation and scalding humor, never once missing a stroke. People may be shallow, Irby is more than happy to point out, but she’s right down there with them — quietly hostile, sure, but also loudly irresistible. Read more
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The enigmatic Susan Taubes wrote the coming-of-age novel “Lament for Julia” in the 1960s; 54 years after her death, its gothic splendors shine. Read more
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