Lionel Shriver’s A Better Life is a work of political fiction. The setting is New York City in 2023, where the local government has initiated the “Big Apple, Big Heart” program as a response to a massive number of migrants flooding into the city. This program recruits NYC homeowners to offer up spare rooms to […]
Summary: David McKittrick and David McVea’s Making Sense of the Troubles is a chronological history of the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1921 to 2012. Taking a measured and neutral approach, McKittrick and McVea trace the origins, central dynamics, key events, and main figures of the troubles. Making Sense of the Troubles is a valuable […]
I recently had the pleasure of visiting a small bookstore with a new friend, and we decided to buy books for each other. His choice for me was Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve been curious about this book for years but never developed sufficient interest to take it on […]
Steve Peters’s A Path Through the Jungle is a unique and valuable guide to self-understanding and self-regulation. The book is presented in seven “Stages,” each of which is comprised of “Units” that build on each other sequentially. The core set of ideas is what Peters calls the “Chimp Model,” summarized in this image from Unit […]
Summary: Scott Barry Kaufman’s Rise Above is about the perils of victim mindset and how we can avoid them. In Part One, Kaufman explores the dynamics of victim mindset, including how people get stuck ruminating about their pasts, how we indulge irrational emotions and cognitive distortions, and how we become overly concerned with self-esteem and […]
Spoiler Warning If you care about spoilers and have managed to avoid learning what happens in The Last of Us, Parts I or II––or in HBO’s TV adaptation––proceed with caution. What follows assumes total familiarity with the plot and does not avoid major spoilers. Introduction: Video Games and Moral Crimes I committed my first digital […]
Summary: Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? is an allegorical tale about how to think about and respond to change. It tells the story of four characters who live in a large Maze and must explore the Maze to find cheese. There are two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two littlepeople, Hem and Haw. They […]
In recent weeks, I have joined millions of my fellow Americans who are trying to understand and cope with the overwhelming changes that are sweeping through our sociopolitical landscape. As I pinball between moments of despair, confusion, curiosity, and the occasional glimmer of hope, one of the questions that keeps coming back around is: Who […]
Summary: Robert Masters’s To Be a Man is a passionate text that challenges men to grow and heal in ways that will generate what Masters calls “true masculine power.” Focusing on the topics of shame, anger, aggression, relational intimacy, and sex, Masters explores the dysfunctional patterns that pervade modern models of masculinity, offering alternative frameworks […]
Summary: Like all his previous books, Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus deploys the lens of history to sharpen our view of the present. Focusing on the historical trends and current states of global information networks, Harari demonstrates the dangerous half-truths that arise from flawed theories of information. He also presents his own theory that information networks […]