Now that I’m vaccinated and beginning to meet up with other vaccinated people without a mask, it only makes sense that my first post in a long time is about a solo activity that doesn’t include anyone else.
I chose five books to read this summer. The overall theme of these five entirely unrelated books seems to be reflection and accountability, a theme we should all hope extends beyond the pages and into the next decade.
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. I’m not a regular reader of Kevin Roose’s NYT tech column, but he was a fantastic guest on the Pivot podcast in February or March. (Despite the vaccine, the days are still bleeding into one another). I wanted to lead off with Roose’s book after spending a lot of time auditing a product called copy.ai for a project I’m working on, because I’m skeptical of AI’s ability to listen for, learn, and communicate human nuance. I’m in a mood to disagree with tech people, so this was a natural start.
Demagogue. Four or five years ago, my Aunt Carolyn bought us tickets to hear a book talk about RFK with Larry Tye (his book) and David Nasaw (wrote the book on Joseph Kennedy) at the NY Historical Society. The two of them were nerds of the highest order and spoke about Bobby Kennedy like they were all friends. That enthusiasm came out in the prose, so I’m sure the same will be true for this book on Joe McCarthy.
I don’t know much about Joe McCarthy beyond the Hollywood 10 and the House of Un-American activities, but Tye’s writing crackles. So this was my 2nd safest pick (below) for a summer read. This also has the highest frustration potential, as people who lived during the hayday of Joe McCarthy continue to fall for political grifters sixty years later….
Mill Town. I don’t regret reading too many historical accounts of Americana, but I wish I never cracked open J.D. Vance’s . I won’t argue that the book was well-written. But a great deal of the narrative turned out to be manufactured to increase the tension between how he grew up and what he became, and the lessons of his own life seemed to be lost on him.
I’m hoping Kerri Arsenault’s portrait of her life growing up in Maine in a town whose livelihood was dependent on a paper mill is a far more honest origin story.
Amusing Ourselves to Death. I try to read Neil Postman’s book every year, so this is probably the safest pick of the summer. I’m hot to re-read this due to the fall of Glenn Greenwald. The book’s central premise is that “the media is the message,” and it seems Greenwald is set to prove Postman’s theory out single-handedly: that television is incapable of delivering honest news reporting because the medium itself is measured in entertainment or ratings. If a Pulitzer winning journalist abandons long-form journalism for the wrong mediums (Twitter, Cable News), is he/she doomed be an entertainer vs. a credible reporter? A reporter who broke two of the largest stories of the past twenty years (Iraq, CIA domestic spying) but then collapses under the weight of Postman’s theory, the answer seems to be ‘yes.’
World Travel. Anthony Bourdain’s longtime assistant wrote a travel book based on a plan Bourdain outlined with her prior to taking his own life almost three years ago. The book uses quotes from his shows to give a tour of cities and countries. Feels like a money grab but super light. Probably the only beach read here.