Entrepreneur Husain (The Sentient Machine) paints a cautiously optimistic picture of an automated future in this accessible survey. Contending that cybernetics, or “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine,” will have a profound impact on social, political, and economic affairs, he describes how “the human and the machine” are “fusing.” For example, he notes that AI and automation use reflexive decision cycles and real-time data to interact with humans who use the resulting information to make decisions and create solutions, which are then fed back into the machines to train their models. His case studies include the “wondrous possibilities” afforded by Saudi Arabian megacity Neom; the successful integration of robotics into Amazon’s warehouses and supply chain; Neuralink and other brain-computer interfaces currently under development, which raise serious unanswered questions about privacy and economic accessibility; and the “bone-chilling” autonomous drones and ground vehicles currently in use in Ukraine and Gaza. Husain gives equal weight to the pitfalls and benefits of autonomous technology, and his ability to interweave pop culture references and technical explanations helps keep the account from getting lost in the weeds. It’s a solid lay of the land. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta, Calligraph. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Human language capacities developed primarily to aid in rearing children, according to this lucid debut from biologist Beekman. Babies are born “underbaked,” Beekman writes, explaining that because human brains are so large, children must be born before theirs are fully grown in order to fit through the birth canal. This creates the need for extensive postnatal care, and language evolved because talking enabled the type of cooperation necessary for “helpless infants” to survive. Writing with wit and making creative use of analogies, Beekman also sheds light on the broader topic of human evolution. She answers the question “Why did our brains get bigger?” by describing how the addition of meat to Homo erectus diets introduced enough nutrients to support such an organ, and she notes the many utilities of social bonds formed by human ancestors. Elsewhere, she uses Tinder as a case study to explain how a genetic mutation in early primates spread and led to “the origin of our species.” Throughout, Beekman showcases her knack for making complex ideas accessible: “It is probably fair to say that human sociality had its origin in Australopithecus’s pathetic-ness.” The result is an edifying and original foray into a critical aspect of human evolution. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, brings together 17 essays on trans life in America in this stunning anthology. Each piece considers the intersection between race and gender against the backdrop of escalating anti-trans sentiment. In “Body Type 1,” Vanessa Angélica Villarreal considers the radical possibilities offered by role-playing games as a place to grieve the fantasy of inhabiting “a precolonial self.” “Straining Toward Humanity” finds Kai Cheng Thom contemplating her place between the binary stereotypes of trans women as “saints” or “monsters,” and in “On Beauty,” Akwaeke Emezi considers the “deviance” of trans bodies and reflects on how beauty expectations were communicated to them at a young age. In “All Power to the People,” Raquel Willis contends that prison abolition is “not solely about tearing down and ending what exists.... It’s also about what we can build and create, especially through sacred queerness.” Across the collection, the complex and multifaceted experiences of trans people of color are rendered vividly, and the pieces urge political action in the present while offering a beacon of hope for a more just future. Readers will find this tough to forget. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Poet Antrobus (Signs, Music) delivers a spellbinding account of his youth as a deaf, mixed-race child in East London. Diagnosed deaf at seven years old, Antrobus struggled socially and academically. He felt alienated from his peers, family, and even other deaf individuals who considered him strange for not signing as well as they could. Shame “seemed to follow me everywhere,” Antrobus writes: “If I wear both hearing aids I look disabled not desirable, if I take too long to answer questions I’m failing, the girl will reject me, the public will pity me, they will act awkward, assume me slow.” Antrobus’s mixed English and Jamaican ancestry made him even more of an outsider. In one particularly heartbreaking passage about the bullying he endured, he admits to “play[ing] into whatever perception kept me safest; black, white, whatever they wanted to see.” Through it all, poetry provided salvation, convincing Antrobus of the power in “finding ways to articulate your unique self in the world.” With lyrical prose, bruising candor, and remarkable tenderness toward his wounded younger self, Antrobus provides an unforgettable account of finding one’s voice. It’s masterful. Agent: David Evans, David Higham Assoc. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this cogent and breezy account, Giansiracusa (How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News), a math professor at Bentley University, sets out to take “the power of math from the rich and give it to the poor.” He takes special aim at personal data usage, writing that it “turns us all into numerical grist,” and he encourages individuals to fight back by better understanding the math used by both the public and private sector. For instance, he dissects the rankings of American colleges by U.S. News and World Report, noting that the factor with the biggest weight in the ranking calculation (“how a school is regarded by top administrators at other institutions”) amounts to “a popularity contest,” and detailing how readers can create their own rankings based on such factors as the weather and the student-faculty ratio. Elsewhere, Giansiracusa explains that while the algorithm used by Facebook shows a user similar content after any interaction, even an angry comment, the angry face emoji doesn’t count as an interaction, making it “a convenient way to tell the poster how you feel without also telling the algorithm you want more.” Throughout, Giansiracusa optimistically illustrates how math can help an individual regain autonomy and makes a solid case that it “can help you consider your options more clearly and make your decisions more thoughtfully.” This successfully brings math to the people. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Music historian Gould (Otis Redding) scrupulously traces the rise and fall of rock band Talking Heads against the backdrop of the volatile 1970s and ’80s New York City art world. Lead singer David Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth, and drummer Chris Frantz connected in 1973 at the Rhode Island School of Design over a shared love of blues, jazz, and funk music. After moving to New York in 1975 and embarking on a two-year residency at the legendary downtown punk-rock venue CBGB (and adding guitarist Jerry Harrison to the lineup in 1977), they signed with Sire Records, finding their musical footing with a sound shaped by punk, Afro-Cuban, and jazz influences. In 1977, the band released its debut album, Talking Heads: 77, and followed it up with multiple successful albums and solo projects. By the late 1980s, however, the group had begun to collapse under the weight of Byrne’s artistic restlessness, which—abetted by communication issues and disputes over song credits—led to their 1991 breakup. Gould delivers a colorful and expansive genealogy of the band and the scruffy downtown music scene they helped form, though his efforts to show how the band influenced New York City culture at large can lead him down distracting tangents, such as an account of Philippe Petit’s tightwire walk between the Twin Towers (and the many copycat acts he inspired). Still, devoted Talking Heads fans will want to pick this up. (June)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Historian Gleeson debuts with an impressive overview of the intersex rights movement. Intersex people first began to connect in early 1990s chat rooms and online newsletters, where they could “come to terms with their shared treatment in relative anonymity.” Most had endured life-changing surgeries as children—“carried out with little regard for their consent, then usually concealed from them”—that had led to scarring and “lifelong numbness.” Gleeson traces the movement’s conceptual evolution from the “gallows humor” of the ’90s through 2000s efforts to transition to more conventionally appeasing, NGO-led patient advocacy and more successful recent attempts to appeal to universal human rights. Not only focusing on the West, Gleeson shows how the Global South, especially Africa, pioneered some of the most impactful advocacy. She also vividly depicts the movement’s main antagonist as a medical field that understands itself as the “enforcers of binary sex,” and points to how the internet has allowed intersex activists to become fluent in the obfuscating jargon that previously gave “medics the upper hand.” Along the way, firsthand accounts bring to life the trauma caused by secret childhood medical interventions; one subject expresses the shock of looking at male and female anatomy in a textbook at 12 years old (“The floor under my feet disappeared in just one second, and I didn’t know who I was”). This is a galvanizing study of an underdiscussed movement. (June)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this propulsive account from architecture critic Glancey (Concorde), Allied military leaders come up with a bold plan that risks endangering the legendary buildings and art of Venice if not perfectly executed. In spring 1945, the Allies were stuck below the Gothic Line in northern Italy, an impenetrable German defensive wall. Allied leaders decided the only solution was to bomb the docks of Venice to cut off German supplies. An Allied strike force was tasked with finding a way to target ships, wharves, and warehouses, but without the heedless destruction of historically and culturally important buildings that had already characterized much of the Italian front and that Allied leaders had publicly vowed not to allow to happen in Venice. The mission was given to the Desert Air Force, which drew on skills honed defeating the Germans in North Africa to develop an elaborate, synchronized aerial attack. Amazingly, all went according to plan: no historic structures were destroyed, and German supplies were cut off, allowing the Allies to push north and help end the war. With harrowing descriptions of the bloody cost paid by both Allied troops at the Gothic Line and Italian civilians caught in Allied bombings, Glancey brings new significance to a relatively obscure event (even Venetians remember it as only “a little bomb” and not a war-ending maneuver). It amounts to a gripping look at WWII’s “Forgotten Front.” (July)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist and public policy consultant Workman (Heart of Dryness) teams up with Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, to paint an upbeat portrait of a revitalized global fishing industry. The authors detail how, as early as the late 1960s and more so in the 1990s and 2000s, commercial fishermen, environmentalists, and scientists joined forces to popularize the concept of “catch shares,” a fishery management system in which a specific percentage of an allowable catch is allotted to individuals, cooperatives, or communities. Rather than coercive top-down governmental regulation, catch shares depend on cooperation and responsibility at the community level. The authors show the concept’s roots in Japanese fishing societies of the 1700s and vividly describe the practice in action. The result, they write, has been a resurgence of fish populations, increased safety and security for fishermen, and a reduction in maritime fossil fuel usage. Much of the story is told through the experiences of Buddy Guindon, a longtime Texas fisherman who evolved from a “grim reaper of the aquatic world” into a passionate advocate for sustainable fishing. Readers looking for a climate change narrative shot through with optimism will find this does the trick. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink

Travel writer Jubber (The Fairy Tellers) takes readers on an entertaining and informative tour of monsters through the ages in this captivating look at “what unsettles us.” Interested in what historical purpose monster stories have served, Jubber covers 12 monsters and ranges widely across time and place. One essay is focused on a Cornish giant named Bolster, whose story of defeat by St. Agnes is retold in a yearly festival that includes a giant puppet of the creature. According to Jubber, the tale of Bolster is about the rise of Christianity. Elsewhere, Jubber reports on the rougarou, a Louisiana bayou version of a werewolf, which one local tells him is a parable for compulsion and addiction; takes a look at tales of Scottish selkies, or “seal folk,” who transform into humans and “can be an analogy” for bodily changes during puberty; and shines a light on Austrian and German myths about dragons, writing that they “intensify the beasts of the wild” and are the center of Germany’s longest-running theatrical performance, the Drachenstich. Jubber masterfully uses these legends as jumping-off points for meditations on the longevity of such stories and on what they mean for society: “monsters echo their landscapes and join communities together,” he posits. Fans of folk horror will love this. (May)

Reviewed on 06/06/2025 | Details & Permalink