You're way ahead of me! This is a new page, which I haven't completed yet. Please check back in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, here are some of my recently published (and net accessible) book reviews.

COLLAPSING SOCIETY: When it comes to Earth's future, we tend to be offered two simplistic choices, either guilt-ridden pessimism or a pollyanna faith in market forces. Too much planning or too little. Here I reprint my lengthy review of Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. No society ever succeeded using the prescriptions we hear touted from today's Left and Right. But history does offer some alternatives.

"Amid his outpouring of dour facts, Jared Diamond pauses to wonder. 'What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?' Then, more generally -- 'How can a society have failed to have seen the dangers that seem so clear to us in retrospect?' It is in addressing this core question -- why do cultures so often falter? -- that his book shows both strengths and faults."

THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE: Will the first decade of the 21st Century be known as the time when our Scientific Age came to a whimpering end? The one trait shared by anti-modernists of both left and right appears to be disdain for our ability to learn and do bold new things. My published review of Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, explores how partisanship can explain much of this collapse of confidence... and why partisan interpretations don't cover everything.

"Alas, "wisdom" is seldom obvious. We rely on politics to determine policy -- an improvement over the whim of kings. But politics, despite centuries of hard refinement, is still far more ego-driven art than craft. Habits of at least four thousand years seem to favor self-interest, hierarchies and dogma, instead of gathering evidence and cheerfully letting facts guide us."

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN'S ECONOMY: On a related note, two recommended books that tout assertive problem solving are The Past and Future of America's Economy: Long Waves of Innovation that Power Cycles of Growth By Robert D. Atkinson and Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. The first explores measures that would allow us to play our roles better in the world economy. The latter pursues Kurzweil's argument that our scientific competence and technologically-empowered creativity will soon skyrocket, propelling humanity into an entirely new age. I don't entirely agree. But boy, what a ride.

NO PLACE TO HIDE: See my review (originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) of Robert O'Harrow Jr's book about privacy, No Place to Hide. O'Harrow is informative about many ways that big data companies aim for Big Brother omniscience while avoiding all accountability. Too bad there's no suggestion how to make things better. O'Harrow knows there are methods. Perhaps his next book will mention some.

"No issue has helped stoke this ecumenical sense of alienation more than the Great Big Privacy Scare. While the Information Age seems at one level more benign -- (the Internet won't directly blast, kill, mutate or infect us) -- social repercussions of new data-handling technologies seem daunting. Pundits, spanning a spectrum from William Safire to Jeffrey Rosen, have proclaimed this to be our ultimate test. I don't disagree."

THE PROGRESS PARADOX: The clichés that most hobble us are those we don't notice, because we accept them so readily. Like the common belief -- shared across the political spectrum -- that the world is going to hell. Or the truism that "our wisdom hasn't kept up with technology." In December 2003 I reviewed a new book that challenges this truism. The Progress Paradox: How Things Get Better While People Feel Worse, by Gregg Easterbrook, suggests we may be better than we thought. There's a world to be saved and those who spread either complacency or gloom aren't helping. What we need is confidence and a sense that our efforts can matter. That will come, if we open our eyes to how much good has already been done.

"Are we ready, at last, to stop ridiculing those eager, can-do boys and girls who believe in progress?"

See also my pages for speaking & consulting and events & appearances for past and future appearances where I've discussed or debated books and popular culture.