Americana Extra
My latest review in Current magazine
Happy New Year!
Americana is officially (insofar as anything about it is official) on hiatus until next week, but I thought I would share a link with you for my latest book review, which I actually wrote months ago but was finally published today at Current. It’s an assessment of Israeli public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Systems from the Stone Age to AI. Harari’s book, Sapiens, first published in English in 2014, has become a kind of social science classic comparable to a book like Jared Diamond’s Blood, Germs and Steel, or Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities—interdisciplinary works have become intellectual landmarks of our era. As I note, I had my doubts that the prolific Harari still has much new to say, but I regard Nexus as good as anything he’s ever done, this time reinterpreting world history through the lens of information management. I find it especially intriguing that he finds that Artificial Intelligence poses existential threats to both democratic and totalitarian regimes, albeit in different ways. Definitely worth a look. Later this month, I have another forthcoming piece in Current, this one on the politics of abortion, slated for the 52nd anniversary of the superseded, but still relevant, Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
I’ll be back on Monday with a contrarian review of the new Nicole Kidman movie Babygirl, to be followed soon after with a new series in which I try to explain the world of our time to my prospective granddaughter. Look forward to your visit. –Jim