A well-researched but overly dense account of the impact of NFTs on the art market.
An in-depth exposé of the recent multibillion-dollar surge and explosive crash in the speculative realms of digital art and crypto finance.
New York Times reporter Small dissects the recent history of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and their significant effect on the investment art community, initiated by the sale of a digital artwork compilation at Christie's in 2021 for $69.3 million. “It was an outrageous sum for digital art—the kind of world record that raises conspiracy theories about the motives of its buyers and sellers,” writes the author. “Suddenly the art market was on the fulcrum of decentralized finance, splitting its weight between the invading crypto billionaires and the ancien régime of traditional art collectors. But auctioneers tipped the balance in favor of the new money, scrambling to find a historical precedent for their new cash cow.” In this sprawling narrative maze, Small profiles a diverse range of digital artists as well as other influential and often shadowy players across the finance, entertainment, tech, and gaming industries. They also expand the context with forays into pivotal movements in art history, a summary of the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of the crypto economy. Throughout, Small sharply critiques the erosion of art collecting's prestige by sellers and investors driven by insatiable greed. “The NFT explosion,” writes the author, “had begun with a deadly symmetry exposing culture’s worst tendencies: toward trustlessness, toward scarcity, toward desperation and sycophancy…criminals took advantage of the zeitgeist and errant entrepreneurs played at expertise.” In their meticulously documented exploration, Small reveals insights hinting at a compelling core story. However, the intricate details and tech-speak will overwhelm many general readers. In the hands of a more seasoned storyteller such as Michael Lewis, the material would resonate with a wider audience.
A well-researched but overly dense account of the impact of NFTs on the art market.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536759
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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