by Corey Pein ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
A clearheaded reckoning with consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.
An on-the-ground look at Silicon Valley and what its power means for the rest of the world.
To research his debut nonfiction book, investigative reporter Pein embedded in Silicon Valley to better understand the technology boom that has been underway since the mid-2000s. Alternating between his roles as a journalist and a would-be entrepreneur as it suits his purposes, he penetrates all manner of industry mainstays: hacker houses overcrowded with eager techies, corporate-sponsored meetups, competitions for startup pitches, and conferences celebrating and promoting the singularity. Seemingly everyone the author encounters in his reporting is confident that the future will be vastly different—and vastly better—than the present. Pein isn’t the first to identify the near-religious faith in technology that is so common to the Silicon Valley crowd, but his deeply unsettling portrait of it is enough to trouble even the most committed tech booster. He presents a place that, far from being a utopia of creativity and efficiency, is a lightly disguised confidence game, where valuation is a meaningless concept, incentives are frequently misaligned, and 95 percent of entrepreneurs fail, often because they don’t have the insider advantages that the veterans do. Pein identifies a “cutthroat libertarianism” at the core of the Silicon Valley worldview, which accounts for its indifference and, in some cases, hostility toward those people harmed by their practices: “Most people in the industry,” he writes, “were convinced that their work was moral because it increased consumer choice and therefore freedom. New technologies were evidence of progress and therefore innately good.” For all the social oddities he observes, cringeworthy encounters he experiences, and wit and outrage he levels at his subjects, Pein’s real achievement is his willingness to find out how Silicon Valley works and not become distracted by all its shiny objects.
A clearheaded reckoning with consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-19378-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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