An excellent overall guide to avoiding scams while learning current best practices for life online.
A noted cybersecurity expert coaches the general public on how to maintain optimal digital safety at home.
“Cybersecurity is no longer optional,” writes the author. “It’s not just a technical issue—it’s a human one, a societal one, and a generational one. Pretending it’s ‘too complicated’ or ‘someone else’s problem’ is no longer acceptable.” Cole knows his subject well, having started out as a professional hacker for the CIA, as well as serving as cybersecurity commissioner in the Obama administration. As he details in this book, one of the greatest challenges in keeping people safe online, both personally and professionally, is the lack of governmental oversight in the U.S., which is among the few countries that doesn’t have unified federal laws in this area, for everything from e-commerce to cloud computing to social media. In many arenas, he notes, if you call the right number or fill out the correct form, action is taken and problems get solved. “In the physical world, we’ve built that. In the digital world, we haven’t,” he writes. In chapters that cover (among other topics) how to keep your smartphone secure and how to stay safe on social media sites, Cole offers an overview, then follows up with practical actions readers can implement on their own, along with key takeaways. He reminds readers frequently that no digital communication device is entirely secure, from the smartwatches on our wrists to the interactive panels mounted in many homes, all of which can be used in scams, phishing schemes, information-gathering activities, and more. Compound that, Cole adds, with AI growth, and no one is completely immune from threats to their identity, finances, and intellectual property. In the author’s estimation, human beings still have the advantage: “You are not powerless,” he writes. “We don’t secure cyberspace by waiting for someone else to do it. We secure it by acting together—billions of small, daily choices multiplied across households, workplaces, and nations.”
An excellent overall guide to avoiding scams while learning current best practices for life online.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9798891389526
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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