A welcome, centrist guide to implementing AI in government.
Hoque, Nelson, and Davenport advocate for the mindful implementation of AI technology for government agencies in this nonfiction guide.
As government agencies confront the AI revolution, the question is not whether they will embrace it, but how: “the pay-off is potentially revolutionary: enhanced public services, improved operational efficiency, and a complete revisioning of the relationship between agencies and the public they serve.” Per the authors, AI is an inevitable tool that will be implemented across a broad spectrum of organizations and lifestyles, making systematic implementation necessary for government services. Acknowledging this technological imperative, the authors advocate a balanced, mindful approach to AI implementation grounded in three major frameworks, called OPEN, CARE, and the portfolio approach. These structures address the need for mindful implementation, agency missions and values, inherent risks and strategies to mitigate them, and the importance of diversifying AI investments for a sustainable program. The authors argue that these frameworks will not work for agencies that fail to recognize the cultural shifts necessary to accommodate AI and don’t prioritize change management, sustainability, and employee input. While many books in this genre take a “moonshot” approach to AI implementation, praising its potential and advocating technological advancement for its own sake, this work offers a welcome centrist perspective. The authors’ emphasis on mindful and balanced implementation is refreshing, and the various theories drawn from business, technology, and organizational management provide a solid foundation for their case. They describe the frameworks in detail to ensure reader understanding, making this a practical introductory guide. The authors use examples from government agencies worldwide both to highlight success stories and to analyze failed initiatives to effectively drive the points home. The prose is clean and clear, oriented toward the technologically uninitiated, and the text includes helpful charts and matrices, but while the book is accessible, the general audience may wish to skip this one, as it’s clearly intended for organizational leadership in the public sector.
A welcome, centrist guide to implementing AI in government.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798895654354
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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