A dense but informative survey of the problems of NFTs and potential solutions.
Zimring offers a breakdown of the deficits of digital-art NFTs as both a commercial finance lawyer and digital artist.
In these pages, the author provides a critique of non-fungible tokens and a detailed account of the issues that surround them. After a comprehensive definition of the terms blockchain and NFT, the author introduces the problem of how digital-art forgeries complicate the provenance of an artwork and raise the question of legal ownership. Zimring then points out, with reference to the Copyright Act and legal precedents, that digital art is copyrightable and internationally recognized as a form of property. The author’s recommendation to creators of digital art to register their works with the Copyright Office—regardless of whether the works are attached to an NFT—is an important takeaway for both creators and purchasers of digital artwork. The third chapter offers a brief history of visual art, explores the broad parameters defining digital artworks (including those that use artificial intelligence in the creation process), and provides visual examples. This is followed by an overview of digital artworks as assets to be traded and collected. The book also addresses the dependence of NFTs on cryptocurrencies and the question of royalties. Finally, the author predicts that regulation of NFTs is likely on the horizon. This book’s legalese, dense prose, and meticulous analyses, especially in the context of the “metaverse,” can be quite challenging, particularly in the first two chapters. Zimring rightly anticipates that the audience of this critique is likely limited to readers “who want to focus on the present day legal problems of NFTs,…want to focus on NFT investing, collecting, or using them in their business, and/or…want to educate themselves further” regarding digital-art NFTs. That said, newcomers to the concepts will welcome the inclusion of multiple explanatory charts to elucidate the more complex concepts as well as the copious art examples provided throughout the text.
A dense but informative survey of the problems of NFTs and potential solutions.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9780984727537
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Mira Enterprises, Ltd.
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2023
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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