A powerful case against Google that deserves readers’ attention.
In this political book, a former insider at Google claims that the company attempted to control the information available to its users.
In response to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, Google’s top executives marshaled a battle strategy to oppose his political plans, contends Vorhies, a senior engineer at the colossal company for more than eight years. According to the author, “The election of Donald Trump was a PROBLEM, which needed a SOLUTION.” Vorhies asserts that the solution was a program called Machine Learning Fairness, an artificial intelligence product designed to be a “new system of information control” that was nominally touted as a way to correct the “unconscious bias” of its users, but more ambitiously aimed to “redefine reality.” The ultimate goal, the author contends, was a dystopian attempt to bury narratives that didn’t support a left-leaning political agenda, a kind of far-reaching program of civic brainwashing. In strong language, Vorhies records his astonishment: “Oh my, God, communism is coming to the United States and it’s going to be brought by Google.” The author eventually resigned from his position as a matter of conscience and, with the assistance of Project Veritas, became a whistleblower. Vorhies’ account is substantiated by an impressive storehouse of evidence—he left Google with hundreds of pages from its internal servers documenting its political commitments as well as its project to combat “algorithmic unfairness.” His position is lucidly conveyed, accessible even to those with a minimum of technological sophistication. But his claims about Google are ensconced in a rambling and sometimes self-aggrandizing autobiography as well as in his complaints about how exhausted he was by “leftists who’d won every single battle in the culture wars for the past thirty years.” Still, his accusations against Google are gravely important, and worth readers’ wading through the meandering parts of his book—written with Heckenlively—to get to them.
A powerful case against Google that deserves readers’ attention.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-51-076736-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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