THERE ARE SEVERAL reasons I like writing book reviews. The first thing to note is that they force me to finish books (no trivial feat with three toddlers in the house). They also prod me to read books closely—to study them properly, to swim in the undercurrents. With good books, they cast a warm reflective glow: a smart author makes for a smart review. With bad books, they offer the satisfaction of tight, clean dissection. Let’s not forget that they get one’s name in print (huzzah). They’re also a source of petty cash. The most important point to keep in mind is that they’re something to do while warding off oblivion.
I’ve been on a little book-review romp lately. My recent outings:
The “Shouting Fire” Pretext, City Journal (Nov. 2023). Review of Jeff Kosseff’s Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation. The First Amendment protects various forms of false speech, and Jeff thinks that’s a mighty good thing. Read this glowing review. Then read Jeff’s well-argued book. Then go read Jeff’s other books, The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet and The United States of Anonymous.
Before the World Was Free, City Journal (Oct. 2023). Review of Ian Johnson’s Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future. Lovely book. The Chinese Communist Party goes to great lengths to shroud its past from view. Johnson shines a light on the writers, artists, and scholars who resist—who remember. (The book identifies these dissidents by name. Does the CCP not take notice of such things?) I was chuffed that the editors let me close out with a stanza of Byron. “For I will teach, if possible, the stones / To rise against Earth’s tyrants. Never let it / Be said that we still truckle unto thrones; / But ye—our children’s children! think how we / Show’d what things were before the World was free!”
A Wrongheaded Critique of Tech Progress, Reason (Sept. 2023). Review of Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson’s Power & Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. Dreadful book. Long. Boring. Glib. Fatuous. Predictable (standard herd-instinct progressivism throughout). Of course, I was destined to revolt, witnessing two MIT professors have a go at centrally planning the nation’s technological development. Intellectual hubris, here, on a par with Toby Ord’s. The “three certainties” cliché, properly stated, runs: death, taxes, and lordly academics getting high on their own supply.
Chronicler of the Realm, City Journal (Sept. 2023). Review of Peter Ackroyd’s six-volume History of England. I wrote this one in December 2021. A winter essay, published in summer. Ackroyd is no man; he is a mist, wafting unobstructed through thousands of years of English history. He is a seer, backwards and forwards. He is sage. “Some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost,” he murmurs. “The great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed.” Just so.
Not Quite Under Our Skin, City Journal (Sept. 2023). Review of Zadie Smith’s novel The Fraud. Would that I could write like Zadie! The style. The sense of humor. The broad-mindedness—usually . . . but not here. The Fraud slides, lazily and contentedly, along well-worn grooves of thought. Smith sets off to explore the stunted, dogmatic outlook of the Victorians, and winds up revealing the stunted, dogmatic outlook of the victimhood left.
While on the subject of books, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer up the latest book / book-adjacent episodes of the Tech Policy Podcast:
#355: Conservative Futurism (Oct. 2023). James Pethokoukis discusses his book The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised.
#359: Your Right to Lie (Nov. 2023). Jeff Kosseff and Liar in a Crowded Theater again—now in podcast form.
#361: AI, Art, Copyright, and the Life of Brian (Nov. 2023). I speak with professor Brian Frye about AI and the concept of authorship. (For more from me on this topic, see AI and the Nature of Literary Creativity, The Bulwark (Sept. 2023).)
THOSE BOOK REVIEWS represent my best efforts, these days, to write well . . . save perhaps two items. I completed a pair of elegies this year. One by choice, the other not so much. The first is an obituary for the work of Richard Posner, a judicial and philosophical hero of mine, who is alive but non compos mentis. The second is a proper eulogy, delivered at a funeral and everything, for Aubin Barthold, my father, who died in the spring.