“AI could be how we flip the script on the last few hundred years and have technology serving us rather than us serving technology,” assert LinkedIn executives Roslansky and Raman in this cogent debut guide to the future of work. Drawing on insights from LinkedIn’s billion-plus members, they detail the concerns, limitations, and possibilities of AI in the workforce. The authors share stories from workers like Jonetta Gresham, a nurse turned project manager who once described herself as a “hell no to AI person.” While pursuing an IT certification, however, she realized AI was an ally that could translate information she needed to learn into words and analogies she understood. Workers like Gresham succeed, the authors explain, by honing unique human capabilities—what they call the 5Cs: curiosity, courage, creativity, compassion, and communication—and delegating routine tasks to AI. They advise readers to place tasks into three buckets: those AI can do alone (generating reports), those that can be done in partnership with AI (having AI draft content that one can then edit), and uniquely human tasks (calming down a nervous client). They conclude with a 30-60-90–day plan for adopting AI, which includes exercises for improving tech proficiency, as well as strengthening interpersonal skills like relationship-building. Offering practical tips for AI implementation while also emphasizing the vital skills people bring to their careers, this is a nuanced perspective on a hot-button topic. AI skeptics and enthusiasts alike will find much of interest. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Atlantic staff writer Garber (On Misdirection) provides a scathing but unfocused examination of how the radically shifting contemporary media environment has warped Americans’ interactions with one another and the world. Writing in response to feeling “chastened by the giddy optimism I once felt for the Internet,” the author seeks to identify the cause of the current influx of misinformation, alienation, division, online bullying, and “surreality.” She chalks it up to the oddity of social media’s “two-way screens.” In contrast to television’s one-way screen, which creates distinct divisions between “those who were watched and those who did the watching,” the internet, particularly social media, confuses these boundaries, making all users “actors and audiences,” and encouraging the mistreatment of others because they “don’t seem real.” This environment has not only turned politics into show business, best exemplified by the rise of Donald Trump (though Garber argues this occurred even earlier with former actor Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s televised sax-playing), but all interaction now carries the pressure of entertainment (she cites the bored response to the January 6 hearings). However, this incisive argument is muddled by frequent, somewhat off-topic asides on major news events as well as TV shows and films, ranging from Love Is Blind to the 2017 P.T. Barnum bio-pic The Greatest Showman. This meanders more than it makes it case. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Ransomware attacks are a surreal hybrid of criminal endeavor and legitimate business pursuit, according to this intricate exposé. Economist Shortland (Kidnap) traces the rise of such virtual heists, wherein hackers remotely take over computers, encrypt their data, and demand a ransom for a decryption key to unlock the system (or, sometimes, to refrain from publishing sensitive information gleaned from the computer files). Shortland explores the clever ways hackers have innovated their work, such as automating the attacks on a massive scale or franchising them to hundreds of “affiliates,” as well as the odd challenges they face: the hackers often have to teach their victims how to use cryptocurrency to pay the ransom; guide them through decrypting and rebooting their own systems; and, ironically, build up a reputation for honesty and integrity, so that businesses believe their ransoms will buy decryption keys that actually restore their computers. Shortland also profiles the cottage industry of “crisis responders” that has grown up to negotiate these agreements, not all of whom are white knights. Some companies, she notes, promise to decrypt computers without paying ransom, then pay the ransom out of their fee—and get a discount from the criminals. Throughout, Shortland teases out these convoluted developments—part cops vs. robbers arms race, part host-parasite symbiosis—in lucid, entertaining prose. It’s an eye-opening look at a shadowy underworld. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

A playful attitude can boost creativity, health, and happiness, according to this upbeat outing from Gelardi (Style Stalking), cofounder of Refinery 29. She argues that while adults tend to believe play is “frivolous” or incompatible with success, it actually strengthens pliability and adaptability in ways that improve problem-solving, boost fulfillment, and foster connection. She explores how a robust imagination can expand one’s sense of possibility by creating “neural pathways that prepare us for new experiences,” while creative expression can “transform our relationship with the unknown and the feared” or facilitate connection during dark moments. Recalling how a night spent singing karaoke became a surprising outlet for her grief over a recent miscarriage, Gelardi observes that play “doesn’t always mean joy or laughter; sometimes it means creative engagement with our grief, a way to befriend it rather than hide from it.” Vivid personal anecdotes and tools for incorporating creativity into one’s day-to-day buttress Gelardi’s argument, and her spunky tone is infectious. The result is a welcome reminder to color outside the lines. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Politics rather than geography is the defining feature of heartland rock, contends this thorough history from music journalist Osmon (Jason Molina). The genre originally known as “working class rock” emerged in the 1970s, as artists churned out songs featuring “factory workers, farmers, the American dream, underdogs, [and] the open road” amid a period of social unease. Osmon highlights the careers of Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, and Bruce Springsteen, focusing on their political leanings and efforts to establish Farm Aid and other benefit concerts. She also explores how their songs have been misinterpreted by popular culture, with tracks like Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” harnessed by politicians eager to “inject a working-class subtext” into campaigns, and Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” written about the plight of a Vietnam veteran, adopted as an anthem of uncritical patriotism. Despite that—and the fact that the genre has been used in the Trump era as the “soundtrack of insidious white grievance”—Osmon makes a strong case for its enduring legacy, noting how more recent bands harnessed its “against-the-odds moxie” to speak for “the 99 percent.” Spotlighting a broad range of famous and lesser-known artists, this is a robust assessment of a quintessentially American genre. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Shakur, stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur, paints vivid portraits of his family and hip-hop culture in his raucous debut. The author recaps a boyhood spent between North Carolina, Harlem, and Queens, where he fell in love with rap in the 1970s, and his later exploits rapping and producing with Tupac’s Thug Life group. Opening sections celebrate Shakur’s father, Mutulu, a charismatic founder of the Republic of New Afrika organization, before the narrative zooms in on Shakur’s time with Thug Life in the 1990s. What follows is an entertaining picaresque featuring starstruck fans, celebrity cameos from Snoop Dogg to Madonna, and violent feuds (“There were several 9-millimeters onstage, including mine,” Shakur recalls of an Atlanta show). Later chapters depict a darker Tupac after he was shot in New York and convicted of sexual abuse; the stepbrothers drifted apart after Tupac “disciplined” Shakur by forcing him to fight members of his entourage. It adds up to a rich, clear-eyed study of a rapper’s life interspersed with uncompromising assertions of the author’s values (“In what world do the cops not care about a dying child?” he wonders when NYPD patrolmen ignore his report of a Black kid getting hit by a bus). Readers will be rapt. Agent: Jon Michael Darga, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer finalist Brundage (Civilizing Torture) chronicles the excruciating suffering of the Civil War’s hundreds of thousands of POWs, as well as the political and legal ramifications of this unprecedented mass incarceration of Americans on U.S. soil. Drawing on voluminous first-person accounts, Brundage tells a story of human misery and political incompetence drifting toward indifference. The worst of the era’s detainment facilities were the “prison pens,” reminiscent of concentration camps, such as Maryland’s Point Lookout and Georgia’s Andersonville. Over the course of the war, conditions worsened steadily for POWs; Brundage argues against the common notion that this was the result of mere expediency. Rather, he claims, the horrors were a product of design and resolve: “Men, not events, made Andersonville.” While the early years of the war saw frequent prisoner exchanges that reduced prison populations, a failure in negotiations and the halting of such exchanges brought about “experiments in custodial imprisonment” that were “beyond anyone’s worst prewar premonitions,” including the use of retaliation—i.e., hurting captive POWs in recompense for how the other side treated POWs. The camps, he explains, prompted new international codes of warfare, including those deeming “just following orders” an inadequate excuse. Captivity in the Civil War camps, Brundage perceptively concludes, “marked a generation of Americans in ways that we have barely recognized.” It’s a benchmark study in a harrowing yet oft-overlooked episode in America’s past. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Lexicographer Stamper (Word by Word) takes readers on an uproarious journey into Merriam-Webster’s somber early-20th-century office and the decades-long, behind-the-scenes kerfuffle over the seemingly simple task of defining colors. Stamper tracks the “earnest and painstaking” editorial relationship between the brilliant scientist I.H. Godlove and various harried editors at M-W, all of whom were struggling to define colors within the tension of “the democratic chaos of language and the curated precision of science.” In other words, the public pictures one thing at the word purple, but a scientist might say that purple doesn’t technically exist, so how should one define it? Stamper depicts the esoteric editorial wrangling and nitpicking with verve, bringing a self-serious, cloistered world to vivid life. She also poignantly profiles the devoted relationship between Godlove and his equally brilliant wife Margaret, who finished his work after his death. Beyond M-W’s walls, Stamper dives into a broader color history, from the great “dye famine” of WWI to congressional debates over whether margarine should be allowed to be yellow, as well as a slew of other surprising, complicated ways color has collided with industry. Stamper writes with grace and a delightful sense of humor, particularly when making fun of her own camp (the average lexicographer’s reaction to a party: “silent panic, then hives, then anaphylactic shock”). It’s a scintillating journey into the prismatic heart of a subject that “touch[es] everything.” (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this symphonic exploration of the music of Prince, geographer and sociologist Shabazz (Spacializing Blackness) reveals how the history, ecology, and culture of Minneapolis incubated a unique musical style that shaped pop culture worldwide. Many credit Prince with creating the “Minneapolis Sound,” a fusion of funk, R&B, rock, synth-pop, and new wave. But Shabazz argues that, while Prince was “its high priest and the singular figure who impacted it more than anyone,” the Minneapolis sound predated and evolved beyond him, emerging from a unique combination of factors, including the area’s segregated but racially diverse history (Shabazz investigates Indigenous influences on the sound and spotlights the collision of Black and white pop music that occurred along the borders of segregated neighborhoods). Other determining factors include the city’s many empty, unfinished basements and unused “backrooms” where the Minneapolis sound was born, and its commitment to the arts, particularly the Minnesota public school system’s uniquely strong mid-20th-century investment in music education. After mapping the world into which Prince was born, Shabazz analyzes Prince’s life, career, and discography, showing how it was intrinsically shaped by Minneapolis, and shaped Minneapolis in turn. Shabazz’s innovative music analysis imbued with geography, history, and social science deserves a standing ovation. Music lovers will be captivated by this textured view of a beloved artist. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

This alarming and deeply perceptive study from anthropologist Doron (Waste of a Nation) and sociologist Broom (Survivorship) examines why India has become ground zero for the global explosion in antibiotic resistance. The authors begin with the “haunting statistic” that an estimated 58,000 Indian newborns die each year from antibiotic-resistant sepsis (not to mention the half million Indians who died in 2021 from drug-resistant tuberculosis, or the country’s horrifying new drug-resistance strains of cholera and typhoid). From there, they emphasize that an urgent solution is needed for India’s crisis but that “oversimplified” explanations of Indians as overusing antibiotics, in both medical and agricultural contexts, due to poverty, inadequate sanitation, and overburdened healthcare systems don’t paint a full picture. The real issue, they explain, is the country’s massive, and growing, pharmaceutical industry. India, they argue, is “saturated” with antibiotics, and like any drug, its very presence creates an epidemic of usage. Indeed, reminiscent of the American opioid epidemic, the authors find that “assertive medical representatives... promote new antibiotics to [Indian] doctors and play a key role in creating incentives for overprescription.” The influence of pharmaceutical sales reps, plus the complex machinations of the country’s “hybrid public-private health-care system,” have created “a cycle of antibiotic dependence,” as the authors astutely put it. Incisively argued and genuinely terrifying, this is a must-read for those whose work touches on epidemiology and public health. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink