By Matthew N. Eisler (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2022, 365 pp.)     Reviewed by David N. Lucsko     When it comes to new technologies, I have never really been an “early adopter.” “Reluctant latecomer” would be closer to the mark, for my mantra has always been that “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” I still prefer LPs to MP3s, DVDs to streaming, and paper copies of journals, books, and magazines to their online equivalents. I have never tweeted, never used Facebook, and only recently (and with grave misgivings) acquired a smartphone. More to the point, my cars have man ..read more

The BBC: A Century on Air—David Hendy (New York, NY, USA: Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group, 2022, 638 pp.)   Reviewed by A. David Wunsch   In 2022, a number of literary critics observed that exactly 100 years had elapsed since 1922, the year that Ezra Pound had once proclaimed as “Year one of a new era.” He was doubtless referring to the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as well as James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was the year that Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics. Not generally noted, but certainly of social importance was the entry of the BBC into the world of radio br ..read more

By Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2020, 305+x pp.) Reviewed by Rachel Maines In Judy Syfers now-classic December 1971 feminist essay “I Want a Wife,” published in New York Magazine ’s preview of Ms., the author listed the reasons why a person might want someone in their life who would willingly do the chores, mind the children, manage the house, shop for provisions, provide social and sexual services, and function as a general household dogsbody. “My God,” Syfers asked, “Who wouldn’t want a wife?” Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy, while not directly citi ..read more

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason. By Lee McIntyre (Cambridge, MA, USA: M.I.T. Press, 2021, 264 pp.) Reviewed by Jacob Ossar   In Book I of Plato’s Republic, Socrates narrates preparing to go home from a festival when he is playfully “arrested” by an acquaintance and told that because he is outnumbered he has no choice but to stay. “Why, is there not left,” said I, “the alternative of our persuading you that you ought to let us go?” “But could you persuade us,” said he, “if we refused to listen?” Here, at the beg ..read more

by Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2022, 344 pp.) Reviewed by Nathaniel Knopf   Spend enough time online and you will inevitably come across a political debate. Within these debates, you can count on accusations that some participants are actually bots. Though the profiles appear to belong to ordinary people, the accusation is they may actually be fake profiles created to spread propaganda and mislead people. The accusation is difficult to prove, but the suspicion is based on real events. Back in 2016, acting on behalf of the Russian government, the Russi ..read more

By James L. Nolan, Jr. (Cambridge, MA, USA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2020, 294 pp.)   Reviewed by Rachelle Linner   It is hard to imagine a more appropriate author for this impressive work of scholarship and interpretation than Williams College Professor James L. Nolan, Jr. A sociologist who focuses on the role of technology in modern society, Professor Nolan is the grandson of James Findley Nolan, M.D., a physician who was involved in the seminal events of the early nuclear age. Through the lens of his grandfather’s life, James L. Nolan explores the dynamics of “th ..read more

By Kim Bell (Stanford, CA, USA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2020, 323 pp.)   Reviewed by A. David Wunsch   The cover of Good Pictures is a visual pun that would probably be lost on anyone under the age of 30, reared on digital photography. It is a shade of yellow as unmistakable as the green on a John Deere tractor. This yellow was the color of Kodak film boxes and papers for over 100 years. But the title too is a riff on another Kodak product: How to Make Good Pictures: A Book for the Amateur Photographer. The work was first published in 1910 and went through numerous editions before expi ..read more

By Stefan Höhne (Cambridge, MA, USA: M.I.T. Press, 2021, 373 pp.) Reviewed by A. David Wunsch   Historians looking for first-hand accounts of the experience of riding the New York subway have their work cut out for them. Such information is elusive. Recently, we were given a small vignette of what was once going on in the mind of the well-known American fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor. In 1943, at age 18, she traveled from her home in rural Milledgeville, Georgia, to New York City. Riding on the New York subway, she ensured that her two female cousins sat on either side of her lest she ..read more

By Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2020, 314 pp.)   Reviewed by Daniene Byrne   Today, it seems like all our daily experiences begin or end with data, with our every move leveraged for data collection. We, more or less, accept this. We know that while our lives unfold, our habits, purchases, travels, and comments become an unceasing stream of descriptive bits collected and assessed elsewhere, in the cloud, slightly outside our consciousness, occasionally popping up to help out with location, shopping tips, or spellcheck. It is all an inescapabl ..read more

By Naomi Oreskes. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton Univ. Press, 2019, 360 pp. Reviewed by Jacob Ossar Anyone paying even the slightest attention to the news in the last few years would have been hard-pressed to avoid reports of wildfires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, and other natural disasters. The severity and frequency of these extreme weather events raise urgent questions about the degree to which they are related to climate changes and what measures we should take in response. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people worldwide to grapple with questions about the efficacy of mea ..read more