Ten Cutting Comments on Books I Consumed

And here's all the book reviews I posted in October in one place: The Traveler By: Joseph Eckert Astounding By: Alec Nevala-Lee Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything By: James Gleick Building a StoryBrand 2.0: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen By: Donald Miller X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga By: Chris Claremont and John Byrne The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral into Madness Under Putin By: Marc Bennetts Dear Debbie By: Freida McFadden The Collapsing Empire By: John Scalzi (from the archives) The Will of the Many By: James Islington Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes By: Joyce F. Benenson with Henry Markovits This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor By: Adam Kay GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything By: Freya India Porcelain: A Memoir By: Moby (from the archives) Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons By: Ben Riggs Watch What You Hear: Penelope's Dream of Twenty Geese By: Edward Teach Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI By: John Brockman (Editor)  (from the archives) The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game By: C. Thi Nguyen Doctor Strange Epic Collection: A Separate Reality By: Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Gardner Fox, and Stan Lee The Inevitable Apostasy and the Promised Restoration By: Tad R. Callister (from the archives) Simplify: Do 50 Percent More with 50 Percent Less By: Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz 21 Days of Fear: One Day, One Letter By: Hervé Commère The Superstition of Divorce By: G. K. Chesterton The City & The City By: China Miéville  (from the archives)  

I. While listening to a recent podcast discussing the events of 10/7 I heard something that really stuck with me. The guest on the podcast explained how Israel had spent the vast majority of their planning and espionage resources on Hezbollah and Iran. This is why, when the time came, they had the brilliant pager and walkie-talkie attack already prepped. Additionally, they had a clear plan for invading southern Lebanon and for striking Iran. By contrast, they spent very little of their planning and espionage resources on Hamas. The border was lightly defended, mostly relying on fancy and ultimately fallible electronic warnings. And they further assumed that Hamas had been "bought off"—that they were too addicted to the money coming in to do anything radical. This assumption ran so deeply that they dismissed the Jericho Wall document, which, in retrospect, laid out Hamas' entire plan. As such, they were completely surprised by 10/7. And even after the smoke cleared they had no real plan for invading Gaza. This led to a few weeks of delays while they come up with one, and even then they were forced to make up a lot of it as they went along. This lesson felt like a metaphor for our own approach to large-scale risk. What is our Hezbollah? And what is our Hamas? What risks are getting a lot of attention, and what risks are being ignored? It's easy to name our "Hezbollah". AI is currently completely dominating our discussion of risk, particularly existential risk. Arguably it's sucking up all the air in the room. In pointing this out, I'm not saying that's inappropriate. Hezbollah was a genuine risk to Israel, but even so it was Hamas who irrevocably pierced the Israeli psyche. And this brings me to my point. It's harder to name our "Hamas", but this identification may be equally important. And I'm willing to wager that when the history of 21st-century disasters is written, just like with Israel, our "Hamas" will end up being more important than our "Hezbollah".  To be clear, this is my read on the subject. I don't have a crystal ball. Nevertheless, many people sense that civilization is reaching a point of critical fragility. Let's say you're one of them and you think something catastrophic (but not necessarily total extinction) is likely to happen before 2100—say in the next 75 years. Options for what might happen include nuclear war, an intentional pandemic, a gigantic financial crisis, etc. Now imagine that you're pretty pessimistic (I am) and that you place the chances of something like this happening at greater than 50%. Well then if your AI P(doom) is less than 25% then you should be willing to wager that "when the history of 21st-century disasters is written" something else will end up being more important than AI. Obviously these numbers are very crude, but I think you get the point: our doom may come from a direction we should be paying more attention to. So, what is our "Hamas"? What do we risk being blindsided by while all of our attention is focused on AI?  

I. I attended the Faith Matters conference a few weekends ago. For those unfamiliar with the organization (most of you, I suspect) Faith Matters is an independent, privately run LDS nonprofit that defines itself as a "space in which an expansive, radiant approach to the restored gospel can be considered." I attended a handful of sessions, and in several of them this "radiance" was on full display. But for the purposes of this post I'd like to focus on one in particular.1 This presentation started in an unradiant manner. The speaker opened by listing all of the problems faced by the modern world. I don't recall everything he listed, but I know that climate change and political unrest were in there, and possibly decreasing fertility. In any case, this list of problems culminated in the term polycrisis. A term I myself have used from time to time. That was the first half of his talk. The second half was his solution to the polycrisis. Obviously a solution to all of our most pressing problems would be the biggest thing ever. In fact, if he could solve even one of the problems he had listed that would be a huge accomplishment! So, how did he propose solving the polycrisis? Meditation… This seems unequal to the task. Though maybe it was super special meditation? His meditative technique does have a greater focus on connection with others and opening oneself up to a "universal orchestra of meaning".2 So it's got that going for it, which is nice. Full disclosure, once the presentation took a turn towards maximum "woo" I kind of checked out. When I say, "checked out", I actually had my laptop open and I was getting a little bit of work done while I listened, but I don't think I missed anything important. I'm pretty familiar with the many crises affecting the world, and I'll wager I could come up with a few this guy had never heard of. And yes, I tuned out even more as he started talking about meditation, but I'm positive I've heard that pitch as well. In fact it's the entire point of my post, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I should recount one humorous anecdote. As I said, I was on my laptop. I had a small software deployment that needed to be taken care of. About the same time I started my deploy, the speaker started his guided meditation section, asking everyone to close their eyes and open their souls to God. (Or something along those lines, I was doing a deploy, not taking notes.) This went on for a while, and eventually he asked them to open their eyes, and expand their senses and feel the love they had for the person sitting next to them. I did feel something from the woman sitting next to me, but it definitely wasn't love… Fortunately, I was on the end of the aisle, so I was only getting barely concealed annoyance from one direction, not both. One of the people I told this story to said that she felt that the woman's annoyance was justified. To which I replied, "Of course it was justified! What kind of jerk works on his laptop through a guided meditation exercise! The point of the story is to shake your head at me, not her." II. This was not the first time...

I. When I pivoted a month ago I stopped posting book reviews to this space, and started posting them to Notes. My idea was that I would then do one long book review every month and also link to all the reviews I had done through Notes, so that anyone who was really interested in my take on the great historical novel, Ivanhoe, or alternatively the queer, postmodern New Testament essay collection, Sex and the Single Savior could see that I had in fact opined on both and click through on whichever one actually interested them.1 That is still the plan, but on top of that I have the urge to use this space to ruminate. Whenever I ask someone to critique my writing they always say I do too much rumination, but what do they know?!? Sure, maybe they went to Yale or Notre Dame.2 But do they understand the public's deep yearning for kidney stone stories set in Edinburgh? ... ------------------------------- After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World Author: Ian Shapiro Year Published: 2026 320 Pages Type: A compilation of thirty-five years of geopolitical regrets, like an old man looking back at the job he didn't take, or the girl he should have married—only the job was the Partnership for Peace and the girl was Russia.5 The old man is proud of a handful of things, like when he didn't sack Baghdad in 1991.6 -------------------------------

While everyone else is talking about AI, I'm going to engage in an exegesis of a single verse in the Old Testament, and yet somehow AI will still sneak in!

Is there some deeper meaning to the traffic cone on Sherlock's head? Or is it just silly vandalism? Most people seemed to think it was the latter, but I think it was a hidden symbol of some mystery. How could it not be? I. June 25 was the tenth anniversary of my blog. I understand that, traditionally, an anniversary post would come out on the actual day, or at least the same week, but I blew past the occasion without even realizing it. And then, even when I did realize it, I was too busy with other stuff to jump on it. In fact I haven't posted anything since July 3. I must have been overcome by the patriotic fervor of our nation's 250th anniversary.1 As a better person than me has said, it's self-indulgent, and even unseemly to dwell overly long on one's recent gap in writing. But this is destined to be a very self-indulgent post so I'm going to ignore her (obviously wise) advice, and explain the gap in great detail. July 3 was two days after my first experience passing a kidney stone. Then two days after that (July 5) I went on a week-long road-trip around the Pacific Northwest.

This was my entry to the 2026 ACX Book Review Contest. Given that it was, sadly, judged inadequate to the high standards of the ACX readership, I must now inflict it on you. Hopefully, with your obviously lower standards, you'll enjoy it. It is ridiculously long. These warnings aside, I would urge you to at least read parts one and two. The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science By: Michael Strevens 0. Why This Book? Out of the tens of millions of books ever written over the centuries, why review this one? Because science is the secret to the creation of the modern world and this book holds the secret to the creation of science.  In particular, it answers the question: why didn't modern science develop any sooner? Why didn't the Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Arabs develop internal combustion engines, arrive at the germ theory of disease, or send a man to the Moon?  The answer it gives is surprising, and right there in the title. Everyone thinks that the essence of science is open inquiry, but it's really a deliberately narrow procedural straitjacket. Modern science has many irrational qualities. It requires us to wall off our thinking. Natural philosophy was never going to succeed as long as it included philosophy. Philosophy is deep. Science only works if it's shallow.  Strevens is not the first to delve into the workings of science. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn trod similar ground, and they'll make an appearance, but Strevens incorporates the best of both. He keeps Popper's focus on empiricism, while better describing how actual scientists work. And he acknowledges Kuhn's assertion of paradigmatic thinking, but shows how this gets channeled into productive public argument.  By showing how science works, Strevens also demonstrates how it might stop working. And once you understand the components of the "Knowledge Machine" it would appear to be in greater peril than most people realize. This is why I chose to review this book out of all the books ever written: science needs saving, and with it the rest of the world. I. My Father, the Physics Teacher .....

I. If you don't live in Utah, you may not have heard that the Great Salt Lake is in trouble. It's been rapidly dwindling in size and depth, and while it's never going to disappear entirely (though look at the Aral Sea), there are always issues when an environment goes through a rapid transformation. The big worry is that the lake will become so salty that even brine shrimp and brine flies can no longer survive. This would eliminate a major source of food for migrating birds, while at the same time a shrinking lake also removes the wetlands they use for mid-migration habitat. There are other potential problems as well, but you get the idea.   I'm old enough to remember when we were having the opposite problem, when the lake was so high that it threatened I-80 (the stretch west of SLC), the SLC airport, and various communities and businesses perched around the edge of the lake. This was in the mid-80s and my father worked at one of those businesses. This particular business would take lake brine, pump it into shallow ponds, allow the water to evaporate away, and then harvest the minerals left behind. Their big cash product was potash, which is used in fertilizers. The rising lake threatened to flood their carefully managed pond system, so it was a real ongoing crisis for my father back then.  After a couple of years of hard fighting, the lake eventually won. The outer dike was breached and lake water flooded into the pond system, completely wiping out the productive capacity of the business. It was a dark day...  

The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity By: Carl R. Trueman Published: 2026 256 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? In the standard story of the transition from the premodern to the modern, the world has gradually been disenchanted. Depending on who you are, this is either a good thing, a sad thing, or a mixed thing. Trueman's contention is that disenchantment has, over the last few decades, transitioned to desecration. In his telling, the modern world hasn't just outgrown the sacred, it's rebelled against it. Much like a headstrong teenager might revel in doing the opposite of what his parents expect, society has come to celebrate the transgression of things that were previously deemed to be holy.  These transgressions are not only a source of rebellious pleasure, but more critically, they provide a way to make the person feel superior to the divine. Violating rules and norms allows one to feel above them. Why is this important? Because (pulling in Nietzsche) having rejected God, men now need to become gods, and this is one way to do it. But these transgressions, rather than elevating men, debase them. We see this debasement in everything from the sexual revolution down through assisted suicide and IVF. In the end Trueman claims one can either accept Christianity root-and-branch or engage in full-on Nietzschean self-creation, but that there is no middle ground, no cultural Christianity, no stable progressive moral creation. It is either one extreme or the other. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Trueman is, himself, a root-and-branch Christian, so he definitely favors one side over the other.  Who should read this book? ...

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by: Eric H. Cline 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed by: Eric H. Cline and Glyinnis Fawkes The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing by: Brink Lindsey The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History by: Odd Arne Westad