New Book Releases | March 17
One of the greatest tools we have for understanding and navigating modern life is one of our oldest information technologies—the book. These four new releases are at the top of our reading list this week.
This week's new releases offer useful insights for navigating our modern world, including a leading philosopher's explanation of why "a reasonable person seeks to understand what is valuable," a Stanford brain scientist's mix of "memoir and cutting-edge neuroscience," a law professor's call for a "a new legal regime that protects users over platforms," and a theoretical neuroscientist and entrepreneur's look at how to "respond to the changes that are already taking hold due to the advent of AI" while remaining"grounded in the human perspective"
Interested in buying multiple copies for your team, book club, or employee resource group? Follow the links below to purchase the books, or check out our services for bulk book buyers to learn more about how you can work with us.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue by Krista Lawlor, published by Harvard University Press
A leading philosopher explores what it means to be reasonable—and why it matters for the well-being of our society.
Reasonableness plays many roles in our lives. In Anglo-American law, it is the yardstick for a wide range of behavior—the “reasonable-person standard” governs everything from contract enforcement to killing in self-defense. In politics, a state can maintain a liberal democracy only if its citizens are reasonable. In ordinary life, we hold each other accountable to reason, criticizing as unreasonable bosses who demand too much of our time or partners who make decisions without regard for our preferences.
But what does it mean to be reasonable? Being reasonable is not the same as being rational. It is also different from being thoughtful. In Being Reasonable, Krista Lawlor argues that a reasonable person seeks to understand what is valuable. A reasonable person must be rational enough to figure out what is valuable and thoughtful enough to care about what other people find valuable, but rationality and thoughtfulness alone do not suffice to make one reasonable. Even an ideally rational and thoughtful person might fail to understand, or lack the concern to understand, what is valuable.
Being Reasonable is the first comprehensive study of reasonableness. Lawlor provides an account of the nature of reasonableness and, further, explains how we manage to be reasonable. Humans discover what is valuable by listening to their emotions and by listening to each other. By taking command over our emotions, and by interacting attentively with others, we can live up to the standard set by society and law.
Emergence: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind by David Sussillo, published by Grand Central Publishing
For fans of Educated and Invisible Child, David Sussillo combines memoir and cutting-edge neuroscience to tell the story of his unlikely journey from group homes and drug-addicted parents to the scientific elite—exploring why, and how, he managed to succeed against all odds.
David Sussillo has made a career at the cutting edge of neuroscience and technology—yet his path there was anything but a straight line. Born to drug-addicted parents in New Mexico, he navigated a childhood marked by violence and neglect. But a seed was planted at the unlikeliest of places—the local arcade.
What follows is a remarkable journey of resilience and transformation, from the chaotic corridors of group homes to the halls of Columbia and Stanford. Along the way, Sussillo takes readers on an illuminating tour of the century-long dance between neuroscience, physics, and computation that has laid the groundwork for neural networks—the technology that drives modern artificial intelligence. As he advances in the field, working to demystify these networks, he also begins to pursue an answer to a more personal question: why, and how, did he succeed against all odds?
Emergence radiates heartbreak, humor, and scientific wonder, inviting readers on an unforgettable journey that bridges the personal and the profound, revealing how intricate complexities arise from simple beginnings.
Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back by Olivier Sylvain, published by Columbia Global Reports
How the Internet lost its way—and how to fix it
Reclaiming the Internet is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency.
With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Reclaiming the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time—what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere.
Robot-Proof: When Machines Have all the Answers, Build Better People by Vivienne Ming, published by Wiley
A compelling story to expand the perspective on the new, unprecedented world of AI.
In Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All the Answers, Build Better People, Dr. Vivienne Ming, “a force in AI unlike any we have seen before” (Mark Minevich, Forbes), helps readers grasp the ugly and the amazing of how individuals, companies, and societies will respond to the changes that are already taking hold due to the advent of AI. Rather than a wonky textbook on machine learning or a utopian/dystopian (take your pick) screed, Robot-Proof is a book about people, exploring what it means to be human in an increasingly automated world.
This book presents, then answers, pressing questions that readers may or may not have thought to themselves, such as:
- What predicts long-term life outcomes across millions of little kids?
- What drives career success in both hyper-networked salespeople and hyper-nerdy programmers?
- Why is the Informational-Exploration Paradox the most terrifying phenomenon you’ve never heard of?
- What predicts the smartest team and how will AI change it?
- Why are ill-posed problems the future work, education, and a robot-proof humanity?
With poignant insight and delicate care to keep us grounded in the human perspective, Robot-Proof is an entertaining and thought-provoking read for all individuals seeking to understand the next steps in a new and completely unprecedented world.
