:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202110American-Independent-Inventors-in-an-Era-of-Corporate-RD.jpg)
No Geniuses Here
W. Patrick McCray praises Eric Hintz’s new book on America’s independent inventors in the 20th century.
Science & Technology
"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein
The Mystery of the Cosmos: What Exactly Are We Looking For?
The key to understanding the universe may lie in grasping the ways it replicates itself.
Blade Runner: Grass and Our Future
Louise Schiavone explains how leaves of grass in all their variety are “now a piece of the complex puzzle that might hold off carbon overload.”
The Invention of “Xenophobia”
George Makari describes xenophobia’s complicated history as a concept, and reveals the curious role of a lone stenographer.
Elites Against Extinction: The Dark History of a Cultural Paranoia
Our ideas about human extinction, including how human extinction might be prevented, have a dark history, explains Tyler Harper.
Why DNA Is No Key to Social Equality: On Kathryn Paige Harden’s “The Genetic Lottery”
A review of Kathryn Paige Harden’s “The Genetic Lottery.”
The Computer Says … What?
Reviewing “Making AI Intelligible,” Paul Dicken concludes it might be easier “to build a human that can talk to a computer, rather than the other way around.”
Fair Play on the Marcellus Shale
Reviewing “Up to Heaven and Down to Hell,” Jonah Walters describes the tragedy of the commons from the inside, as a member of the community in question.
The Bigoted Roots of Epidemiology
In reviewing “Maladies of Empire,” John Galbraith Simmons shows how an understanding of colonial medicine and slavery needs to better inform our present.
AI Critique 2.0
Leif Weatherby surveys the new frontier of AI critique.
The Dream Economy
All the talk of colonizing Mars is a dangerous pipe dream that deflects from the less glamorous task of trying to keep Earth habitable.
Dissecting “Noise”
Vasant Dhar considers “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,” the new book by Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony.
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202110fractal.png)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202110eelgrass.png)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202110Jean-Martin-de-Saintours-.png)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202109xrisk.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202108thegeneticlottery.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202107makingaiintelligible.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202107uptoheavenanddowntohell.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202107maladies.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202107Atlas-of-AI.jpg)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202108WhatleyAgarMars.png)
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202108noise.jpg)