A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “book review”. Follow an idea across the archive.
This book review examines 'We Present Television' (1940), a collection of essays by early TV pioneers describing the birth of television, written when TV was still experimental and before classic shows like 'I Love Lucy' existed.
A review of Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs covering his transformation of Singapore from third-world city-state to wealthy nation through pragmatic policies, framed as a 'rationalist power fantasy' of someone who successfully implemented sensible governance.
Two psychiatrists conduct an adversarial review of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going To Hurt,' debating whether his NHS memoir represents institutional failure causing PTSD or a self-inflicted martyr complex, while examining the book's comedy, structure, and impact on healthcare discourse.
Scott Alexander shares excerpts from Josiah Royce's 1886 history of 1850s San Francisco, showing that many supposedly modern urban problems—housing prices, crime, family breakdown, NIMBYism, boom-bust cycles—existed in frontier California.
A detailed exploration of The Tale of Genji (circa 1000 CE), arguing against its supposed accessibility while demonstrating the extreme cultural alienness of Heian-era Japan's Imperial Court through discussions of aesthetics, hierarchy, gender segregation, relationship customs, poetry, and translation challenges.
A review of Thomas Urquhart's 17th-century English translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, told through the tragicomic life story of the translator - a Scottish aristocrat who failed at everything except creating this masterpiece of baroque English prose.
A descendant of missionary Hiram Bingham reviews his ancestor's memoir about bringing Christianity and Western civilization to Hawaii in the 1820s-1840s, drawing parallels to modern Effective Altruism and examining what lessons today's do-gooders can learn from this earlier generation of world-savers.
A book review of 'The Escape Artist,' which tells the story of Rudolf Vrba's escape from Auschwitz and his failed attempt to stop the Holocaust by warning European Jews, ultimately exploring human denial in the face of unimaginable horrors.
An exploration of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest epic, examining its themes of mortality and meaning while providing extensive historical context about ancient Mesopotamia and arguing that the poem's true immortality comes from the countless people who preserved and transmitted it.
This review of Masooda Bano's 'Breakdown in Pakistan' examines how Western aid systematically destroys the capacity of local voluntary organizations to mobilize collective action, replacing diverse community-driven institutions with professionalized NGOs dependent on foreign funding.
A review of 'Great and Desperate Cures' by Elliot Valenstein, which examines the history of lobotomy and psychosurgery, explaining how tens of thousands of patients underwent dangerous brain operations from the 1930s-1950s despite poor evidence of effectiveness.
A deep dive into the Book of Abraham, focusing on how Joseph Smith's translations of Egyptian papyri were definitively proven false by Egyptologists, yet Mormonism continues to thrive—raising questions about whether instrumental rationality trumps epistemic rationality.
Scott announces the finalist selection phase for the 2026 Book Review Contest, asking readers to help rate 162 entries using a new website built by Rob Ennals.
Scott reviews a history of the Frankfurt School, explaining their response to Marxism's failures through negative dialectics, cultural criticism, and the belief that society needed conceptual transformation before communist revolution could succeed, while examining their actual influence on modern leftism.
Scott announces the 2026 book review contest with a May 20th deadline, requiring anonymized submissions via Google Form, offering prizes of at least $2,500/$1,000/$500 for the top three winners.
Scott examines a paradox where bloomers and anti-doomers warn against apocalyptic thinking while treating doomerism itself as an unprecedented existential crisis requiring drastic action.
Scott Alexander presents 51 links covering AI progress and safety, political developments, scientific research, cultural oddities, and ongoing philosophical debates about miracles and education reform.
Scott announces the winners and finalists of the 2025 Non-Book Review Contest, with prizes ranging from free subscriptions to $2500, and provides bios for all the winning authors.
Scott opens voting for the 2025 Non-Book Review Contest finalists, listing all thirteen entries and providing a link to the ranked-choice voting form.
Scott reviews a new book by Yudkowsky and Soares that makes an uncompromising case for halting AI development to prevent human extinction, analyzing both its arguments and its potential impact as a call to action.
A book review examining the evidence for Joan of Arc's miraculous abilities and accomplishments, analyzing historical sources and debating whether she was divinely inspired, mentally ill, or part of a conspiracy.
A review of L.R. Hiatt's book on Aboriginal anthropology that examines the complexity of their traditional social structures and practices, while exploring broader questions about cultural evolution and the impact of colonialism.
A detailed review of a 1995 paper introducing the PDAPP mouse model for Alzheimer's disease, examining how its limitations were overlooked and shaped decades of potentially misguided Alzheimer's research.
Scott reviews Steven Byrnes' work explaining how our perception of self and consciousness can flip between different models, similar to optical illusions, which explains phenomena like trance, hypnosis, and spiritual experiences.