Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in June. All of the mentioned titles are available to put on hold in our catalog and will also be made available via the library’s Overdrive website on the day of publication in eBook and downloadable audiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“1873: The Rothchilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World” by Liaquat Ahamed (Jun 2)
Over the course of the 1850s and 1860s, during the first era of globalization, the world experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Fueling this expansion was an explosion in the global bond market, at the hub of which stood one family — the Rothschilds, arguably the wealthiest banking family in history. While the giant sums of capital provided through the bond market built the railroads, the century’s most transformative investments, the money raised also unleashed a frenzy of speculation, massive overinvestment, and wasteful borrowing by governments. With excessive euphoria leading to disappointed expectations, in the early 1870s the bubble burst. Stock markets from Vienna to New York crashed, and dozens of railroads and many governments defaulted. Financial officials responded by blundering into a precipitous remaking of the global currency system — exacerbating the ensuing economic collapse and setting the stage for decades of a punitive deflation that sparked waves of anti-globalist populism. As Liaquat Ahamed shows us in this enthralling history, the crisis of 1873 was, among other things, a death blow to Reconstruction in the United States and the proximate cause of the Ottoman Empire’s slow death spiral. Ironically, though the Rothschilds had presciently kept a low profile during the bubble, when the deluge came, they were viciously scapegoated as part of a wider hatred directed at “Jewish finance,” a strain of antisemitism that would come to full evil flower during the twentieth century. “1873″ is a bird’s-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath. The Rothschilds and a cast of other witnesses give us the human perspective. And we have a brilliant financial historian’s grasp of the larger forces at play, resulting in a global narrative with thrilling explanatory power.
“Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World” Katherine Dunn (Jun 16)
Gone are the days when we pulled off to the side of the road, twisted a map this way and that, and squinted in exasperation before saying, “We’re lost.” Now, a network of satellites that circles the earth points us in the right direction. The Global Positioning System is embedded not only in our phones but in our cultural history and our future. GPS, intangible but ubiquitous, has instigated a radical shift in our relationship to our own intuition and place in the world, making us critically dependent on technology we forget is even there. “Little Blue Dot” uncovers GPS’s origins as a product of the Cold War, from the Space Race to the bombing campaigns in Vietnam, following along as its military and civilian uses expanded and shifted to become part of the fabric of modern life. With pulsating detail and witty expertise, investigative reporter Katherine Dunn takes us on a fascinating journey from the origins of the technology to its modern-day iteration, considering its role in international politics and conflict-and its rising vulnerabilities to manipulation. Initially a cog in the wheel of globalization, GPS has now taken on a new life and may even serve as a parable for the proliferation of AI and newer technologies on the horizon. Sharp and evocative, “Little Blue Dot” considers the future of GPS, its impact on our understanding of space and time, and the role of technology in our lives.
“The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence– Before It’s Too Late” by Cory Doctorow (Jun 23)
In modern tech parlance, a centaur is a person who is able to use technology to be a better, more productive version of themself. A reverse centaur is a person who is forced by technology to work at an inhuman pace — a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code. “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI” is not another anti-AI screed. Cory Doctorow uses AI in his work every day. As a creative person, he has no moral or dogmatic issue with AI — he thinks the technology is useful, even exciting, and full of potential. And yet. AI has arrived surrounded by unprecedented hype driven by a tech industry desperate to maintain its unprecedented valuation based on its own promises of endless financial growth. Despite the fact that almost all of AI’s real-world implementations have proved underwhelming, AI is projected to be worth more than $16 trillion — a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of “value,” every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI. For Doctorow, it is imperative to see through that hype to the real story, to understand the technology not just for what it does, but for who it does it to and who it does it for. From that point of view, the story of AI is indeed dramatic and unprecedented, having generated an investment bubble so big that it endangers the entire world economy. In “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI” — as he so successfully did in “Enshittification” — Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life “after” AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.
More Notable Releases for June
- “The American School of Spies: The Archaeologists Who Fought the Nazis and Saved the Treasures of Ancient Greece” by Stephen Talty (Jun 9)
- “Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age” by James M. Tabor (Jun 9)
- “Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution” by Denise Kiernan (Jun 23)
- “Becoming George: The Invention of George Sands” by Fiona Sampson (Jun 23)
