An Historian’s Evolving Vision of Mankind

An Historian’s Evolving Vision of Mankind

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Spiegel and Grau, 2018. Hardcover, 400 pages, $28. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant historian teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His 2015 bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History...
Narrating the Future

Narrating the Future

Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future By Jason Phillips. Oxford University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35. Reviewed by Carl Lawrence Paulus “What is past is prologue.” William Shakespeare’s line from The Tempest is inscribed...
The Scientific Case for an Alarming Utopia

The Scientific Case for an Alarming Utopia

Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. Viking, 2018. Hardcover, 556 pages. $35. Reviewed by Jeffrey Folks Steven Pinker’s writing is intriguing. Just about everything he says is half right and half wrong. In this and...