Our Lives in the Panopticon
The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control Jacob Siegel. Henry Holt and Co., 2026. Hardcover, 336 pages, $29.99. Reviewed by Albert Norton, Jr. Just within the last year, Paul Kingsnorth published Against The Machine about the source of our increasing...
Preparing for Leisure
The Leisure Ethic: The End of Work and a Return to Virtue By David Edward Tabachnick. Toronto University Press, 2026. Paperback, 288 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Robert Rich. In August of 2014, the science educator and YouTuber CGP Grey made the case, in a video titled...
Monster is the Machine
The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origin of Bovadium By J. R. R. Tolkien. William Morrow, 2025. Hardcover, 144 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Ben Reinhard. When Russell Kirk decried the automobile as “a mechanical Jacobin”—a revolutionary naturally destructive of...
The Machine or the Garden?
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity By Paul Kingsnorth. Thesis/Penguin Random House, 2025. Hardcover, 368 pages, $32. Reviewed by Paul Krause. In the beginning was the garden. That is a very standard myth to start. Many cultures have foundation myths that...
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