Our Lives in the Panopticon

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

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

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?

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...
Personalism in the Age of AI

Personalism in the Age of AI

Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko. Lexington Books, 2025. Hardcover, 266 pages, $115.  Reviewed by Grant R. Martsolf. The first time I had ever heard of ChatGPT was in April of...