So, we’re coming up to the end of summer! Let’s talk about summer reading as we move toward Labor Day. What are you reading these days? Here’s what I’m reading.

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna – The AI Con

In this book, two technology experts expose the ‘AI Con.’ By that term, they mean the overhyping of AI in order to make money and eliminate jobs. On the whole, they do a fantastic job of it. They show in detail how AI hype conflates many different kinds of technology, exaggerates the capability of ‘AI,’ tricks people into thinking it’s intelligence when it really isn’t, and sells the world on a bill of goods.

And they end the book with an extended chapter full of reasonable recommendations for action. They move from basic steps like not using AI to enforcing existing regulation and promoting new regulation.

It’s a much needed book in a world where the tech industry dupes corporate leadership and management into thinking ‘AI’ can do the job of its workers. It can’t, though it might take on some management tasks. Bender and Hanna clarify again and again how claims about AI ‘freeing up worker time’ is little more than code for de-valuing labor and turning jobs into gig work.

But the book slips into bad arguments from time to time. The argument against ‘AGI’ on the grounds that it’s associated with eugenics is a particularly low point of the book. It’s also a commonly heard bad argument. Those issues aside, this is a book worth reading.

Ally Condie – Crossed

This is the second book in Condie’s YA dystopian Matched series. It picks up where the first book left off…at least, it sort of does.

Unlike the first book, this one is inconsistent in pacing and surprisingly little happens. There’s a decent payoff in the last 30 or 40 pages as the book finally builds to something. And the book does heighten the tension with the love triangle from the first novel, even though one of the participants barely makes an appearance this time.

Without revealing too many spoilers, I’ll say that the topic of this book is the fight by the main characters to join a resistance movement against the ‘Society’ entity that rules their world as a totalitarian force. By the end of the novel, they’ve gotten there.

It’ll be interesting to see where it goes in the conclusion.

Charles Derber – Bonfire

My partner and I read this book from veteran sociologist Derber for our book club. We wanted to take on contemporary politics.

The book started promising enough with a high level overview of U.S. politics after the 2024 election. Derber lays out a view he called ‘sociocide,’ where a wide range of social institutions and civil culture break down, leading the way to the dissolution of the country.

The problem is that the book never really goes anywhere after that insight. Derber breaks the book down by topic – moving from democracy to the economy to tech, culture, the environment, guns, and so on. But he never builds on the initial insights, and his recommendations for a solution are banal.

It had a promising start, but I can’t say I recommend it.

Lisa Jewell – Invisible Girl

My local reading group selected this one for a mystery book month, and it looked promising. It even began promising – filling the first part of the book with suspense and the kind of upper middle class angst I love reading about.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t go anywhere. It centers on a mystery involving the disappearance of a lead character. But, for one, it never really comes off as a compelling mystery because it was fairly obvious from the first half of the book why she disappeared. And, second, it features a lot of over the top bad police work. For that reason alone, it doesn’t work as a ‘crime fiction’ piece.

With that said, the book’s exploration of gender and the ‘manosphere’ does have its moments. And, as I mentioned, I did genuinely enjoy the book’s level of upper middle class anxiety.

Noam Scheiber – Mutiny

This is a book on the early 2020s wave of unionization among college-educated workers at places like Amazon, Apple, and Starbucks. It covers the stories of a few workers who struggle after college, end up working in lower wage work, and take a leading role in efforts to unionize their workforce.

At the end of the day, Scheiber is a labor reporter. And he’s more journalist than theorist. In terms of building a narrative and getting a feel for his main characters, he does an excellent job. But in terms of drawing a broader point and making an argument, it’s never clear where this book wants to go.

I’d recommend it as a supplement to, say, a DSA low wage worker organizing campaign. I’d also recommend it for people looking to hear a good story about young, college educated people who struggle. But it’s not advancing any new theory or contributing to an explanation of either our economic conditions or the state of union organizing.

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