Reviews and Comments

Medicine always seems to be entangled with the latest technological fads, and here Greene analyzes this fascinating and important history. Importantly, he shows how misguided technological determinism is, with many technologies sputtering and failing despite promise. In addition, practitioners often drove innovation in this space, with familiarity with CCTV encouraging doctors at MGH to develop a novel "video calling" telemedicine system for their clinic at Logan Airport. With all of the recent hype around using AI for medical purposes, this book is a must read. Highly recommend

This book argues that public sector workers can through pension funds utilize their shareholder voting power to drive more worker-friendly policies. The cases and legal review here is by far the most useful and interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, Webber exposes his lack of expertise about effective organizational management, economics, and, in hindsight to be fair, naivete about the long term stability of legal mechanisms that threaten entrenched interests. That's not to say I disagree with his aims or even some of the mechanisms suggested here. Rather the arguments here represent a reductive view of how organizations and investments function, and absent political power the likelihood that substantive worker driven changes are almost always rolled back

Despite the title, this book is primarily about how different animals make decisions. Viewed through this lens, it's an interesting review of how different classes of animals behave and choose different courses of action. Tomasello does hypothesize an awful lot about "agency," but strangely doesn't really define what he means by the term until the final chapter, and as far a evolution is concerned offers literally zero supporting evidence for how this characterization developed. Beyond that, the sections on neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science are woefully out of date (protip: don't unironically cite cognitive science papers from the 50s). There are at least a lot of pointers to interesting studies to read more about

Virdi brilliantly illustrates the fraught history of deafness "cures" throughout the centuries, showing how quack cures seamlessly blended with science, the ableism and techno-solutionism underlying these approaches, and using her own experience as a deaf person to give a personal look at the issues enmeshed with these historical developments. This book pulls triple duty, hitting the economic, scientific, and sociological implications of this history, and Virdi's writing makes this an absolute page-turner. I particularly liked the review of technology hype-driven "cures," as these examples serve as great analogues for technologies today. Highly recommend

This book examines how people, companies, and governments used timekeeping technology from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. There is of course a review of local time and how the advent of the railroad forced the creation of time zones, but also fascinating details about the role of jewelers and other professions as official timekeepers through the updating of large public clocks. The role of the federal government in paying private companies to build and display large clocks on their buildings was also incredible. While this technology is something we take for granted now, it's instructive to study the rollout and spotty evolution of a truly foundational technology. Highly recommend

Wagner illuminates the history of the poorhouse, a once ubiquitous institution that was abolished post-WW2 and has somewhat been reconstructed, albeit in a different form, in recent decades. Starting with the frankly shocking way the poor were treated prior to poorhouses (poor people were literally auctioned off to the lowest bidder - they were paid by the state to feed and house them in exchange for labor), this book then moves into the complicated organization of the poorhouse - part homeless shelter, often part prison, nearly always involving forced labor, and managed by the state. One can imagine the issues that might arise in these institutions, and Wagner does examine the many abuses and graft that went on behind the scenes, but what struck me was how we arguably haven't improved much, if at all, on the conditions that prevailed in poorhouses over a century ago. With the New England focus here, I was also surprised that many of the community farms and hospitals in the area were originally poorhouses, with the farms used as workplaces for the poor. In many histories of the US, the poorest are invisible. Not here. Highly recommend

This book uses extremely detailed case studies to demonstrate how the beginnings of the US financial system were inextricably tied up with slavery, funding its expansion and proactively financializing enslaved people. I do wish there was more macro perspective here, since while the individual cases which make up the majority of this book are revealing they eventually become repetitive and don't provide much insight into the broader impact of these financial practices. That being said, the sheer amount of historical detective work that must have gone into assembling these cases is extremely impressive, and the book overall is an essential text in understanding the US financial system and its horrific roots as well as the systemic depths of slavery. I would suggest pairing this book with Rosenthal's "Accounting for Slavery" to gain an even deeper perspective on how profoundly slavery has shaped the entire foundation of our economy. Highly recommend