A gripping look at military strategy and a brave new world of future conflicts.
Brains in battle.
Wright, a neuroscientist and adviser to the Pentagon, follows the brain’s functions from the most basic to the most complex, linking them to observed effects in war. Drawing on the Chinese Civil War, both world wars, the war in Ukraine, and the U.S. Capitol insurrection, Wright notes that successful leaders motivated soldiers with ideas of unfairness and justice, or perceived social inequalities, linking these to structures in the brain that generate our beliefs and actions. Surprisingly, World War II studies indicate that soldiers would risk death but few had the will to kill, with only 15% to 20% of men firing their weapons even in intense battles. Evolving technologies—covering armies with sensors, and digital monitoring during soldier training—will target training goals and produce a fire hose of data in the “intelligentized era,” with AI enlisted for analysis. Still, a capacity to manipulate perception will require human interpretation, and Wright argues that a deeper understanding of perception is our best defense. He writes, “Information has gone from the eye, to the telescope, to radar, and now also through AI—but no technology can ever halt the perceptual arms race between militaries.” Wright draws on the research of AI pioneers and former colleagues Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis, as well as Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Carl von Clausewitz, to argue that an understanding of human mental models has been used by leaders throughout history. A military saying, “Capabilities create intentions,” is especially terrifying in an era of AI weapons development. Blurring the lines between strategy and biology is a fascinating approach, and extensive notes give military and civilian readers much to explore.
A gripping look at military strategy and a brave new world of future conflicts.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250286871
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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