Ongoing Series: Adam Thierer’s Book Reviews

Adam Thierer enjoys reviewing nerdy books about technology, cyberlaw, media policy, and the evolution of the digital world in general. Here is a running list (in reverse chronological order) of some of the books he has reviewed in recent years. Note: The articles highlighted in bold text are essays in which several books are tied together in some thematic fashion.

• The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, by Samuel Florman (April 6, 2022).
• Where Is My Flying Car?, by J. Storrs Hall (reviewed January 20, 2022).
• World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, by Franklin Foer (reviewed Jan. 2018 for Reason).
• The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do about It, by Timothy Sandefur (reviewed Fall 2017 in Independent Review).
• Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, by Garry Kasparov (reviewed 5/11/17).
• Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies, by Calestous Juma (reviewed 7/29/16).
• A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping beyond Our Control, by Wendell Wallach (reviewed 4/20/16).
• 5 Great Books on Innovation & Technology Policy, September 18, 2015.
• Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, by Clive Thompson (reviewed 11/16/13 in Reason)
• The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World Together in Commerce, by Anupam Chander (reviewed 8/24/13).
• Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, by Ronald J. Deibert (reviewed 7/16/13).
• My Two Favorite Technology Policy Books of the Past Half-Century
• Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age, by Ian Brown & Christopher T. Marsden (reviewed 6/27/13).
• Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet, by Abraham H. Foxman & Christopher Wolf (reviewed 6/24/13).
• To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, by Evgeny Morozov (reviewed 4/27/13 in Reason).
• Ithiel de Sola Pool’s Technologies of Freedom Turns 30
• Important Cyberlaw & Info-Tech Policy Books (2012 Edition)
• The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network, by Christopher Yoo (reviewed 10/2/12).
• Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, by Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy (reviewed 8/26/12 in Forbes).
• Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems, by John Palfrey & Urs Gasser (reviewed 6/11/12).
• Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us, by Andrew Keen (reviewed 5/27/12 in Forbes).
• Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources, by Brett Frischmann (reviewed 4/25/12 as part of a Concurring Opinions symposium).
• Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, by Rebecca MacKinnon (reviewed 1/25/12)
• Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive, by Bruce Schneier (reviewed 1/23/12 in Forbes).
• Important Cyberlaw & Info-Tech Policy Books (2011 Edition)
• Thoughts on Cleland’s Search & Destroy & Cyber-Conservatism
• Emord’s Freedom, Technology and the First Amendment Turns 20
• Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, by Jeff Jarvis (reviewed 9/25/11 in Forbes)
• The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You, by Eli Pariser (reviewed 6/7/11).
• The Googlization of Everything, by Siva Vaidhyanathan (reviewed 3/9/11).
• The Case for Internet Optimism, Part 2 – Saving the Net From Its Supporters
• The Case for Internet Optimism, Part 1 – Saving the Net From Its Detractors
• The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov (reviewed 1/4/11).
• The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2010 (posted 12/10/10).
• Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance, by Milton Mueller (reviewed 11/28/10)
• What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly (reviewed 11/7/10).
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by Tim Wu (6-part review: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers (reviewed 9/6/10)
• Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake (reviewed 8/6/10).
• Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-open: A Free Press for a New Century, by Lee C. Bollinger.
• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in the a Connected Age, by Clay Shirky (reviewed 7/9/10).
• Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, edited by Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma (reviewed 7/1/10).
• The Death and Life of American Journalism, by Robert McChesney & John Nichols, (reviewed 6/28/10).
• Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace edited by Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (reviewed 6/8/10).
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr (reviewed 6/1/10)
• You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, by Jaron Lanier (reviewed 2/15/10).
• Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society (posted 1/31/10)
• The Digital Decade’s Definitive Reading List: Internet & Info-Tech Policy Books of the 2000’s
• The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 (posted 12/19/09).
• Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta (reviewed 12/13/09).
• A Better Pencil, by Dennis Baron (reviewed 10/23/09).
• Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive, by Gary Reback (reviewed 9/20/09).
• thoughts on Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy, John Freeman’s The Tyranny of E-Mail and the debate over the impact of information overload
• a look back at Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments at 250 and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty at 150
• Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto, by Mark Helprin (reviewed July 2009).
• Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, by Lenore Skenazy (reviewed 6/6/09)
• A critical look at Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace at 10 [debate at Cato Unbound].
• Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, by Randall Stross (reviewed 2/2/09).
• In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, by David G. Post (reviewed 1/22/09).
• The Most Important Technology Policy Books of 2008 (posted 12/7/08).
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, by Clay Shirky (short review 12/7/08).
• Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, edited by Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (short review 12/7/08).
• Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk, by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer (short review 12/7/08).
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, by Lawrence Lessig (short review on 12/1/08).
• Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis (reviewed 11/18/08).
• Understanding Privacy, by Daniel Solove (reviewed 11/8/08).
• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, by Nick Carr (reviewed 10/30/08).
• Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, by Lee Siegel (reviewed 10/20/08).
• Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (reviewed 10/10/08).
• Grouping Recent Net Books: Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists (posted 9/6/08).
• Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents, by Dr. Kourosh Dini (reviewed 4/23/08).
• Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, by Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson (reviewed 4/14/08).
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler (reviewed 4/7/08).
• The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain (reviewed first on 3/23/08 and then at greater length in a series of follow-up essays. See parts 2, 3, 4, 5 + video debate).
• Some books worth reading (posted 3/10/08).
• The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen (reviewed 10/16/07).
• Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet, by Debora Spar (reviewed8/31/04).
• The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law, by William Landes and Richard Posner (reviewed 8/23/04)
• Five Tech Policy Classics (posted on 8/20/04).
• The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television, by Daniel M. Kimmel (reviewed 8/17/04).
• Republic.com, by Cass Sunstein (reviewed in Regulation magazine in 2001).