David

Coming Out Republican

For more than fifty years, gay Republicans have been a small but significant constituency for the party and some of its most enthusiastic activists, remaining loyal even as its platform has embraced evangelical Christian resistance to gay rights. And closeted gay Republicans have held influential positions in Republican administrations ever since Reagan. But they have been more than just good foot soldiers – their activism has been instrumental in creating the party of Trump.

Coming Out Republican: How LGBTQ Conservatives Paved the Way For the Modern GOP follows the gay men and women who, in the 1970s, from the boardrooms of Southern California and the bathhouses of San Francisco, mobilized an unexpected political movement dedicated to personal freedom and the right to be left alone. A diverse band of gay Republicans from small business owners, entrepreneurs, and military officers to leather daddies, drag queens, and bathhouse regulars – waged battles both at the ballot box and inside the GOP with the hopes of throwing Democrats out of office and homophobes out of their party.

They would not succeed at both. But even as their hopes of having a moderating influence on the party faded, gay Republicans adapted. And rather than leaving the party, many of them doubled down, sharpening the GOP’s far-right edge and helping to shape the modern Republican party. The compromises and calculations that gay Republicans made, and the embattled identity they cultivated, give us a new way of understanding the improbable rise of Trump and the conflicting currents that animate the GOP today.

The Walls We Don’t See

Although the entrenched racial discrimination in the housing market that Richard Rothstein chronicled in The Color of Law has been declining over the past several decades, one of America’s most enduring systems of housing inequity – economic segregation—largely goes unremarked. From coast to coast, cities—many of them liberal bastions—have imposed laws and regulations that have locked inequality into the urban landscape.

In The Walls We Don’t See, Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation calls for us to pay attention to the myriad ways in which government has promoted economic segregation—most of it affecting people of color in urban settings. By implementing laws that ban the construction of less expensive and denser apartment buildings and other multifamily units like duplexes and triplexes, and by setting aside land that is restricted to single family dwellings, housing choice has been socially engineered to the benefit of the affluent.

Economic segregation matters. Where you live affects so much—your access to transportation, employment opportunities, decent health care, and good schools. Yet NIMBYism has meant that even the most moderate plans for building more housing have faced opposition. In response, The Walls We Don’t See proposes a new “economic fair housing act” to prohibit or discourage laws and practices that bar access to entire neighborhoods.

Rick also chronicles how, in cities like Minneapolis, things are beginning to shift. Writing in the New York Times, Farhad Manjoo has ventured to hope that support for different housing practices might be growing. Partly in response to the housing crisis revealed by the pandemic, he suggested that “a pragmatic, humane and rational view toward housing, homelessness, inequality and other pressing urban problems may be dawning.”

In The Walls We Don’t See, Rick Kahlenberg brings economic segregation to light and in so doing offers a view of how things can and must change.

Framers

The essential tool that will enable humanity to find the best way through a forest of looming problems is defined in Framers by internationally renowned authors Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Francis de Véricourt. From pandemics to populism, AI to ISIS, wealth inequity to climate change, humanity faces unprecedented challenges that threaten our very existence.

To frame is to make a mental model that enables us to see patterns, predict how things will unfold, and make sense of new situations. Frames guide the decisions we make and the results we attain. People have long focused on traits like memory and reasoning leaving framing all but ignored. But with computers becoming better at some of those cognitive tasks, framing stands out as a critical function—and only humans can do it. This book is the first guide to mastering this innate human ability.

Framing is not just a way to improve how we make decisions in the era of algorithms—rather, it will be a matter of survival for humanity in a time of societal upheaval and machine prosperity.

Coming To Our Senses

What would it be like to see clearly after a childhood of near blindness? Or to hear for the first time? Since understanding what we see and hear comes so naturally to most of us, we assume that our senses developed spontaneously in infancy—that gaining sight or hearing later in life would be like turning on a light switch or a sound system. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The real story is far more interesting and inspiring, with much to teach us all about the way that we perceive the world.

With her latest book Coming To Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, a Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World , neurobiologist Susan R. Barry draws on the stories of two remarkable young adults to show how our brains process raw stimuli into meaning, why ‘gaining a new sense’ requires a fundamental reorganization of the brain, and how our past experiences and personal predilections influence our future observations and growth. Her conclusions suggest that while adapting to a new sense after childhood is immensely difficult, it’s not impossible—in the same way that adult athletes continue to train after their brains and bodies are mature, it is possible to become an “athlete of perception.”

Liam McCoy was 15 when a surgical procedure addressed several conditions that had left him nearly blind since early childhood. But instead of seeing his family, friends, and everyday objects within a three-dimensional landscape, he saw a hodgepodge of lines and colors on one flat plane. Zohra Damji was 12 when a cochlear implant enabled her to hear for the first time. But all sounds—voices, a car motor, the rain—merged into one unintelligible cacophony.

Susan Barry, having come to know each of them and their families and having experienced her own sensory awakening, as chronicled in her first book, Fixing My Gaze, is uniquely positioned to tell their amazing stories from both a scientific and personal perspective. As moving as it is illuminating, Coming To Our Senses invites readers to “see” ourselves in a whole new way.

The New Goliaths

The biggest companies are getting bigger – and it’s not just Amazon and Facebook, it is happening in field after field. Jim Bessen became interested in why this was happening as part of his research on the impact of automation. He wasn’t convinced that the factors that are typically thought to be behind this growth—mergers and acquisitions, changes in antitrust regulation, and, indeed, automation—were good explanations any longer.

His work revealed that the secret to these large firms’ dominance comes from their ability to invest in bespoke technology. And this, in turn, convinced him that we are in the midst of a profound economic change. In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation of Disruption, he makes a compelling case for a shift in the nature of capitalism, one that has gone largely unrecognized.

Over the last twenty years, technological advances have become less of a force for disruption and more of a barrier that dominant firms employ against would-be disruptors. The New Goliaths documents this change, explains why it has occurred and what can be done about it. The impacts are profound. The changing nature of capitalism has exacerbated social divisions, undercut average productivity growth, and threatens future innovation and economic dynamism. Understanding these changes will be key to grasping the economic and social challenges of coming decades.

David

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