Publishing

A COUPLE OF NEWLY PUBLISEHD BOOKS, one fiction, the other non fiction, merit attention. "The Every", by novelist Dave Eggers, is a sequel to his 2013 dystopian nove, "The Circle". "The Every" also portrays a dystopian societal future, but with a few more laughs. A woman named "Delaney" seeks and gains employment with and entry into the world's last remaining corporate entity for the intended purpose of destroying it, with the hope of returning society to a kinder and gentler past. Over the past few decades the concentration of wealth in the United States has reached proportions not seen since the gilded age of the late nineteenth century, causing some people to semi-seriously speculate that there wil come a time when all the money in the world is owned by a single person. This novel gives us the most plausible scenario to date in which such a scenario becomes possible. The Every is the result of a merger between "The Circle" and a major e-commerce concern, which completes the process of ultimate corporate integration. The work has been likened to a cross between Orwell's "1984" and McGoohan's "The Prisoner". Its a smmooth read, easily digestable. "The Age of Danger" is a bit bumpier, for it deals with current reality, and offers suggestions on how to deal with it, to the extent that dealing with modern societal circumstances is a possibility. The United States is beset with a plethor of what we tdoay tend to term "challenges", what once were called "nightmares". Arms races with both traditional (Russia) and new (china) superpowers, the former in apparent decline, the latter seemingly on the rise. New high tech weapons systems, such as dronew and hypersonic missiles capable of blowing holes in the nation's infrastructure. Cimate change, Economic instability precipitated by seemingly regularly scheduled convulsions in the market economic system. Artifical Intelligence and its possiblity for abuse and human surrender to machines. The authors, andrew Hoehn and Thom Shanker, cogently point out that of them all, climate change itself is the greatest threat; if the Earth's ecosystme continues its encroaching disruption through sustained human attack, no other threat is necessary to bring about the destruction of civilization. No age in human history has been even remotely close to being danger free, obviously. But the threats which imperil us now have a much more comprehensive characteristic. Hypothetical soultions proposed by the authors result from their access to a large number of national security experts, and provide a thought provoking mix of remedies, and of a potentially much safer American future with creative and innovative possible solutions.