The Secret Life of the Universe, by Nathalie A. Cabrol (Scribner). This compact and often astonishing overview of the current state of astrobiology, by a director at the SETI Institute, explores the scientific advances of the past few decades, many of which have radically altered our understanding of the universe and, Cabrol argues, brought us close to finding extraterrestrial life. Space telescopes—most notably the Kepler, launched in 2009—have revealed a cosmos “populated by more planets than stars,” and infrared surveys of those planets’ atmospheres will yield vast amounts of data in the coming years. Cabrol, an assured and accessible guide, notes that interpreting that data poses a great challenge: because we still lack a consensus on the definition of life, we may not know it when we see it.
Playing with Reality, by Kelly Clancy (Riverhead). Games may be a diversion, but, as Clancy, a neuroscientist, writes, they also can provide useful models of the real world. In this comprehensive study, which fuses science, world history, and politics, she documents the role that games have played in medicine, economic thought, moral philosophy, A.I., and more. Although knowledge acquired from gaming has had worthwhile practical applications, from text translation to advances in cancer treatment, games don’t necessarily reflect reality, and players don’t always act rationally. In detailed chapters on topics like modern war-game simulations and the misapplication of game theory in justifying mass privatization, Clancy warns of the societal risks of allowing mathematical models to govern political decisions.
What We’re Reading
Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction.
The Coin, by Yasmin Zaher (Catapult). In this début novel, a wealthy, fashionable Palestinian middle-school teacher living in Brooklyn wrestles with feelings of alienation. Seeing dirt everywhere, she begins to wash herself compulsively. Her lessons become strange and her relationships with her students blurry. After a dalliance with a man, she gets swept up in a scheme involving reselling luxury handbags. In a moment of winking symbolism, she comes to believe that a coin she swallowed as a child is living in her body, altering her personality. Somewhat surreal, and willing to risk a little provocation, Zaher’s book plays with overlapping ideas of privilege, asking complex questions about what past suffering means in the face of a desire for today’s luxuries.
The Divorce, by Moa Herngren, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies (HarperVia). The collapse of a thirty-two-year marriage is depicted with an even hand in this book, which amounts to two parallel novels: one about a woman “feverish with confusion,” who feels that she was abandoned without warning, and another about a man who has been grappling with the end of his relationship for months. The two-sided account starts at the beginning of the end, when the husband hasn’t come home and isn’t answering his wife’s texts. As Herngren stitches together the couple’s perspectives, she writes with a sharp neutrality, never overplaying the book’s many tense moments of discovery or languishing in the wife’s despair.