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.

• 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 13/13/09)
• 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)

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