Output

AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Josh Tyrangiel ’99MA
(Simon and Schuster, $29) 

Current assessments of artificial intelligence are rife with extremes: AI is either the salvation of the species, or the agent of human enslavement and extinction. But veteran tech writer Tyrangiel says that AI is “transformative technology” and that the “only effective response” to it “isn’t to hide from it or smash it to bits, but to make it a collaborator in the effort to preserve and improve the things you love.” The author highlights people such as Kristy Johnson, who is using AI to develop systems that allow her to communicate with her nonverbal son and is working with Yale medical school researchers to come up with “noninvasive communication methods for people with autism.”

The Man Who Read Everything: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom
Heather Cass White ’92
(Yale University Press, $30)

When Sterling Professor of the Humanities Harold Bloom ’55PhD died in 2019, his legacy included not only dozens of books of literary criticism he wrote or edited, but also a weighty trove of correspondence. White, an English professor at the University of Alabama, mined the letters and a series of emails and answering-machine messages to pull together an intimate look at the exchanges between Bloom and eight writers, from poet Alvin Feinman to sci-fi/fantasy novelist Ursula K. Le Guin. “The sound of Bloom’s voice was unforgettable,” writes White, as was “the presence of love” for great writing and writers—and readers—that comes through so vividly in this book.

The Foursome: A Novel  
Christina Baker Kline ’86
(Mariner/HarperCollins, $30)  
“Here’s the truth: Even the most extraordinary life feels ordinary when you’re living it.” So declares the narrator of this remarkable novel, which is based on the very real lives of Kline’s distant relatives, sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates. The novel begins in rural North Carolina in the early 1840s, when Sallie and Addie met Eng and Chang Bunker, the internationally famous conjoined twins who were dubbed “the eighth wonder of the world.” Eng and Chang were linked “only by a narrow band of cartilage just below their ribs,” notes Kline; they were otherwise “entirely separate people” and “hale and agile.” They were also looking for wives. “Sinful.  Perverted. Mad.” That’s how the horrified community characterized any union, but the sisters married the twins anyway, produced 21 children, and forged the unlikeliest of complicated relationships, which lasted until Eng’s and Chang’s deaths in 1874.

My Dear You: Stories
Rachel Khong ’07
(Alfred A. Knopf, $29)

“And on the 2,556,750,000th day, God reconsidered what he had made, and decided the world would be better off if human beings were other animals entirely—if there were no such thing as human beings at all.” Thus did the Lord, after years of frustration, send out a universal text message that gave each member of our species 30 days to decide which kind of nonhuman organism they’d like to be transformed into. That’s the premise of “D Day,” the last of the ten stories in this fine collection and a touching look at the divine conundrum that protagonists and lifelong besties Ruby and Jade wrestle with before the “Devolution” deadline. While the other tales walk many different paths, from wreaking revenge on a guy obsessed with dating Asian American women to attempts at pregnancies that don’t quite go according to plan, Khong infuses her characters with deep and bittersweet humanity. 

Theory of Change
Ian Gottlieb ’15MusM and Splntrd Wood
(self-released album)

Gottlieb composes for the alt-cello ensemble Splntrd Wood, which he cofounded. He retunes, rethinks, and reinvents these wondrously vibrant instruments to create a low-slung musical landscape that seems slow and sonorous and steady, yet never calm. The Apple Music app classifies this album as New Age rather than neoclassical, but Theory of Change has none of the lush, laid-back layering associated with New Age; it would jolt listeners of that genre out of their seats. This is subtly propulsive, slow-burning music that uses repetition not to lull but to provide a vigorous massage. It lets the cello not just vibrate but throb.