October 2024 books: ChatGPT and the Future of AI, The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Landing the Paris Climate Agreement, and more

Explore some of our most anticipated books for October 2024

This month: an insightful exploration of ChatGPT and other advanced AI systems; the inside account of the seven-year negotiation that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement; a radical approach to solving hunger and poverty in the US; and more. Discover these books and a selection of our other new and soon-to-be-released titles below.


A Book about Ray by Ellen Levy

Ray Johnson (1927-1995), a.k.a. “New York‘s most famous unknown artist,” was notorious for the elaborate games he played with the institutions of the art world, soliciting their attention even as he rejected their invitations. In A Book about Ray, Ellen Levy offers a comprehensive study of the artist who turned the business of career-making into a tongue-in-cheek performance, tracing his artistic development from his arrival at Black Mountain College in 1945 to his death in 1995. Levy describes Johnson’s practice as one that was constantly shifting—whether in tone, in its address to potential audiences, or among three primary artistic modes: collage, performance, and correspondence art.

You might also like Tony Smith Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné Volume 1 edited by James Voorhies and Sarah Auld


ChatGPT and the Future of AI: The Deep Language Revolution by Terrence J. Sejnowski

In ChatGPT and the Future of AI, the sequel to The Deep Learning Revolution, Terrence Sejnowski offers a nuanced exploration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and what their future holds. How should we go about understanding LLMs? Do these language models truly understand what they are saying? Or is it possible that what appears to be intelligence in LLMs may be a mirror that merely reflects the intelligence of the interviewer? In this book, Sejnowski, a pioneer in computational approaches to understanding brain function, answers all our urgent questions about this astonishing new technology.

You might also like AI & I: An Intellectual History of Artificial Intelligence by Eugene Charniak


Daydreaming in the Solar System: Surfing Saturn’s Rings, Golfing on the Moon, and Other Adventures in Space Exploration by John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson

Imagine traveling to the far reaches of the solar system, pausing for close-up encounters with distant planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, accompanied by a congenial guide to the science behind what you see. What, for instance, would it be like to fly in Titan’s hazy atmosphere? To walk across the surface of Mercury? To feel the rumble of a volcano brewing on one of Jupiter’s largest moons? In Daydreaming in the Solar System, John Moores and Jesse Rogerson bring that dream to virtual life. Through a combination of story and science they let readers know what such an otherworldly experience would actually look, feel, and even taste like.

You might also like An Infinity of Worlds: Cosmic Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe by Will Kinney


Father Nature: The Science of Paternal Potential by James K. Rilling

We all know the importance of mothers. They are typically as paramount in the wild as they are in human relationships. But what about fathers? In most mammals, including our closest living primate relatives, fathers have little to no involvement in raising their offspring—and sometimes even kill the offspring sired by other fathers. How, then, can we explain modern fathers with the capacity to be highly engaged parents? In Father Nature, James Rilling explores how humans have evolved to endow modern fathers with this potential and considers why this capacity evolved in humans.

You might also like Explaining Life through Evolution by Prosanta Chakrabarty


Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next by Todd Stern

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the twenty-first century: 195 nations finally agreed, after 20 years of trying, to establish an ambitious, operational regime to address one of the greatest civilizational challenges of our time. In Landing the Paris Climate Agreement, Todd Stern, the chief US negotiator on climate change, provides an engaging account from inside the rooms where it happened: the full, charged, seven-year story of how the Paris Agreement came to be, following an arc from Copenhagen, to Durban, to the secret U.S.-China climate deal in 2014, to Paris itself.

You might also like Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation edited by David W. Orr


Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City by Rafael Schacter

What is graffiti—vandalism, ornament, art? What if, rather than any of those things, we thought of graffiti as a monument? How would that change our understanding of graffiti, and, in turn, our understanding of monument? In Monumental Graffiti, curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. He applies monument as a lens to understand graffiti and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, challenging us to consider what the appropriate monument for our contemporary world could be.

You might also like Banksy: Completed by Carol Diehl


The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know—and Start Again by Mariana Chilton

Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis.

You might also like Transforming School Food Politics around the World edited by Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert


The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise by Ravin Jesuthasan and Tanuj Kapilashrami 

As the world navigates the rapid and disruptive effects of AI, climate change, and geopolitical conflicts, the world of work, too, needs to change. Jobs are giving way to skills as the currency of work to ensure a more agile, resilient, and flexible enterprise that cannot just respond but must thrive in the face of these challenges. This pivot from jobs to skills will require us to rethink everything we know about work. Building on his bestselling book Work without Jobs, Ravin Jesuthasan returns, this time with coauthor Tanuj Kapilashrami, an international human resources leader, to provide the framework organizations need to thrive in a world demanding perpetual reinvention.

You might also like Work without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System by Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau


Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation by Greg Epstein

Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not.

You might also like Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine by Michelle Drouin


Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload by Richard E. Cytowic

The human brain hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age, let alone in the mere thirty years of the Screen Age. That’s why, according to neurologist Richard Cytowic—who, Oliver Sacks observed, “changed the way we think of the human brain”—our brains are so poorly equipped to resist the incursions of Big Tech: They are programmed for the wildly different needs of a prehistoric world. In Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age, Cytowic explains exactly how this programming works—from the brain’s point of view. What he reveals in this book shows why we are easily addicted to screen devices; why young, developing brains are particularly vulnerable; why we need silence; and what we can do to push back.

You might also like Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up by Katie Davis


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