The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, r. Feb. 2026

 p. 6 Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternate universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and – as I will show – unsuitable for children and adolescents. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness – perpetually – to managing what became their online brand.

p. 73 As the Stoics and Buddhists taught long ago, happiness cannot be reached by eliminating all "triggers" from life; rather, happiness comes from learning to deprive external events of the power to trigger negative emotions in you.

p. 120 In Walden, his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The cost of a thing is the amount of ... life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." So what was the opportunity cost to children and adolescents when they started spending six, or eight, or perhaps even 16 hours each day interacting with their devices? Might they have exchanged any parts of life that were necessary for healthy human development?

p. 139 The opportunity cost of a phone-based childhood refers to everything that children do less of once they get unlimited round-the-clock access to the internet.

p. 152 Part of defining the self comes from successfully integrating into groups; part of being attractive to groups is demonstrating one's value as an individual with unique skills. Researchers have long found that boys and men are more focused on agency [striving to individuate and expand the self] while girls and women are more focused on communion [striving to integrate the self in a larger social unit through caring for others]

p. 194 A central concept for Durkheim was anomie, or normlessness – an absence of stable and widely shared norms and rules. Durkheim was concerned that modernity, with its rapid and disorienting changes and its tendency to weaken the grip of traditional religions, fostered anomie and thus suicide. He wrote that when we feel the social order weakening or dissolving, we don't feel liberated; we feel lost and anxious. That, I believe, is what has happened to Gen Z. They are less able than any generation in history to put down roots in real-world communities populated by known individuals who will still be there a year later [rather than a network with "a daily tornado of memes, fads, and ephemeral mircrodramas, played out among a rotating cast of millions of bit players].

p. 203 "collective effervescence"

p. 204 family rituals such as a digital Sabbath (one day per week with reduced or no digital technology, combined with enjoyable in-person activities)

p. 206 Screens lead us to forget that our physical bodies matter.

p. 207 If we want to experience stillness and silence, and if we want to develop focus and a sense of unified consciousness, we must reduce the flow of stimulation into our eyes and ears. We must find ample opportunities to sit quietly, whether that is in meditation, or by spending more time in nature, or just by looking out a car window and thinking on a long drive, rather than always listening to something, or (for children in the back seat) watching videos the whole way.

p. 209 Social media is a fountain of bedevilments. It trains people to think in ways that are exactly contrary to the world's wisdom traditions: Think about yourself first; be materialistic, judgmental, boastful, and petty; seek glory as quantified by likes and followers. Many users may believe that the implicit carrots and sticks built into platforms like Instagram don't affect them, but it's hard not to be affected unconsciously.

p. 253 Unstructured free play addresses – head-on – making friends, learning empathy, learning emotional regulation, learning interpersonal skills, and greatly empowers students by helping them find a healthy place in their school community – all while teaching them life's most important skills like creativity, innovation, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, self-direction, perseverance, and social skills.  

p. 260 Human childhood evolved in savannas and forests, alongside streams and lakes. When you put children into natural settings, they instinctively explore and spontaneously invent games. Abundant research shows that time in natural settings benefits children's social, cognitive, and emotional development, and these benefits matter even more as young people are increasingly ensconced in the virtual world and as their anxiety levels continued to rise.

p. 269 As for your own interactions with your child, they don't have to be "optimized." You don't have to make every second special or educational. It's a relationship, not a class. But what you do often matters far more than what you say, so watch your own phone habits. Be a good role model who is not giving continuous partial attention to both the phone and the child.

p. 274 Bonus points for any [monthlong teen summer camp] that promises to not post pictures every day on its website. Summer camp is a great opportunity for parents and children to get out of the habit of constant contact and, especially for parents, constant reassurance that their kids are okay.

p. 280 6. Talk with your preteen about the risks [of social media], and listen to their thoughts. Even without a social media account, all children will encounter age-inappropriate content online. Exposure to pornography is virtually certain. Talk with your preteens about the risks inherent in posting public content or sharing personal information online, including sexting and cyberbullying. Ask them what problems they see in their peers' online habits, and ask them how they think they can avoid such problems themselves. 

p. 281 You have to let go online eventually. But if you can keep the quantity of online time lower and the quality higher in this long period of childhood and early adolescence (ages 6-13), you'll make room for more real-world engagement, and you'll buy time for your child's brain to develop better self-control and less fragmented attention.

p. 281 FOR PARENTS OF TEENS AGES 13-18 (HIGH SCHOOL) [a list of ] More (and Better) Experience in the Real World: 1. Increase their mobility. 2. Rely more on your teen at home. 3. Encourage your teen to find a part-time job. 4. Find ways for them to nurture and lead. 5. Consider a high school exchange program. 6. Better thrills in nature.

p. 287 As your children get older, increase their mobility and encourage them to find part-time jobs and ways to learn from older adults. Consider an exchange program, a summer wilderness program, and a gap year.

p. 289 ...the radical transformation of childhood into something inhuman: a phone-based existence.

p. 290 In part 4, I offered dozens of suggestions, but the four foundational reforms are: 1. No smartphones before high school. 2. No social media before 16. 3. Phone-free schools. 4. Far mare unsupervised play and childhood independence.

Flesh by David Szalay, r. Feb. 2026

p. 128 "So you need to fit in. You need to fit in with everything else in their lives. That's what they want. They're people with serious money and they want someone who fits in with everything else in their lives."

p. 83 He realizes that the thing that are so important to him – the things that happened, and that he saw there, the things that left him feeling that nothing would ever be the same again – they just aren't important here. [as he looks out the window of the train, dusk becoming night and thus his own reflection, leaving the war in the Middle East and heading back home]

p. ??? Without that hour in the afternoon to look forward to, there is nothing to give the days any sense of purpose or meaning.

p. 162 There are those London summer days when summer seems muffled somehow, when a cool, humid grayness hangs in the park as he runs. Statues hold their positions.

p. 172 He lies there for another minute or two against the pillows, looking at the ceiling, which is discreetly studded with smoke detectors and other things, and wondering what will happen now.

p. 214 The difference is maybe that when he’s drunk he doesn’t care that he’s disconnected from things, it doesn’t seem to be a problem, whereas when he’s stoned it somehow does.

p. 256 On Christmas Eve he meets some Oxford friends for lunch in London. Afterward they go to a pub in Knightsbridge with an open fire. It’s one of those winter afternoon drinking sessions that merge into evening in a way that’s almost imperceptible as it’s happening. It’s just suddenly nine o’clock.

p. 278 There’s the distinctive quiet that follows the end of one of these [video calls], the restoration of a solitude that was anyway only partly dispelled by the presence of someone else on the laptop screen.

p. 289 The idea that his son is afraid of something, that he’s suffering in some way, and that there’s not much he can do about it is very hard for him to deal with. It’s just very painful to think about.

The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting by Anne Trubek, r. Jan. 2026

p. 60 Handwriting, [Trithemius] said, was a spiritual act, a form of religious devotion that putting blocks into a press could never be.

p. 95 The media and public were fascinated by the spectacle of typing contests. Going fast was becoming a cultural phenomenon in an increasing industrialized America, and typing speed contests fit perfectly into this general speedup.

p. 97 Only once typing became the de facto method to conduct business correspondence and keep records did handwriting assume the associations we have with it today: a way to express one's uniqueness and personality. It is only in the twentieth century that handwriting becomes evidence of – and a way to analyze – the individual psyche.

p. 105 "This philosophy of the manifestation of the soul through graphic signs is based on the intimate connection which exists between each sign... which emanates from the human personality, and the soul, which is the substance of that personality. Who can doubt that every word is as spontaneous and immediate a translation of thought as speech? All handwriting, like all language, is the immediate manifestation of the intimate, intellectual and moral being." –Michon

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, r. Dec. 2025

p. ?? Even before she graduated to sentences, even before she learned to read, the love affair with Homer began. "Homer was not a man, but a god," figured among the early penmanship lessons, as did the first cantos of the Iliad. No text more thoroughly penetrated Cleopatra's world. In an age infatuated with history and calibrated in glory, Homer's work was the Bible of the day. He was the "prince of literature"; his 15,693 lines provided the moral, political, historical, and religious context, the great deeds and the ruling principles, the intellectual atlas and moral compass. The educated man cited him, paraphrased him, alluded to him. It was entirely fair to say that children like Cleopatra were —as a near contemporary had it— "nursed in their learning by Homer, and swaddled in his verses." Alexander the Great was believed to have slept always with a copy of Homer under his pillow; any cultivated Greek, Cleopatra included, could recite some part of the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart. The former was more popular in Cleopatra's Egypt —it may have seemed a more pertinent tale for a turbulent time —but from an early age she would have known literarily what she at twenty-one discovered empirically: there were days you felt like waging war, and days when you just needed to go home.

p. 37 It was in Alexandria that the circumference of the earth was first measured, the sun fixed at the center of the solar system, the workings of the brain and the pulse illuminated, the foundations of anatomy and physiology established, the definitive editions of Homer produced. It was in Alexandria that Euclid had codified geometry. If all the wisdoms of the ancient world could be said to have been collected in one place, that place was Alexandria. Cleopatra was its direct beneficiary. She knew that the moon had an effect on tides, that the Earth was spherical and revolved around the sun. She knew of the existence of the equator, the value of pi, the latitude of Marseilles, the behavior of linear perspective, the utility of a lightning conductor. She knew that one could sail from Spain to India, a voyage that was not to be made for another 1,500 years, though she herself would consider making it, in reverse.

p. 73 Both Cleopatra and Caesar manifested the intellectual curiosity that was the trademark of their age, a lightheartedness and a humor that set them apart from their peers, insofar as either had peers. Such an unsociable, solitary thing is power, notes Plutarch; generally those around Caesar and Cleopatra could be relied upon to fawn or plot. Both knew, as Caesar put it, that success came at a price, that "everything that lifts people above their fellows arouses jealousy." Theirs was an exclusive brand of social isolation.

p. 113 [Cleopatra] lived these months in Latin; whatever her proficiency in that language, she discovered that certain concepts did not translate. Even the ironic sense of humor was different, broad and salty in Rome where it was ironic and allusive in Alexandria. Literal-minded, the Romans took themselves seriously. Alexandrian irreverence and exuberance were in scant supply.

p. 142 It is notable that when she is not condemned for being too bold and masculine, Cleopatra is taken to task for being unduly frail and feminine.

p. 286 "The truth of the matter," Plutarch announces, to centuries of deaf ears, "no one knows."

p. 296 [Octavian] had too cause to note "that no high position is ever free from envy or treachery, and least of all a monarchy." The enemies were bad but the friends arguably worse. The office, he concluded, was utterly dreadful.

Working by Studs Terkel and adapted by Harvey Pekar, r. Dec. 2025

 p. xxi Nora Watson may have said it most succinctly. "I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly-line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people."

p. 99 "I get up about noon. I would only consider myself outside the norm because of the way other people live. They're constantly reminding me I'm abnormal. I could never bear to live the dull lives that most people live, locked up in offices. I live in absolute freedom. I do what I do because I want to do it. What's wrong with making a living doing something interesting?" (jazz musician)

p. 101 "Hundreds of times I've gone to work thinking, oh my God, I hate to think of playing tonight. It's going to be awful. But something on that given night takes place and I'm excited before it's over. Does that make sense? If you have that kind of night, you're not aware of the time, because of this thing that hits you." (jazz musician)

p. 104 "Real talent takes a long time to mature, to learn how to bring what character you have into sound, into your playing, not the instrument, but the style of music you're trying to create should be an extension of you. And this takes a whole life." (jazz musician)

p. 160 "Peace and quiet and privacy have meant a great deal to me since I made my escape. Of course I'm a has-been. Radio itself is a has-been. But the quiz kids achieved history and I'm proud to have been part of it. ...The reason I like this job is that my mind is at ease all day long..." (greenhouse worker and former child genius)

p. 162 He dropped out of high school. "It's a good way to go. Take what you can stand and don't take any more than that. It's what God put the tongue in your mouth for. If it don't taste right, you spit it out." (carpenter)

p. 163 "Any work, you kneel down – it's a kind of worship. It's part of the holiness of things, work, yes. Just like drawing breath is. It's necessary. If you don't breathe, you're dead. It's kind of a sacrament, too." (carpenter)

When We Were Young by Daryl Gregory, r. Oct. 2025

 p. 32 Do any of them have a thought in their heads, or are they all just bots, following a dialogue tree like some Elder Scrolls shopkeeper?

p. 37 One of the underappreciated pleasures of a long friendship is this constant tilling of familiar fields. Occasionally they turn over a new rock. But mostly they forbear and forgive each other's reputations.

p. 50 Who the hell would design a system like this, in which some teenage boy's digital goop could wiggle inside her and start coding up an entire other creature – a creature who'd grow to the size of a bowling ball while inside her?

p. 64 He's trim and handsome, and there's something sad about him. She approves of that. She doesn't trust happy people.

p. 106 Deb keeps her disapproval at a constant simmer. Their dearly departed mother was the same way. The Marks women, Dulin thinks, are emotional Crock-Pots.

p. 144 He's joking, of course. No one believes in bots. At least, no one JP knows or follows on media. The affiliation bubble that he's a part of – middle-left "reasonables," the NPR-listening, cabernet-drinking, mostly white folks who practice meatless Mondays – have agreed that the belief that some people (almost always people in other countries) are not conscious is not just solipsism, but a form of racism.

p. 157 It's like we've all become right-wing evangelicals longing for Armageddon. Even the worst problems are just part of God's plan. We've abandoned all sense of stewardship.

p. 200 Even though they live in a simulation, even though they are made up of ones and zeros, they are lucky, unbelievably so, to be these two arrangements of bits, in this particular moment.

p. 249 "There's only one problem if you find out you're inside a simulation. How to get the fuck out."

p. 250 If her poor, overworked brain could only get free of the body, it could finally get some work done, like a poet longing to be free of her family for an afternoon.

p. 266 "Rabbi. You lead a church." "Yes, well, I don't so much lead the synagogue as study the map and point out available routes."

p. 303 "Oh yeah. I drove up right away. And once the treatments started, I just sort of moved in. I was glad to do it. It was the first time in a long time I'd been useful. It was a terrible time, but..." He shakes his head. "This is embarrassing, but I was so grateful. Just happy to know what my job was. I haven't had that for a long time. Not since Marion was little."

p. 311 His pale feet, strapped into their Teva sandals, rest without effort on the wet floor of the raft. Such idiots, these appendages. He admires their ignorance.

p. 313 [After jumping into the calm, cold, canyon river water] JP can feel his blood whooshing around, worriedly trying to keep his organs at operational temperature.

p. 317 The sim undermined his certainty. An afterlife was now technologically possible, even plausible. He believed in backups; he believed in restoring from disk. Resurrection had become rational. There was no reason that the Simmers couldn't reinitialize him after his death.

p. 347 Both those things, and suffering was worse. Pain was just nerves firing, he said, the body firing off warning signals according to the rules of the simulation. Suffering was the awareness of that moment of pain – and the awareness that more of those moments were on the way. Suffering could occur even when you were feeling no physical pain. Suffering stretched into the past, all you pain remembered, and reached into the future to take in all the agony that lay ahead. 

p. 381 [The nun, in older age] alternated between fury and acceptance and boredom and back to fury. The seasons came and went in her heart. But gradually, very gradually, a kind of climate change occurred. She was now warming but cooling down. She decided, at last, to become something different than the old Sister Janet. In her head, and in her heart, she would become a tree.

p. 383 "Oh, Zev," she says. He doesn't understand how precious he is to her. No clue to his worth, always chastising himself for being an indecisive man, a waffler, a thinker with no strong opinions of his own, and therefore no bedrock of faith. He mistook his openness for emptiness.

p. 433 The Engineer adjusts his glasses. "It's odd, isn't it? Putting a solid object in front of your eyes so you can see another world." "Like a book," the father says.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, r. Oct. 2025

p. 109 During one such pause, Churchill likened a man's life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. "As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage." He danced on.

p. 180 When John Colville read the initial draft, he realized he had heard bits of it before, as Churchill tested ideas and phrases in the course of ordinary conversation. The prime minister also kept snippets of poems and biblical passages in a special "Keep Handy" file. "It is curious," Colville wrote, "to see how, as it were, he fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in speech."

p. 192 Churchill slept well, not even waking when the all clear sounded at three forty-five A.M. He always slept well. His ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, was his particular gift. Wrote Pug Ismay, "His capacity for dropping off into a sound sleep the moment his head touched the pillow had to be seen to be believed."

p. 230 [Winston Churchill's 18-year-old daughter, Mary] exulted in her life. "What a wonderful year it has been!" she wrote. "I think it will always stand out in my memory. It has been very happy for me too – despite the misery & unhappiness in the world. I hope that does not mean that I am unfeeling – I really don't think I am, but somehow I just haven't been able to help being happy."

p. 250 Young people were reluctant to contemplate death without having shared their bodies with someone else. It was sex at its sweetest: not for money or marriage, but for love of being alive and wanting to give."

p. 434 [Goebbels's] diary crackled with enthusiasm for the war, and for life. "What a glorious spring day outside!" he wrote. "How beautiful the world can be! And we have no chance to enjoy it. Human beings are so stupid. Life is so short, and they then go and make it so hard for themselves."

p. 483 "I never gave them courage," [Churchill] said. "I was able to focus theirs."