What We Are Reading Today: ‘Thoreau’s Axe; Distraction and Discipline in American Culture’

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Updated 27 March 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Thoreau’s Axe; Distraction and Discipline in American Culture’

Author: Caleb Smith

Today, we’re driven to distraction, our attention overwhelmed by the many demands upon it—most of which emanate from our beeping and blinking digital devices.

This may seem like a decidedly 21st-century problem, but, as Caleb Smith shows in this elegantly written, meditative work, distraction was also a serious concern in American culture two centuries ago.

Smith explains that 19th-century worries over attention developed in response to what were seen as the damaging mental effects of new technologies and economic systems.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Updated 22 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Authors: John Y. Campbell and Tarun Tamadorai

We interact with the financial system every day, whether taking out or paying off loans, making insurance claims, or simply depositing money into our bank accounts. 

“Fixed” exposes how this system has been corrupted to serve the interests of financial services providers and their cleverest customers—at the expense of ordinary people.

John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai diagnose the ills of today’s personal finance markets in the US and across the globe, looking at everything from short-term saving and borrowing to loans for education and housing, financial products for retirement, and insurance. 

They show how the system is “fixed” to benefit those who are wealthy and more educated while encouraging financial mistakes by those who are aren’t, making it difficult for regular consumers to make sound financial decisions and disadvantaging them in some of the most consequential economic transactions of their lives.