A collection of essays focuses on the author's quest to understand how people behave in a world increasingly mediated, for better and for worse, by images and interactivity.

"Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you. There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former...

"Ted Scheinman spent his childhood eating Yorkshire pudding, singing in an Anglican choir, and watching Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. As the son of a devoted Jane Austen scholar, this seemed normal. Despite his attempts to leave his mother's world behind, he found himself in grad school organizing the first ever University of North Carolina Jane Austen Summer Camp, a weekend-long event that falls somewhere between an academic conference and superfan...

In his highly anticipated debut essay collection, Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he's one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays assembled here--five from Phillips's Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces--go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world's most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular...

Things That Helped is a memoir in essays, detailing the Australian writer Jessica Friedmann's recovery from postpartum depression. In each essay she focuses on a separate totemic object-from pho to red lips to the musician Anohni-to tell a story that is both deeply personal and culturally resonant. Drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Friedmann's wide-ranging essays touch on class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well...

"From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world"--

"Poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert's The Unreality of Memory consists of a series of lyrical and deeply researched meditations on what our culture of catastrophe has done to public discourse and our own inner lives. In these tender and prophetic essays, she focuses in on our daily preoccupation and favorite pastime"--