Author: Lauren

Best Museum Passes for Families with Young Kids

/ Lauren / 1 Comment

As a parent of two young kids, my time away from work is a constant stream of requests and/or demands. The 4-year-old: refill my milk cup even though you’re currently buttering my toast and haven’t even made your coffee yet. The 20-month-old: read Trashy Town to me again. The 4-year-old: I just discovered My Little Pony and I love it, so now my name is Princess Twilight Sparkle and my brother is Spike. Spike: read! Twilight: you are no longer Momma, you’re now Princess Celestia. Can you talk like Princess Celestia? Spike: I will scream-cry if you don’t read to me in two seconds.

Sometimes you need a change of scenery in order to prevent your kids (or yourself) from scream-crying. For me, the library’s museum passes have been invaluable when it’s too wet to visit the playground at Bartlem Park or too cold for miniature horses at Brooksvale Park. Museum passes offer discounted or free admission for adults and kids to museums and educational attractions across Connecticut and beyond. You can reserve them up to 30 days in advance and print almost all of them from home anytime, requiring no special trip to the library. For added convenience, many museums will just scan the pass right from your phone. Here’s our young crew’s experience with the passes.

The Children’s Museum

Location: 180 Mohegan Drive, West Hartford

Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission

Cost before perks: $15/person ages 2 and up, below 2 is free (price info)

We visited The Children’s Museum when Twilight was two years old and Spike was an unhatched egg. The museum accepted the digital pass that was sent to my phone via email, and soon we were in an indoor air-conditioned wonderland. The museum looks like a former school with one long hallway and branching classrooms that have been converted to different activity areas. I appreciated the easy navigation! The woods-themed dramatic play room was a hit, as was the craft room. The dinosaur room was another success.

There’s also a large collection of live animals spread across three rooms: snakes, chinchillas, box turtles, and more, all of whom came to the museum after being given up, injured, or confiscated. The museum has regular demonstrations where kids can meet some of the animals. Twilight wasn’t interested in petting the ball python, but there were so many other activities that kept her engaged that it wasn’t a loss.

KidsPlay Children’s Museum

Location: 61 Main St, Torrington

Pass perks: Half-price admission for up to 6 family members

Cost before perks: $14 for everyone age 1+, free under 12 months (price info)

KidsPlay has become our family’s favorite museum. There are so many rooms and activities here: play vehicles, a climbing wall, air play, a craft room, a music room with a piano, a grocery store, a pioneer cabin with dress-up clothing. We could not possibly visit every area in one trip! We were impressed not only with the breadth of activities, but how clean and well-maintained the space was. We loved this museum so much on our discounted visit that we got a year-long membership, so we’ve gotten to experience rotating play areas like kinetic sand and a hockey rink.

Street parking is a breeze in downtown Torrington, and there’s an off-street lot as well. The only drawback is its limited schedule. As with any museum, check the hours of operation before you visit!

Roaring Brook Nature Center

Location: 70 Gracey Road, Canton

Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission

Cost before perks: $9 for adults, $7 for children 12 and under (price info)

Our Children’s Museum pass also grants discounted admission to Roaring Brook Nature Center (not to be confused with Roaring Brook Park, the not-for-the-faint-of-heart local trail). The nature center has an indoor section with taxidermy dioramas of our local habitats, live animals, play nooks, and a library, plus an outdoor area with rescued birds and turtles. Twilight enjoyed the scavenger hunt, singing lullabies to Tomasina the black vulture, and looking for turtles in the pond.

The highlight of the trip, though, was a hike along the trails next to the nature center. The trails are free to access and open from dawn to dusk, and a lot of it is hemlock forest (i.e., those really cool dark forests that make you feel like you’re a character in a fantasy book). The kids played Poohsticks from the bridge over the creek and explored a set of lean-tos while their bird nerd of a parent listened to warblers and nuthatches calling in the trees.

Connecticut Science Center

Location: 250 Columbus Blvd, Hartford

Coupon perks: 15% off up to six admissions

Cost before perks: $29 for adults, $23 for ages 3-12, plus $7 per person for butterfly encounter (price info), plus $7 per vehicle for 3 hours of parking in the adjacent garage (garage information)

Twilight loves the CT Science Center. When she was two years old, we could easily spend an hour just in the water play area. (They provide smocks, but it’s still a good idea to bring backup clothes and shoes.) There’s also live animals including a sloth, a butterfly encounter, and lots of interactive science activities that get more interesting as Twilight gets older. A glass elevator lets you look out across the whole museum, and it’s roomy enough for you to indulge in repeat rides without compromising foot traffic.

This is not a reservable pass, but a coupon that you can pick up anytime and use anytime. Even with a coupon, this is admittedly a pricier outing. But if you can swing it, it’s worth a visit.

Dinosaur State Park

Location: 400 West St, Rocky Hill

Pass perks: free admission to the exhibit center for two adults and four kids age 6-12; kids 5 and under are free

Cost before perks: $6 for ages 13+, $2 for ages 6-12, free parking and trail access

The kids recently visited 200-million-year-old dilophosaurus footprints at Dinosaur State Park, where you can visit indoor exhibits for free with the CT Parks Pass. (This is a physical pass that needs to be picked up and delivered back to the library.) The footprints are housed in a geodesic dome that also includes dino dioramas, crafts, and some live reptiles and amphibians. The adults loved it, but Twilight was a little disappointed that dinosaurs were extinct and weren’t there stomping around making the footprints.

Luckily, the nature trails outside the exhibit center are perfect for small legs, and they’re free to use without the pass. We saw a big (and completely harmless) water snake sunning itself near the marsh!

Overall, there are so many activities at each place that you really can’t go wrong with borrowing a pass. And even if your museum outing is more miss than hit, hey – at least it’s a few hours in which your kids aren’t pretending they’re Keith Moon and your living room is a Holiday Inn!

Why don’t all the passes give me free admission?

We would love to offer passes that grant free admission everywhere, but the museums set the terms for their passes and decide what they’re going to make available for libraries to purchase. Sometimes that’s free admission. Sometimes that’s just a discount. It all depends on the museum, but we always get the best discount we can!

Why doesn’t the library offer passes to Beardsley Zoo, Mystic Aquarium, or the Maritime Aquarium?

Good question! Unfortunately, the aquarium passes don’t really offer a good value for most patrons. (Think a percentage off a yearly membership, or a few dollars off if you purchase add-ons beyond general admission.) Instead of disappointing our patrons, we opt to get different passes with better discounts. As for the Beardsley Zoo, they changed their ordering process a couple years ago, and it doesn’t jive with the way we make purchases. However, we’re planning to add more animal-themed passes in 2026. Stay tuned!

What about the Peabody Museum? Why doesn’t the library offer a pass?

We don’t offer a Peabody Museum pass because it’s completely free! They gave it a major overhaul recently, and it’s a gorgeous space. Fossilized skeletons and plants are on the first floor, with minerals and animal dioramas on the third floor. Human history is exhibited on the second floor.

Want to spend more time doing free stuff in New Haven? Enjoy a drive or hike to the top of East Rock Park where you can look out over the city and Long Island Sound, or walk around the grounds of Edgerton Park, which also hosts Shakespeare performances in August and the CT Folk Fest in September. Older kids and adults will enjoy free museums such as the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments (when it reopens to the public). Admission to the New Haven Museum is also free when you borrow our pass!

Optimism for Earth Day

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I’d say I think about death more than your average sub-40-year-old. I could blame my high school English teacher for introducing me to existentialist thinker Albert Camus, or childhood Don Bluth films, but I probably just came out this way. Saying somebody “passed” feels strange in my mouth, inaccurate, as if the total and unequivocal departure from this plane of existence is akin to expelling a kidney stone. When I was pregnant, instead of choosing color palettes for a nursery like many expectant mothers, I went shopping for life insurance and wrote detailed directions for the disposal of my body (with relevant phone numbers).

“This is a great start to a post about optimism,” you might be thinking. But my acute awareness of mortality isn’t a pool I sit and wallow in. Instead, it spurs me to use my brief time to make a positive impact in this world. That’s how I feel about climate change. We’re inundated with data on warming temperatures, declining wildlife populations, more frequent severe weather events. We could collectively sit and wallow in a pool of doom. Or, we can arm ourselves with hope, draw up an imperfect plan of action, and try our best to leave whatever mark we can in the time we have.

If you’re stuck in the doom-pool and need some help, let one of these books be a hand extended to pull you out.

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024)


In the throes of the terrible summer of 2020, a tiny bright spot emerged: How to Save a Planet, a cheery podcast that discussed tangible solutions to the problem of climate change. The podcast and its parent company were swallowed up and digested by Spotify, but biologist and policy wonk Ayana Elizabeth Johnson continues to spread the gospel of actionable solutions, most recently in this book.

Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katharine Hayhoe (2021)


We all have a stake in the health of our planet. Instead of assailing you with facts about why you need to act on climate issues, Hayhoe gives you strategies to help you start conversations with almost anyone who isn’t on board (yet).

Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War by Tom Steyer (2024)


Streyer is excited about the future of clean energy, to the point where he left a lucrative job at an investment fund to start – well, another investment fund, but one dedicated to climate solutions. You’ll learn how investors, inventors, and entrepreneurs are harnessing the power of capitalism for the good of the planet.

How Can I Help?: Saving Nature with Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy (2025)


Stand on the corner of gardening and conservation long enough, and you’ll run into Doug Tallamy. He’s published on the importance of native plants and the virtues of oak trees. His newest book gives property owners and gardeners a host of actions that they can take in their own yard to help the environment.

Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope by Catherine Coleman Flowers (2025)


Flowers advocates for the rural poor in areas where a lack of infrastructure, paired with climate change-related flooding, makes it difficult for families to access sanitary water. This book is a series of essays on her work and personal experiences with environmental and racial justice, and it’s an inspiration for others to join in the fight for a safer, healthier future for our neighbors.

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future by Alan Weisman (2025)


Previous books in the list have looked at specific solutions and people, but Weisman’s upcoming book (which conveniently comes out right on Earth Day) takes a wider approach to see what the fight against climate change means for us as human beings. He talks with architects, scientists, artists, and religious leaders to ultimately paint a portrait of hope.

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn (2021)


Years ago, in the middle of a long hike in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, I looked down at the rocks beneath my feet and realized I would be very happy if, many thousands or millions of years from now, the elements in my body were to become part of a rock underneath a foot as someone or something moved through a beautiful place. Everything alive is going to die. But nature and the processes of the physical world will go on. In Scotland, rare flowers grow on a heap of 19th century waste. Elk and wolves wander the irradiated exclusion zone around Chernobyl. With beautiful prose, this book travels to places ravaged by war, pollution, and human-made disaster to show how life continues in our absence. With or without us, Earth will eventually heal itself, and I find that deeply comforting.

Put Some Alto in Your Voice: New Books About Women Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet

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Maybe I should have been a scientist.

I mean, setting aside that my library degree has the word “science” in it, I could have been very happy with the hard stuff like biology and physics. My recent reading of Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger has me considering a parallel life as an engineer designing parts for the aerospace industry. Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl brought me back to college anatomy and physiology, which I took for fun. What self-respecting English major memorizes squamous cells and zygomatic processes for fun? And why didn’t I pursue this thing that obviously called to me?

Answer: literature and the arts simply sat closer and sang louder. We had lots of books at home, but the mystery of a story’s meaning or a certain chord or color called to me more than the mystery of what existed in outer space or beneath the soil. By the time I was thinking about my future, I could more easily conceptualize myself creating worlds than uncovering the world that already existed. But, if I ever change my mind and decide to implode my professional life, it’s easy enough to channel Suzanne Simard and fill out an application for forestry school.

Many women in history never had the benefit of choice that I do, the ability to see a path beyond their sex. Their dreams – if they were even allowed to dream – were crushed because women weren’t supposed to be scientists, or run businesses, or be leaders and advocates. They were supposed to keep quiet. Well, for this Women’s History Month, I’m sharing some brand new books about women that put some alto in their voice and let themselves be heard.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder (2024)


After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from male physicians who distorted Darwin’s evolution theory and proclaimed that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Into the midst of this turmoil marched Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of a New York publisher and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women’s reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education.

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street by Paulina Bren (2024)


Award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of the first generations of women who fought their way into the bad-boy culture and lavish opulence of the finance world. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with tough-as-nails persistence. Starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of Wall Street’s clubs and unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm at top firms, Bren chronicles the remarkable women who demanded a seat at the table. She-Wolves is an engaging and enraging look at the collision of women, finance, and New York from the go-go years to ground zero.

American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice by Daniel Stone (2025)


The untold story of Alice Hamilton, a trailblazing doctor and public health activist who took on the booming auto industry—and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people across America. Hamilton had New England connections, too – she attended Miss Porter’s Finishing School in Farmington, became the first woman faculty member of Harvard, and she retired to live out her days in Hadlyme, CT.

The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela D. Toler (2024)


Toler draws on extensive archival research to unearth the largely forgotten story of Sigrid Schultz’s years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through the Nazi rise to power and Allied air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front-page stories and her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a “freak,” Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats.

Fearless and Free: A Memoir by Josephine Baker (2025)


Published in English for the first time, this is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker. After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the Civil Rights movement in the US, boycotting segregated concert venues, and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel (2024)


Dava Sobel approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy–from France’s Marguerite Perey and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity before her death at 66 from aplastic anemia.

Daughter of Daring: The Trick-riding, Train-leaping, Road-racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman by Mallory O’Meara (2025)


Helen Gibson was a woman willing to do anything to give audiences a thrill. Advertised as “The Most Daring Actress in Pictures,” Helen emerged in the early days of the twentieth-century silent film scene as a rodeo rider, background actor, stunt double, and eventually one of the era’s biggest action stars. Her exploits on motorcycles, train cars, and horseback were as dangerous as they were glamorous, featured in hundreds of films and serials–yet her legacy was quickly overshadowed by the increasingly hypermasculine and male-dominated evolution of cinema in the decades that would follow her. Through the page-turning story of Helen’s pioneering legacy, Mallory O’Meara gives readers a glimpse of the Golden Age of Hollywood that could have been: an industry where women call the shots.

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion by Julie Satow (2024)


The twentieth century American department store: a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one roof. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. In the 1930s, Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller came to her husband’s department store as a housewife tasked with attracting more shoppers like herself, and wound up running the company. Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor championed American designers during World War II–before which US fashions were almost exclusively Parisian copies–becoming the first businesswoman to earn a $1 million salary. And in the 1960s Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel re-invented the look of the modern department store. This stylish account captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History by Olivia Campbell (2024)


In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, physicists like Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.

Recent Reads for Black History Month

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February is a month of opposites. Love (Valentine’s Day) and hatred (New England winters) and apathy (NFL championships). There’s also the forgetting of the very recent past (last month’s resolutions) and the remembrance of our longer past: presidential birthdays and Black History Month. For the latter, we celebrate the contributions of members of the African diaspora to the culture and history of the United States. There’s been a recent flurry of books related to African American history, and I’m excited to share them with you this month.

But first, I’m gonna tell you about something that is 1) not a book 2) not about America. It is the excellent BBC documentary series, A History of Africa, which you can view for free on YouTube. The African continent has a diverse and fascinating history that deserves way more attention than it gets. This documentary is a great starting point to enrich your knowledge of Africa’s diasporic daughters and sons.

If you prefer to start your journey in print, though, first on our list is the book equivalent of the aforementioned documentary.

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi (2025)

Badawi (the host of A History of Africa) is a Sudanese-British journalist who worked for Channel 4 and the BBC before her current gig as President of the prestigious SOAS University of London. Her sweeping historical survey traces Africa’s rich legacy from prehistory to the present, exploring ancient civilizations, medieval empires and colonialism’s impact, while highlighting African voices and perspectives to offer a long-overdue account of the continent’s global significance.

Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation by Bennett Parten (2025)

A groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham (2024)

You never forget your first shark. For Jasmin Graham, it was a little bonnethead, a type of hammerhead shark. Jasmin fell in love with sharks and with science, but the traditional academic path wasn’t for her. So, she joined with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for young women of color who were pursuing the fascinating and environmentally essential work of marine studies. Jasmin became an independent researcher: a rogue shark scientist, learning how to keep those endangered but precious sharks swimming free – just like her.

Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families by Judith Giesberg (2025)

Drawing from an archive of nearly five thousand letters and advertisements, this is the riveting, dramatic story of formerly enslaved people who spent years searching for family members stolen away during slavery.

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (2024)

Born into poverty in rural Alabama, John Lewis rose to prominence in the civil rights movement, becoming second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions. Greenberg’s biography, a New York Times Book Review Top 100 Book of 2024, follows Lewis’s journey beyond the civil rights era, highlighting his leadership in the Voter Education Project and his ascent in politics.

The Stained Glass Window: A Family History As the American Story, 1790-1958 by David Levering Lewis (2025)

Sitting beneath a stained-glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, it struck Lewis that he knew very little about those ancestors. And so, in his mid-80s, the esteemed historian began to excavate their past and his own, from white slaveholding families to a mulatto slaveholding family to an up-from-slavery black family. Lewis previously won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for each volume of his biography of W.E.B. DuBois.

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene Daut (2025)

Haiti has the amazing distinction of being home to history’s most successful slave revolt, which led to its independence from France in 1804 and its establishment as a sovereign republic. Its significance looms large in the consciousness of African American thinkers and writers, with figures like Langston Hughes spending time on its soil. This book is the essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti, Henry Christophe (1767-1820).

Growing Up Urkel by Jaleel White (2024)

An incisive and insightful memoir by Jaleel White, the actor who portrayed Steve Urkel on the hit sitcom Family Matters. You may wonder what place this has among serious history books, but Family Matters remains one of the longest-running live action sitcoms starring a mostly African American cast. Join Jaleel as he invites you to relive the unforgettable ride of nineties nostalgia, while uncovering the personal growth behind the iconic suspenders and the lasting impact of his journey as one of America’s favorite sitcom stars.

Further Reading

Who Better Than You?: The Art of Healthy Arrogance & Dreaming Big by Will Packer (2025)

In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space by Irvin Weathersby Jr (2025)

Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History by Rich Benjamin (2025)

Books and Shows to Confirm Your Growing Technological Anxiety

/ Lauren / 1 Comment

“Have I told you all about the time that I got sucked into a hole through a handheld device?” asks the narrator of a song from the Arctic Monkeys’ 2018 album Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. Technological ambivalence (or perhaps anxiety?) is a recurring theme. I can relate. I spend too many nights sitting down to unwind for just a few minutes, and somehow two hours pass by, during which I’ve clicked link after link on my phone while the dirty dishes sit neglected in the sink and my toddler’s toys are still strewn across every floor. If you’ve ever lost an evening of your life to Wikipedia or Youtube, or ever looked up from staring at a screen to wonder if you still have long-distance vision, you can relate, too. 

While I can’t give you advice on how to stop the vicious cycle of passive consumption – every time I delete a time-sucking app, I seem to replace it with another one – what I can do is suggest some slightly more cerebral time-killers to add to your queues. 

To Read/Listen to:

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr 

As we enjoy the Internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? The printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In contrast, the Internet encourages rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information. As we become ever more adept at scanning and skimming, are we losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection? 

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt 

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness, then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development. Most important, he describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Many folks would point to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as fitting in best with this post’s theme, but those screen-covered parlor walls in front of which Mildred parks herself in Bradbury’s book-burning dystopia come to my mind more often than the Shakespeare-quoting John. Plus, Bradbury’s foretold degradation of the human attention span has supposedly come true. 

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman 

It’s hard to believe this book is almost 40 years old, but the thesis is just as relevant now as it was back when Family Ties and 60 Minutes were among the top television shows. Postman posits that the visual medium of television has led to the decay of rational discourse by turning information into entertainment. On paper (or screen) it might sound like Postman is a technophobic curmudgeon, but one need only think back to how often misinformation under the guise of “news” has spread like wildfire via social media over the last ten years to see his point. 

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari 

Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. So he went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention – and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. He introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus, if we are determined to fight for it. 

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke 

This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli, and we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain . . . and what to do about it. 

To Watch:

2001: A Space Odyssey 

Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, and its sentient computer that turns murderous, has been so influential that even AI voice assistants will often respond back with a knowing reply if you quote the film at them. This is a film that tells its story mostly through the visual medium with little dialogue, so you’ll have to put aside from time to watch this one without compulsively scrolling on your phone. 

Black Mirror (available on Netflix) 

Twilight Zone for the information age. This Channel 4 / Netflix drama is composed of standalone episodes where technology complicates, or more likely completely destroy, the lives of the characters. In one story they can store, replay, and delete memories via an implanted device in their skin. In another, social interactions are given ratings, and they affect one’s socioeconomic status. Every once in a while you’ll have a happy ending, but you’re usually buckling in for a dystopian take on the computer-based tools we already use. Watch it via Netflix or purchase episodes through Amazon Prime. 

The Social Dilemma (available on Netflix) 

This docu-drama explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations. It’s no mistake that Google’s own (former) design ethicist is a key narrator in this Emmy-winning documentary. Watch it via Netflix.