📚 Books I read in June and July 2026
Back from a long summer break with some reading recommendations for all my readers.
Some of you might have noticed, and most probably haven't: I just took a long break. It's been a bit more than a month since the last issue of this newsletter, a month spent working and traveling (more traveling than working) with the family on our motorhome. This week I'm ramping up again towards full-time working, and I can't tell you how hard it is to sit down and write these lines.
I know the feeling will be gone in a week or two, but it always amazes me how quickly we get used to living outdoors, visiting new places, and reading interesting stuff. It almost feels like we were made to live this way.
As usual during summer months, I tend to favour reading fiction, yet today's highlight is a great non-fiction book: Visionaries, Rebels and Machines by Jamie Dobson
💫 Book Highlight: Visionaries, Rebels and Machines by Jamie Dobson
Visionaries, Rebels and Machines by Jamie Dobson
323 pages, First Published: June 19th, 2025
Disclosure: Jamie kindly sent me a free copy of this book for a review, which remains fully independent work on my end.
Visionaries, Rebels and Machines - or VRM - is an engaging and insanely detailed history of humans’ ingenuity and all the inventions that originated from the early experiments with electricity by Volta and Galvani, and through many surprising jumps, led to the pervasiveness of digital technology of today's era. It covers the invention of the telegraph, the vacuum tube, the transistor, the microchip, and computers, all the way to cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Dobson is deeply knowledgeable about the stories he covers in the book, and he manages to share all that extensive knowledge in an engaging way. Never pedantic, never throwing in details just for the sake of showing off. You can feel the author's passion throughout the book, and it's almost contagious. I say almost because I always read with a healthy dose of scepticism, which inevitably makes me somewhat suspicious when I'm facing what seems like excessive enthusiasm.
The enthusiastic and optimistic angle dominates parts 1 to 4 of the book. Despite talking about the invention of the nuclear bomb with Oppenheimer and his team, Dobson rarely indulges in inventions that have negative or nefarious effects on humanity: weapons, forever chemicals, microplastics, etc. Granted, this is a book about innovation mainly in the analog-to-digital space. Yet, a narrow focus on inventions that had positive effects (at least for some), and ignoring those whose side effects outweigh their benefits, tends to arouse my critical thinking beyond the usual threshold. That's why I appreciated it even further when the tone evolved significantly in part 5 of the book.
The sentiment and underlying narrative of part 5 are notably different from what came earlier.
Past innovations are all recounted and celebrated with enthusiasm and optimism in the first four parts of the book. The last one covers the impact of AI in the present and its potential future impact. Here, the author suddenly takes a more cautious style and approach. He mentions sources such as Brian Merchant , who are not at all enthusiastic or optimistic about what's coming. He brings up the real and potential side effects of this technology wave: job replacement and further concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few tech entrepreneurs. Chapter 19 on unintended consequences even reminded me of a recent video interview with Geoffrey Hinton that I recently watched1.
It made me wonder what was different between the industrial revolution and subsequent innovations and the one we're living through now, to justify the difference in perspective.
Is it the fact that the author is observing it as it happens that makes the potential consequences more real, more concrete, and more relatable?
Is it because the risks are significantly higher than the ones we've ever faced in our earlier history?
Or is it just that Dobson's view on the subject of innovation and techno-optimism evolved during the course of writing the book, as he learned more about the dark sides of the current AI wave?
I don't, and I might never know the answers to these questions.
Yet, this detail is what piqued my curiosity and fueled my reflections the most in the entire book. I'm sure there is a good dose of confirmation bias at play in there, as I'm clearly not in the techno-optimist camp.
But it's hard to misinterpret statements such as the following, taken from the conclusions of Chapter 19:
Since the beginning of the 1970s, owners have taken home more profits and left employees with less in their pay packages (Gordon 2016). This trend will accelerate as AI's tentacles take further root in society. Artificial intelligence will cause further injustice and chaos, which in turn will increase grievances within society that demagogues exploit. AI has a dual role here: it's simultaneously the tool of the capitalist and the weapon of the demagogue.
To some extent, it almost felt that parts 1 to 4 were one book, and part 5 was a separate book. Related, but with a very different take, narrative, and point to make.
That said, I've profoundly enjoyed the read. Though I believed I knew plenty about the innovations that led to the digitalization of the world, I learned a lot thanks to VDM, and managed to connect some dots that were just isolated points in my memory.
It's a history book that reads like an engaging novel, a genre and style I'm appreciating more and more as I explore it. Last but not least, I found part 5 resonating deeply with many of the concerns I have about the wave we're facing now.
In a way, it's reassuring to read an optimistic author write critically about potential issues that many others are way too keen to downplay. Even in its most optimistic and enthusiastic lines, Dobson is always very sober and stays clear of the hype narrative that's become ubiquitous in the past couple of years.
If you'd like to get a detailed history of how technical evolution unfolded from the analog to the digital world, I highly recommend Visionaries, Rebels and Machines.
Thanks Jamie Dobson for sending the book over! It was indeed a great read.
I am looking forward to furthering the conversation you started with this book!
📚 Other books I read in June and July 2025
📓 Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio
Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio
687 pages, First Published: April 18, 2019
This is the first pure fiction book I read by Damasio, and I wasn't disappointed. It's the kind of science fiction I love. Thoroughly developed characters, imaginative and visionary, presenting the reader with a dystopian future very rooted in today's world: privatization of public resources, extreme stratification of society, pervasive advertising and control, all made possible by a handful of very powerful and insanely rich big tech companies.
The fact that the book was published in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak and well before the outset of the GenAI hype cycle, makes it even more impressive.
The “furtifs” from the title are surprising and mysterious creatures that live among humans but can never be seen. They move in the zones where nobody is watching, managing to stay in the blind spots. What are they exactly? In a world where everybody is constantly tracked, monitored, recorded, and controlled, how can such creatures even exist? Do they really exist, or are they just a myth? Are they the ultimate form of resistance, managing to live below the radar?
The beauty of the book is that, beyond being an engaging read, it triggers all sorts of questioning and reflection about today's society and whether we should passively ride along and conform or whether we should adopt some forms of resistance. Everyone will have different answers, and the act of reflecting on such questions is what really matters.
📒 Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère
Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère
489 pages, First Published: September 1, 2011
Yet another “fake” historical novel from Carrère. It's written and reads like a great novel, but all the events narrated are real facts. It's another example of the great mix of fiction and non-fiction that Carrère seems to excel at.
Limonov tells the story of Eduard Limonov2, an eclectic and quite controversial Russian writer and politician. Through the tumultuous and reckless life of Limonov, Carrère depicts the evolution of the Soviet Union after its fall, the emergence of the oligarchs, and the rise of Putin.
Despite the highly controversial subject, Limonov expressed far-right political views and got involved with crime on multiple occasions during his life, Carrère manages to keep an objective and non-judgmental view of him. Through the pages of the book, Limonov emerges as a charismatic anti-hero with a talent for adaptability, survival, and resilience. It's never clear who the real person behind the masks he's often wearing is, and that doesn't really matter. Limonov is as much a portrait of a complex and multi-faceted individual as it is a short documentary on one of the most complex and intricate socio-political transitions of the late XX and early XXI centuries.
This book was so good that I immediately followed it with another one from the same author. A totally different one, though.
📖 La classe de neige by Emmanuel Carrère
La classe de neige by Emmanuel Carrère
148 pages, First Published: May 3rd, 1995
La classe de neige is the first pure fiction book I've read from Carrère, and I was surprised by how different it was from anything else I've read from him until now. It's a relatively short book with a wonderful pace and rhythm. It was so difficult to drop it that I read it in a single day.
Though the story has been inspired by a real event, the plot and characters are all original. The beauty of the book is the pervading sensation of a looming danger from page one, a sensation that follows the reader through the entire story and only resolves towards the end. That's one of the two highlights of La classe de neige. The second is Carrère's ability to put himself and the reader in the mind of a 10-year-old boy, Nicolas, full of insecurity and self-doubt. Carrère is Nicolas, and you are too, as you read through the book.
This is a sign of a true exceptional novelist: the ability to write fiction that feels so real that it almost messes up your brain, mixing memories of your younger self with the feelings of the main character being described.
La classe de neige was turned into a movie a few years after its publication, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to watch it.
📘 La realidad by Neige Sinno
La Realidad by Neige Sinno
272 pages, First Published: March 6, 2025
The last book of July is one that brought back a lot of personal memories. It's the personal story of Neige Sinno, the author, who attempted to travel to La Realidad, a small village in Chiapas, Mexico, but never managed to get there. That failed attempt led to other events that ultimately shaped the author's life.
I enjoyed the read mainly as I found the experience of the author relatable, having lived myself about 3,5 years in Mexico and visited many of the places she talks about. Yet, I found it difficult to follow at times, as it lacked a clear structure. It went from narrating a personal story to finding parallels with the famous French writer and artist Antonin Artaud to introspection and reflections on feminism across different cultures and societies.
At times, the author gave the impression she didn't know where she was going. That might be the exact reason why she wrote the book: a personal exploration and reflection more than a story to tell. As such, I felt somewhat disappointed when I got to the last page, which left me with a frustrating “so what?” feeling of a book that could have been a lot more impactful but came short of its full potential. By trying to go to too many places, it ended up not going anywhere specific.
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Link to the video, recommended watch for anyone interested in what is going on in this space. The guy is a Nobel Prize winner and knows a thing or two about AI.
Check out this Wikipedia page for more details about the figure.