We live in a time of rapid change. Such periods have been recorded in our earlier history, but nothing quite compares to the present. If this change could be represented in a graph, it would indicate a nearly vertical rise in almost everything from technology and population to species extinction and climate change. We are remaking the world, from the micro to the macro, with consequences that are unprecedented.

Two book reviews in the Atlantic magazine of December 2021 by Rebecca Giggs identify some of these changes.