This book has an excerpt from it published a couple months ago about what what really happened when six boys were shipwrecked on a crappy island for years, in the way of The Lord of the Flies. Spoiler alert: they were not the horrible fictional characters of that book, rather, they adapted and were incredibly "civilized," a term that, after reading this book, I'm more than a bit put-off with. Maybe "advanced" or "cultured" would work better? Cultivated? Sophisticated! There we go.

Another spoiler alert: you should read this book.

When I started reading this book, I was somewhat rolling my eyes, thinking it was going to be a remake of Enlightenment Now, which was WAAAAY better than the actively-disliked Rational Optimist, but still a "yeah, yeah, I already read this" book. Except Bregman actively talks about Pinker's earlier work that says humans are awful beings, and then says, "welllllllllll, about that."

Which sets the stage for just about every major study you've heard about that tells us humans are awful creatures. I mean, we are, but.... welllllll, actually....

Take the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City in March of 1964, everyone says it is the abdication of responsibility, that when surrounded by a crowd doing nothing as you're being murdered, call upon one person to take action. Except, the whole story about how 37 neighbors ignored her death wasn't accurate: they didn't hear her. And the one who did actually did his best, and she died in a friend's arms. The newspapers reported the made-up news of uncaring neighbors, because it sold more newspapers.

This is book three of Scalzi's Interdepency and much like the first one in the series, I picked up the book and pretty much read it straight through, with a couple pauses to, oh, you know, work and sleep. In reality, after reading Redshirts, I wanted to keep reading Scalzi, despite having several books going already. That's the way it is sometimes.

So, a few things about this book.

1. Scalzi is taking notes from George R. R. Martin, and I don't like it. I had to read that Martin-esque part over again three, maybe four times, skip to the end, come back, read it again, and, did I mention I don't like it because I'm sure I did. Sure, yes, good plot point, nice foreshadowing, interesting twist, and I don't like it.

2. There is likely a reason the name Kiva and the name Kitt are so fucking similar that you can't fucking help but fucking notice the fucking similarity. You can guess which character's storyline I enjoyed reading the fucking most. And no, my mother does not fucking talk that way, thankfully.

3. I absolutely love how many times in this book in particular, a character would stop and, while being upset at something another character said, recognize that the shit thing that came from the other character (words, gestures, advice, the like) was actually fair. Authors often have verbal tics, words or phrases repeated so frequently in a book that they stand out. I don't recall any of Scalzi's other tics offhand, but this one stood out. I liked it. I rather wish more people were able to separate the message from the messenger and appreciate the feedback being given.