The founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self explores the danger that text messaging is replacing in-depth, face-to-face conversation. Divided attention has become the new norm as we shift our attention back and forth between our mobile devices and present companions whenever there is a lull in the conversation. "Fully present to each other, we learn to listen[and] develop the capacity for empathy," writes Turkle (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, 2011, etc.), but "these dayswe find ways around conversation." Throughout this eye-opening book, the author cites some amazing statistics: "average American adults check their phones every six and a half minutes"; "Most teenagers send one hundred texts a day." An even more insidious problem is that "online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation," than speaking to one another. It affords the opportunity to edit what we want to say. Turkle shares an amusing anecdote of how the etiquette of text messaging requires the use of punctuation marks to indicate emotional tone. Adhering to the new norms, she texted her 21-year-old daughter with a brief message to set up a meeting for morning coffee, but her daughter was alarmed. By omitting punctuation, Turkle had inadvertently signaled distress. A more proper message would have been, "Heyam swinging by the Square tomorrow :) on my way to a meeting later!!!!!...do you have time for an early breakfast??? Henrietta's Table? Not dorm food???" Online connections with friends and family can also change the tenor of communications, as we edit our posts to encourage positive feedback. More importantly, digital devices encroach on family time, and teenagers are not the only culprits. All too frequently, children complain of the difficulty of gaining their parents' full attention. Turkle also wisely acknowledges the benefits we receive from our digital devices. "It is not a moment to reject technology," she writes, "but to find ourselves." A timely wake-up call urging us to cherish the intimacy of direct, unscripted communication. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Turkle (social studies of science and technology, MIT, and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self) has spent the last three decades studying the junctions between human behavior and technology. A psychologist by training, she has written several books that offer scientifically rigorous yet humanistic analyses of human-computer interaction, among them Alone Together (CH, Aug'11, 48-7239). In the present volume, Turkle examines the possible dehumanizing effects of technology (effects she originally asserted in Alone Together) as evidenced in media-based communication. She claims that the propensity to use technology to communicate remotely in disjointed chunks, such as in texting, rather than in rich, protracted, deep conversations has the potential to shut down the ability to truly connect with others and engage in deep thinking. A longtime proponent of the beneficial possibilities of technology, Turkle supports her criticisms with examples of well-documented behaviors--such as unwillingness to engage, as one reaches for a smartphone at the first sign of boredom or interpersonal conflict. This book is a timely and important contribution to media studies and communication theory. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Susan M. Frey, Indiana State University

*Starred Review* The modern world is one of paradox, writes MIT professor, clinical psychologist, and prominent writer Turkle (Alone Together, 2011). Technology has enabled humans to become the most resourceful, resilient, and rewarded beings in history, yet many of us appear to lack the social and linguistic abilities to successfully navigate even the most basic situations. What has been compromised in the digital age is the ability to relate. E-mails, texts, instant messages, and social media have afforded myriad methods by which to connect, but at the expense of the ability to converse. These are ways to share information but not ideals, means of reaching out to but not truly touching someone else. As a result, people are losing the ability to empathize, to talk beyond the most superficial level, to develop deeper understandings of ourselves and our place in the larger world, one that seems to have shrunk to the size of a phone or computer screen. From the kitchen table to the classroom and office, these electronic devices dictate how humans interact. Knowing how and when best to use them can make the difference between meaningful communication and meaningless encounters. There's a wealth of relevant information and revealing insights on every page as Turkle provocatively takes us to the use it or lose it communications precipice.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2015 Booklist

Turkle argues that digital technology reduces people's ability to have deep and meaningful face-to-face conversations, which are essential for the many connections in life, business, and love. She explores different problems and strategies through anecdotes and research that can help people navigate the demands of technology and real-world interactions. Potter presents Turkle's words with a natural and wholehearted delivery. She teases out subtleties in the text, and casts quotes from outside sources and short bouts of dialogue in relief. A Penguin Press hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

RECLAIMING CONVERSATION: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle. (Penguin, $17.) Dialogue is a gateway to developing introspection and compassion, Turkle argues, but as technology mediates more of our conversations, our interpersonal and emotional skills have deteriorated precipitously. Turkle cautions against the unquestioning embrace of technology, calling instead for a return to face-to-face talks and more personal interaction. THE VISITING PRIVILEGE: New and Collected Stories, by Joy Williams. (Vintage, $16.95.) Gathered in part from her previous collections but including 13 stories new in book form, these tales exhibit Williams's trademark blend of grim humor and despair; in the title story, a woman finds unexpected solace in visits to her friend being treated for depression. The book amounts to what our reviewer, Ben Marcus, called "one of the most fearless, abyss-embracing literary projects our literature has seen." TRANS: A Memoir, by Juliet Jacques. (Verso, $19.95.) The author, who chronicled her sex-reassignment surgery and transition in columns for The Guardian, writes lucidly about her coming-of-age and experiences of feeling out of place. As she puts it, "I felt trapped not by my body but a society that didn't want me to modify it." AS CLOSE TO US AS BREATHING, by Elizabeth Poliner. (Lee Boudreaux/Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.99.) Three Jewish sisters converge on a familiar summer destination, a stretch of Connecticut's coast known as Bagel Beach, and find comfort in domestic rituals, religion and one another. Poliner's wideranging novel, narrated by one of the sisters' children, flits back and forth in time over a nearly hundred-year period, with a family tragedy at the story's center. BIG SCIENCE: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the MilitaryIndustrial Complex, by Michael Hiltzik. (Simon & Schuster, $18.) Lawrence, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, played a role in the Manhattan Project, and his inventions helped set a trend of enormous projects. But chief among his contributions was developing, as one admirer put it, "the modern way of doing science." By forging closer ties between science and politics, he helped make science far more interdisciplinary. THE GREEN ROAD, by Anne Enright. (Norton, $15.95.) The members of an Irish family, after years in far-flung locales, return for what might be a final Christmas holiday together. In this masterly novel, Enright, the 2007 Man Booker winner, writes as expertly about the AIDS crisis in New York and humanitarian work in Mali as she does about Ireland. THE NIXON TAPES: 1973, edited by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter. (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.95.) In these illuminating transcripts, the president's words from a turbulent period speak for themselves. At the outset of this volume of the tapes, Nixon has won re-election but soon turns to obsessing over the gathering Watergate scandal and plotting his response. ?

"Put down that cell phone and reclaim conversation!" demands Turkle (social science, Massachusetts Inst. of Technology; Alone Together). Her main points are that conversation is solitude, listening, mentoring, deep reading, and multitasking, and conversation makes us happier, more empathetic, and less lonely. She argues that texting and social media displace and distract us from authentic communication, supporting her message with poignant vignettes, which ultimately cannot establish that lives of endless, Internet chatter are universal. Recent studies by Wikia and the Pew Research Center have shown that not all teens are "plugged in" or message constantly. Even Turkle's own stories feature conversations gone awry. A young man storms out angrily, and a middle school principal sadistically interrogates a student. Worse yet, she offers few solutions. Turkle advocates "sacred spaces" and changing cell phones' "affordances" but fails to mentions apps that temporarily block distractions. Those who enjoy social science and Internet critiques can also read Andrew Keene's Digital Vertigo or Marc Prensky's Brain Gain, while those interested in better conversation can try Susan Scott's Fierce Conversation. Verdict For Turkle fans only. Everyone else can do better.-Eileen H. Kramer, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.