While many of my book reviews have been longer essays published on my blog or episodes of my podcast, Red Reviews, I also write shorter book reviews for social media. These appear mostly on Instagram, as it is the social media platform I primarily use and it has a longer character limit for captions than, say, Threads or Twitter. Instagram’s 2,200 character limit for captions requires you to be concise and clear, and I enjoy the challenge to keep my posts within that character limit. It’s actually a lot of fun to write a quick review that is informative as well as indicative of my opinion. This blog post will be the first in a series of blog posts where I will share a few reviews that are connected by a common theme, along with photographs of the books as they appeared on Instagram. 

This first set of reviews are tied together under the theme of “science and society,” which highlights books that employ science and/or philosophy to expound on social issues. From Bertrand Russell’s argument for a four-hour workday to Christopher Lasch’s conception of a “minimal self,” each of these books provide provocative insights into the human condition.