Alex Dobrenko

We can have sympathy for the dandies. To live, as many of them did, in a rapidly changing, ever-industrializing Paris, where alleyways and artisans were constantly being supplanted by grands boulevards and department stores, must have been disorienting; the ease of technological reproduction at once dazzling and destabilizing. A whole host of... See more

Rather than giving us pleasure itself, as is commonly thought, dopamine motivates us to do things we think will bring pleasure. As the brain’s major reward and pleasure neurotransmitter, it’s what drives us to seek pizza when we’re hungry and sex when we’re aroused. Scientists use dopamine to measure “the addictive potential of any experience,”... See more

“Brilliant lithography,” the authors of a packaging textbook write, “was essential for selling canned food that was not visible during a purchase based on faith.”

Like many other dramatized conversations in AHWOSG , the Q&A—46 pages long, even longer than the book’s front matter—devours itself, transforming from quasi-realistic representation of an actual event to a meta self-interrogation, in which Eggers describes the comfort of his own upbringing, movingly reveals his late father’s alcoholism, and defends... See more