Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK
One of the New York Times’ Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring

When Vauhini Vara was fourteen, her sister was diagnosed with cancer. Too terrified to discuss it with a human, Vara instead turned to the fledgling internet with her questions. Those seminal early experiences influenced her decision to become a technology reporter; decades later, she used a predecessor to ChatGPT to help her write about her sister’s death.

In this provocative, timely and highly personal account of our interdependent relationship with technology, she examines the early days of the internet, the encroachment of social media into our lives and how we might work with AI in the future. Brimming with candour, humour and a probing, roving intelligence, Searches anoints Vara, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as an essential voice for our moment.