Nick Poppy
If you’re reading this review online, you’ve elected to do so instead of looking at baby pictures, porn, or any number of blogs, vlogs, and feeds—a seemingly limitless collection of media and information. It’s shocking what people will put online. Or, strike that, it’s no longer shocking. In a worryingly short amount of time, many of us have become very comfortable with oversharing our lives and consuming the personal details of others on the Internet. It is this rapid shift that concerns Canadian social critic Hal Niedzviecki in his book The Peep Diaries. Niedzviecki meditates on the changes wrought by A word of advice: Do not allow Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge to plan your vacation, unless touring missile silos in the middle of Wyoming is your idea of a good time. Better to go to the beach and bring along A Nuclear Family Vacation, their entertaining travelogue-cum–history of the American nuclear-weapons industry (and its analogues in central Asia and Iran). Better still, read their book at summer’s end; though frequently amusing, A Nuclear Family Vacation is likely to dampen one’s spirits, as discussions of nuclear war will often do.