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FOR FREE PEOPLE

Weekend Reading: Putting Three New Books on Your Radar

The hypocrisy of the American elite, the dangers of AI, and tech’s dirty secret—in our first-ever Saturday digest.

Hello, readers! Bari here. Today, we’re trying something different. We’ve cherry-picked three new books that we think will be up your alley, and we’re giving you a taste of each, with links to keep reading more on our site. (Which we hope you’ll come to more often!)

First up is an excerpt from a new memoir by Yeonmi Park, who grew up in North Korea believing Kim Jong-il was so powerful he could read her mind. She survived a famine that killed nearly three million people, eating dragonflies to survive. At age nine, Park witnessed the public execution of her friend’s mother, who was put to death for the crime of watching a Hollywood movie. Almost no one escapes the Hermit Kingdom. Yeonmi Park did. Last year, as she wrote in The Free Press, Park became a U.S. citizen.

In her national bestseller, “While Time Remains,” Park writes about her experience among America’s most celebrated, wealthy elites—and the moral corruption she found at their conferences and on their Gulfstreams. Check out her story below.

We also bring you a searing interview with Siddharth Kara, the author of Cobalt Red, the book that exposed the suffering bankrolled by Big Tech (and, frankly, anyone who owns an iPhone). And finally, tech guru David Auerbach—the man behind the smiley emoji and the new book, Meganets—tells us just how worried we should be about the future of AI.

I’m curious to hear what you think of this format. Does it work? Are there ways to improve? We hope you write to us: tips@thefp.com—and have a wonderful weekend. 

—BW

If you’re hungry for more, check out these other recent Free Press stories, including a scoop on the school that won’t quit COVID, a fascinating read on the brave new world of surrogacy, and TGIF—our essential digest on the week’s news. 

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