In Conversation: On 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet

Dave Barry is the author of thousands of humor columns and dozens of books, including Lessons from Lucy: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog (Simon & Schuster), which explores the ways in which his dog is wiser than he is; Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys, Dave Barry Turns 40, and Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up. He plays guitar (although he admits, not well) for the Rock Bottom Remainders and is probably the only living human who has both won a Pulitzer Prize and had a sewage lifting station named after him.

Deesha Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press), won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. It explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and enjoy a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories presented feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions. There is 14-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife; Lyra, whose discomfort with her own body at 42 stands between her and love; and a serial mistress laying down the ground rules for her married lovers. Kirkus celebrated the book as a “collection of luminous stories populated by deeply moving and multifaceted characters. … Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root.”

Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and oversees book coverage at the Times, where she hosts its weekly book review podcast. Her previous books include By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from The New York Times Book Review; Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Rectangle Time, a book for children. In her latest book, Paul’s musings turn to modern life and its absolute entrenchment in the digital space. Today we exist, for the most part, in the filtered and isolated corners of the internet – a place that has all at once become our local library, office, bar, movie theater, and concert hall. In 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet (Crown Publishing Group), Paul presents a record of all the things we long for without realizing that they’re gone, as well as the things we’re all too happy to let slip into the pre-internet past, from voicemails to civility. In these never-before-published essays charmingly illustrated by Nishant Choksi, she reflects on the small losses and the more significant repercussions, such as weaker memories, the inability to entertain oneself, and the utter demolition of privacy. While the internet has put an entire world at our fingertips, it has also taken away many of the fundamental human experiences that sustain us.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for MSNBC, and author of Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House and The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton. The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III (Anchor) – co-written with his wife, Susan Glasser, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a CNN global affairs analyst – is a study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late 20th-century America. For 25 years, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency or ran the White House without the advice of James Addison Baker III. A child of Texas aristocracy, Baker had never worked in Washington until a family tragedy struck when he was 39. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races – and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season but an indispensable dealmaker after the election, Baker ran Ronald Reagan’s White House. The Economist called it a “masterclass in political biography.”

Zakiya Dalila Harris spent nearly three years in editorial at Knopf/Doubleday before leaving to write her debut novel The Other Black Girl. Prior to working in publishing, Zakiya received her MFA in creative writing from The New School. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Guernica, and The Rumpus. She lives in Brooklyn.