Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever (New Republic)

 As an author with a forthcoming non-fiction book, it's both depressing to read that non-fiction book sales are down, but inspiring to read of the importance of books.

The New Republic considers the (diminishing) prospects and (continuing) importance of non-fiction books.

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever
Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction, and our understanding of the world around us.  by Paul Elie

 “The decline in sales of new nonfiction might reflect a changing information ecosystem,” Elizabeth Harris observed. “People looking for information can now easily turn to chatbots, YouTube, podcasts and other free online sources.” Last December, The Guardian cited NielsenIQ figures indicating a one-year drop of 8.4 percent in nonfiction book sales (twice that of fiction) and quoted a writer who had “heard publishers have soured on any nonfiction that isn’t ‘Hollywood friendly.’”

... 

"Fretful narratives about the demise of books and the rise of devices have been in play for half a century or longer. “Our world of books, like most other worlds now, is the arena of an increasingly bitter struggle for space, and for the limited reading time that a busy citizen in this electronic age can afford,” John Updike lamented when accepting the American Book Award in 1982. Narrative nonfiction in particular has faced headwinds in mass culture before. And in many respects, the challenges it faces are built in. Long fact is hard to publish and always has been. Reportage and research take time, resources, attention, and fortitude. A book can require several years to write and another year and a half to be edited, checked, printed, and publicized—only to wind up coming out during a news cycle dominated by a sex scandal, school shooting, pandemic, or war. It was as true half a century ago as it is today that readers expect to pay for fiction but are used to getting nonfiction passively through the media. 

...

"In societies where freedom is under threat, an informed citizen is countercultural and deep reading is an act of resistance. Just as protest and vigilance are essential, so is the ability to read and think. In a would-be autocracy, the autocrat aims to subsume our society’s particular narratives into his master narrative—in which his name fills the headlines, his voice and image dominate the broadcasts, and his airbrushed visage appears on the facades of government. To read a book, however, is to enter a narrative that stands outside the politics-and-media maelstrom. In a would-be autocracy, even a small bookstore—with hundreds of books, classic, recent, and current—is a space of contrary narratives, where truth is recognized as both essential and complicated." 

Stanford remembers John Roberts (1945-2026)

 Economist John Roberts, leader in organizational research, dies at 80
The Stanford professor’s work brought game theory to management practices in firms around the world. 

"Donald John Roberts, the John H. Scully Professor of Economics, Strategic Management and International Business, Emeritus, died Jan. 23 after a long illness. He was 80.

"His start at Stanford GSB was carefully cultivated. When economics professor Robert Wilson began growing the economics faculty at the business school in the late 1970s, he had already recruited an impressive group of young scholars. But he needed someone to shape the intellectual direction of the program.

"Wilson believed Roberts was that person.

At the time, Roberts was a young professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, already known for his teaching credentials and research in economic theory. Wilson persuaded him to join Stanford in 1980, bringing him west to help build what would become one of the most influential economics groups in academia.

“John played a central role in shaping the direction of the economics group in those years,” says Wilson, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus, and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. “He had a remarkable ability to see where an idea could lead and to push it until the logic became clear.”

"Roberts remained at the school until his retirement in 2012. At Stanford GSB, he helped lead the doctoral program, mentored younger faculty, and played a central role in recruiting a generation of economists whose work reshaped the field. His four decades of research helped transform how economists study organizations and their management, bringing rigorous economic theory to questions about how firms function internally.

...
“Besides his scholarship, John was an institution builder who helped shape the intellectual culture of the school,” says David M. Kreps, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus. “John helped create an environment where both ambitious research and professional education thrived. He was the personification of balanced excellence.” 

How to revive science in America by Harvey V. Fineberg, in PNAS

 Here's a paper in the latest PNAS that begins with this epigraph:
 
“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money, and I’ll tell you what they are.” — attributed to James W. Frick (Vice President, University of Notre Dame, 1965–1983) 

 The rest is commentary, (and a figure is worth a thousand (1,000) words). 

How to revive science in America by Harvey V. Fineberg, PNAS, March 26, 2026   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2537854123

 

 

Freedom Festival

 Passover is the Freedom Festival.

The word of the day is LIBERTY (in all it's complications)

A happy and safe Passover to all who celebrate.

 

 

Steven Pinker on Robert Trivers (1943-2026)

 Pinker writes about how Trivers introduced game-theoretic ideas into evolutionary biology (with genes as the players, and selection into subsequent generations as the payoffs). It's a well written tribute.

The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)  by Steven Pinker 

"Trivers’s contributions belong in the special category of ideas that are obvious once they are explained, yet eluded great minds for ages; simple enough to be stated in a few words, yet with implications that have busied scientists for decades. In an astonishing creative burst from 1971 to 1975, Trivers wrote five seminal essays that invoked patterns of genetic overlap to explain each of the major human relationships: male with female, parent with child, sibling with sibling, partner with partner, and a person with himself or herself." 

The danger to democracy: some quantitative measures (Martin Wolf in the Financial Times)

 Read it and weep.

We must not underestimate the peril for democracy
Donald Trump’s America is a world leader in democratic decline  by Martin Wolf 

"Democracy is in grave peril, worldwide. This is the message of two authoritative recent reports — one, from Sweden’s V-Dem, subtitled “Unraveling The Democratic Era?” and the other, from Freedom House in the US, subtitled “The Growing Shadow of Autocracy”. These make two fundamental points. The first is that what Stanford’s Larry Diamond has labelled a “democratic recession”, which began two decades ago, is beginning to look dangerously like a democratic depression. The other is that, in 2025, the Trump administration launched what turned out to be the swiftest decline in the health of any significant democracy in recent times. 

 

 and compared to S. Africa:

 

 

Alex Chan on deceased organ donation

 The Harvard Gazette points to this interview with HBS professor Alex Chan:

Designing Incentives That Matter—Even After Death: Interview with Alex Chan By Avery Forman 

"In “Reimagining Transplant Center Incentives Beyond the CMS IOTA Model,” published in January in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Chan explores a government experiment that pays kidney centers for volume and efficiency—not just outcomes—which could increase transplant numbers. Chan cowrote the article with Alvin E. Roth, the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration, Emeritus, at HBS.

In addition, covering funeral costs for organ donors could increase donation rates by up to 35%, and save up to 419,000 life years and as much as $800 million in Medicare expenses, Chan and coauthor Kurt Sweat of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center write in “Funeral Expense Reimbursement as a Strategy to Enhance Organ Donation and Transplantation Access,” published in October in NPJ Health Systems.

 ...

"Why Chan felt compelled to study the organ market

“Two things pulled me in. First, this is a market where the stakes are brutally clear. Organ transplantation is one of the few places where inefficiency shows up not as a deadweight loss in a textbook, but as people dying on a waiting list. When a market fails here, it fails loudly.

Second, the level of inefficiency is staggering. Each year, more than 5,000 organs are recovered and then discarded, while roughly the same number of people die waiting for an organ. These are million-dollar transactions once you account for surgery, lifelong care, and avoided dialysis. So even small improvements in incentives can save lives directly and save the healthcare system billions of dollars.

For an economist or market designer, that’s a rare alignment: moral urgency and economic leverage pointing in the same direction.”

Incentives must consider what’s socially acceptable

“Incentive design is much harder than we like to admit. Organ transplantation is a supply chain. You have procurement organizations, hospitals, surgeons, patients, regulators, all responding to different incentives.

Designing a good incentive for one actor is already difficult. Designing incentives so that the entire chain works well is not just adding up the optimal incentives for each link. Sometimes improving one part of the system quietly breaks another.

The choice isn't between market and no market. It’s between a system we design on purpose and a system that fails by accident.

This is a market with moral and political constraints embedded in it. In healthcare, and frankly now in most markets, the incentives that are economically sensible also need to be socially legitimate.

Incentives don’t just change behavior; they express values. In markets that touch life, death, or dignity, people react not only to what the incentive does, but to what it seems to say. That makes incentive design less like tuning a machine and more like negotiating a fragile social contract.

 ...

"The ‘ick factor’ might prevent progress

“Very often people do not want to use the right incentives because they have this concept of it being repugnant.

[For instance], we would pay for the funeral of someone who gives their life for their country when they serve in the military. We will pay for the funeral of someone who donated their body for scientific research to advance society. But if people want to donate an organ to save another person's life? If [that donor’s] family would very much welcome some support at a moment of crisis, we are not going to pay for the funeral. Even a very sensible incentive sometimes is bound by social norms, or even what we call the ‘ick factor,’ and we have a less effective system at the end.

People worry that incentives will corrupt the gift of life. But the truth is that we already have incentives; they’re just accidental and poorly distributed. The choice isn't between market and no market. It’s between a system we design on purpose and a system that fails by accident. Ignorance of incentives doesn't make a system moral; it just makes it inefficient.”