From blog to book

Image by Midjourney.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Oxford University Press to turn The Permanent Problem into a book. Assuming I can complete the manuscript on time, the plan is for a publication date in the fall of 2025.

What a funny way to write a book! This Substack started out as a book proposal that I wasn’t really sure about. I knew I was asking important questions, and I thought I had some illuminating insights about what’s gone wrong in the world, but I lacked confidence in my ideas about how to make things better. So I decided to start a Substack and work through my book proposal in essay form: instead of committing irrevocably to a particular line of argument, I could just think out loud and explore possibilities. Along the way my thinking has sharpened considerably, and I’ve grown more comfortable that my prescriptions for addressing the “permanent problem” are at least directionally correct. So now, at last, I’m ready to write a book — and, lucky me, most of the book is already written at this point, scattered in chunks across a few dozen essays.

There will be new material in the book, I promise, and there’s a lot of work to be done in refining and strengthening the arguments I’ve been making on this site. So between now and the end of the year, book writing will be my primary occupation. Accordingly, I don’t expect to release any new essays here for a while, but I do plan to continue with podcasts — in fact I recorded a new one yesterday, which will be out in a few weeks. So please keep dropping by! And thanks to all my readers here for your interest and support.