Second Life

Books

The long-awaited debut memoir from the beloved New York Times critic, chronicling the convergence of parenthood and technology. For more than a decade, Amanda Hess has documented the ways that social media and new technologies have upended our identities, living the contradictions of the internet even as she has tried to make sense of them. But when Hess discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own. In the summer of 2020, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess's baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search suddenly sucked her into the destabilizing world of the internet, and she was vulnerable-more than ever-to conspiracy, myth, judgment, commerce, and obsession. As her relationship with the digital world escalates, Hess identifies these technologies as points of initiation into wider systems, with sometimes ...