Whether through salacious subject matter (50 Shades of WTF), provocative parenting advice (Tiger Mothers, oh my!) or because Oprah deems it worthy (so many copies of The Secret, so few fires), books still have the ability to capture the zeitgeist. The better ones do it by distilling our cultural moment instead of just waving it around like a flag for attention. David Rushkoff’s Present Shock has the potential to be just that book—it examines the way we live in our super plugged-in universe, where Twitter, texts and Facebook live in between snooze buttons, and how that’s shifted us to a perpetually “on” present that we’re never actually present for. Rushkoff knows his stuff; he’s written 12 bestsellers and coined the term “viral media.” If you head to Greenlight Bookstore Thursday for his in-store discussion, you’ll get a jump start on the next “now” book just as its moment arrives.
