20 Great Books for Summer 2026

It may feel like AI has seeped deep into our lives, but compared to the world within “Certainty,” a new dystopian novel by best-selling author John Twelve Hawks, we’re practically in the Flintstones era. In Twelve Hawks’ realm, self-driving tractor-trailers dominate the highways. Parents delegate child-rearing to AI-powered stuffed animals - all-knowing, well-mannered versions of “ Ted,” essentially. The authorities make aggressive use of a predictive-policing algorithm built atop an aged AI no one fully understands, which I see as a real warning about AI wrapper startups.