. @hankgreen's debut novel "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" was just about the most hankgreenian novel you could imagine: a compassionate, expainly, fast-moving well-told tale about social media stardom and polarization:

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/25/carls-against-humanity.html

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It's the tale of duelling factions of social media stars who disagree about whether the mysterious, alien (?) Japanese killer-robot statues that have appeared in every city in the world at the same instance are harbingers of doom or salvation.

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It ends with an amazing action sequence that left readers with a brutal cliffhanger, which is a very canny way of setting up a sequel!

Now, that sequel is out, and it's fantastic.

"A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor" hits shelves today.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576280/a-beautifully-foolish-endeavor-by-hank-green/

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Endeavor picks up where Remarkable left off, with the same characters in second acts, their lives utterly transformed by the crisis (timely, huh?). Like Remarkable, this is a book of global networked movements galvanized by competing theories about what's truly going on.

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And like Remarkable, social media influencers play an outsized role in our species-wide deliberation. But Endeavor goes deeper here, explicitly connecting crises and extractive capitalism, scoring deep points about exploitation and commodification.

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It's a brutal and brutally honest look at the mixed and impure motives that drive "successful" people, the gaudy frauds of heroic tech founders, and the invisible human cost of "automated" systems that make the world seem so seamless (when it's working).

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The fact that these themes are so salient in this moment is both a testament to Green's insight and a reminder that the pandemic crisis didn't create our problems, merely heightened them to the point of undeniability even by the most motivated of reasoners.

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This is a Hank Green novel, so it's charming and fast-moving as all get out, and has a climax that turns on both heart and fascinating, poorly understood, super important economic systems, like the endings of 48 Hours or My Cousin Vinny.

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And above all, it was so lovely to visit with these charming and complicated characters again, to watch them learn and grow, and to root for them against all odds.

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The pandemic wiped out Green's plan to tour this book, so he's embarked upon a virtual tour, with interlocutors including his brother @johngreen, @iSmashFizzle, @romanmars and me!

https://hankgreen.com/?page_id=17 

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You can catch my appearance with Hank this Friday, July 10, livestreaming in collaboration with beloved #Minneapolis booksellers @magersandquinn.

https://www.magersandquinn.com/product_info?isbn_id=26578312&products_id=163359157

eof/