Rupert Murdoch Unleashes His Inner Book Critic on Twitter

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Move over Oprah, another media titan is stepping into the hardback endorsement space. Rupert Murdoch, with his inexplicable but highly entertaining presence on Twitter, is on a book critic tear, firing off terse, 140-character reviews of literature ranging from the controversial to mainstream bestsellers. The News Corp. chairman and CEO has a rather unpredictable reading diet. Here's what he's tweeted about so far:

Charles Murray Coming Apart Make no mistake, Murdoch loves Charles Murray. The co-author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, which associated race with IQ differences, is the only author the media mogul confesses to "re-reading." "Profound" and "strongly recommend," gushes Murdoch of Murray's new book Coming Apart. In this tome, instead of dissecting racial differences, Murray appears to focus on white America exclusively. "The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk," reads the Amazon review.

As he's known to do, Murdoch looks at the book through the prism of the GOP primaries. "Re-reading Charles Murray. Profound. Can Santorum lead moral regeneration and restoration of original American dream? Tall order!" he tweets. One of his rather cheeky Twitter followers replies: "A call to restore morality from the man who debases the political discourse & peddles gossip, rumor and scantily-clad women."

Matt Ridley The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves For everyone who's sick of headlines about famine, natural disaster, rape, and murder, this sounds like the book for you. The Rational Optimist's premise is that "life is getting better...Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before." Blaming negative sentiment on the "pessimists who dominate public discourse," the book puts an optimistic gloss on the sweep of human history. What saith Murdoch? "Have just. Read The Rational Optimist. Great book." A nice endorsement for a product that, unlike his adulatory endorsements for movies, isn't owned by News Corp.

Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs The fawningly appraised book seems to aim a little too close to the jugular for Murdoch. "Steve Jobs biog interesting but unfair. Family must hate," he tweeted. Did the passages about Jobs being posthumously described as a controlling jerk hit a little too close to home?

Alain de Botton Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion Murdoch likes to support religious causes (Catholicism) and candidates (Rick Santorum) but he's pretty comfortable delving into a book tailored to atheists. "Just read Religion for Atheists," he tweeted earlier this month. "Great writing, thoughtful, disturbing...Highly recommend." The book is advertised as a guidebook for atheists on how to "look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, get more out of art, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and much more."

David Shenk The Genius in All of Us A book with a rather uplifting premise, Shenk's tome rejects the "long-standing notion of genetic 'giftedness,' and presents dazzling new scientific research showing how greatness is in the reach of every individual." Murdoch hasn't finished reading it but it sounds like he's skeptical of mankind's universal potential. "Just starting on much acclaimed 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk. Hard to reconcile with all these tweets, including mine!"

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”