Second Life

One of TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 . One of LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025.

In the summer of 2020, when Amanda Hess was pregnant for the first time, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in her baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers online. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search unleashed a destabilizing onslaught of data and technology, and she was vulnerable - more than ever - to conspiracy, myth, judgement, commerce and obsession.

In Second Life, Hess tells her deeply personal story of a pregnancy that falls outside the feted category of 'normal'. But this is also a story about all of us. For as she made her way through a bizarre digital world of pregnancy apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender reveal videos, rare disease Facebook groups, 'freebirth' influencers and hospital reality shows, Hess realised that ideas of eugenics, surveillance, ableism and hyper-individualism are being sold through shiny technologies to a new generation of parents.

At once funny, surreal and heartbreaking, Second Life asks compelling questions about how our most fundamental human experiences are fractured and reshaped by technology.

About the Author

Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the New York Times. Her writing has received multiple awards including a National Magazine Award for Public Interest (for her Pacific Standard article about online harrassment of women), a Sidney Award for an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism, a Mirror Award for best traditional article on the media industry, and a Newswomen's Club Front Page Award for criticism.