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The Reading List

I've got links to four of the last few books I've read over on the sidebar, but this is a more comprehensive list - of all the books I've written about recently. Over time, I'll be pulling in links to all the books I've reviewed, either here or over on my Cincom blog - but that will take me a bit to unpack. The links go to the posts where I discussed the book in question; in the meantime, the more recent ones:

 

  • A Dance with Dragons - book five of the series, and winter has finally arrived - along with (at least to me) one very surprising death. Starts slow, but gets going by the middle.
  • Griftopia - a critical examination of the 2008 Financial crisis by Matt Taibbi. Unsparing, and worth reading if you're willing to have your pre-disposed political notions set on edge.
  • Spin - What if the world was going to end soon due to outside interference, and there was nothing you could do about it?  And then what if it didn't actually end?
  • Axis - What came after the world was going to end, and instead - horizons expanded immensely
  • A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire - an overview of the last 150 years of one of the longest lived empires in human history
  • Operation Mincemeat - the "truth is stranger than fiction" story of the WWII deception plan for the invasion of Sicily
  • Android's Dream - a hilarious sci-fi romp invcolving genetic engineering, technocratic religion, and interstellar diplomacy.  Highly recommended.
  • Armenian Golgotha - a first person account of the horror that was the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ittihad government of the Ottoman Empire
  • S*it My Dad Says - a hilarious tribute by Justin Halpern to his dad, via various things his dad has siad over the years. 
  • Innovation: Need of the Hour - a set of interviews and case studies with entrepeneurs, across many different industry sectors
  • The Accidental Time Machine - A lot like "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells, but with more of a rushed ending like "The Stand".  If you like Haldeman, good.  Otherwise, might be skippable.
  • The Return of the Great Depression - Vox Day's take on where things are headed in the economy. Short answer - he's not optimistic. Worth reading for a take you won't find in most mainstream economic reporting.
  • PowerHungry - Robert Bryce's survey of what we'll be doing for power over the next few decades. His take - it won't be the "renewables".
  • Counterstrike: The Last World War - The conclusion of the book just below.
  • The Last World War - a techno-thriller about an accidental interplanetary war - humanity gets involved in a war that's been going on on a different planet for generations due to the invention of wormhole technology on that planet
  • The Design of Design - a collection of essays from Fred Brooks, covering his life's work as a designer (across more than just hardware and software).  A quick read, accessible, and highly useful for software designers.
  • We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism - A pessimistic polemic on the state of politics and culture in the US in 2010
  • Sheridan's Lieutenants - A look at the last year of the (US) Civil War, focusing on Sheridan and his top commanders.
  • Chesapeake Bay in the Civil War - A look at the riverine war on the Chesapeake Bay during the (US) Civil War.
  • 2013: World War II - speculative fiction on a Chinese attempt at world domination
  • Red Inferno: 1945 - alternate history of the endgame of WWII
  • Freedom - wrapup from Daemon, a near future speculation on societal evolution
  • The Well of Lost Plots - The Third Thursday next novel, an enjoyable romp
  • Daemon - Speculative look at a near future of techno-libertarianism and the establishment reaction to it
  • A Feast for Crows - Book four of "A Song of Ice and Fire from George Martin
  • The Eyre Affair - Book one of the Thursday Next series
  • A Storm of Swords - Book 3 of "A Song of Ice and Fire" from George Martin
  • A Game of Thrones - Book 1 of "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George Martin
  • Eagles and Empire - Mexican-American War
  • Sway - How decisions, good and bad, are made
  • The Naked Quaker - Early Colonial New England via court records
  • The Last Days or Europe - A pessimistic take on Europe's future
  • Vickburg 1863 - the campaign for the Mississippi
  • Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West - Chris Caldwell looks at mass immigration in modern Europe
  • Free: The Future has a Radical Price - Chris Anderson looks at how business models are coping with the increasingly lower cost of electronically transmissable goods
  • The Collapse of Complex Societies - a historical comparison of how and why complex societies collapse, and what we can learn from them
  • Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea - a contemporary chronicle of the march to the sea, taken from letters, newspapers, and journals
  • The Long Surrender - a look at the endgame of the Confederacy
  • A War Like No Other - the long war between Athens and Sparta, and what lessons it might hold for us. Great book by Victor Davis Hanson
  • The Next 100 Years - A speculative look ahead at the next century for the US
  • The Stalin Archives - a short history of how Jonathan Brent got access to the formerly secret archives, and what kinds of things he discovered in them
  • The Paradox of Choice - a study on how increased choices makes us less happy, and more undecided
  • Spring Forward - a hilarious look at the history of dalight savings time
  • The Ascent of Money - Niall Ferguson traces the history of money
  • Crusade - the 1960's after an alternate WWII where the UK yielded and the nazis were defeated in the late 1940's by an overwhelming nuclear attack
  • Britannia - An alternate history of the civil war, where Britain gets involved in the US civil war after the brief diplomatic crisis of 1863 is not resolved. A trilogy, of which I've only read the first book.
  • American Lion - a biography of Andrew Jackson, a man with obvious faults, but likely a better President than the other men on offer at the time
  • Mammoth - an enjoyable enough yarn involving time travel and a DNA reconstruction of a Mammoth
  • Red Thunder - a fast paced book that spins a tale of an ad-hoc private mission to Mars with an ad-hoc crew
  • After Tamerlane - what became of central asia after the great era of vast horse empires peaked
  • No Simple Victory - Norman Davies points out that WWII w as more morally complex than we'd like to believe - the West allied with one devil (Stalin) to defeat another (Hitler) and acquiesced to decades of misery for eastern Europe after the war.
  • The Clash of Civilizations - the late Samuel Huntington's classic book on the current (and future) civilizational conflicts.
  • War of the World - Niall Ferguson's depressing, but engaging, look at the 20th century as a long, agonizing civil war within the West
  • The Contrarian Effect - How to increase sales by dropping the heavy handed approach. A short, pleasant business book.
  • The Zimmerman TelegramBarbara Tuchman explains things you probably didn't know about the Zimmerman Telegram and US entry into WWI - including the brilliant job of the UK's diplomatic service (at least from their perspective :) )
  • The Proud Tower - Barbara Tuchman's excellent review of the golden age of the West - the late 19th and early 20th centuries leading up to WWI
  • A Shattered Peace - David Andelman's in depth look at the disaster that was the Paris Peace conference of 1919.
  • Your Inner CEO - Allan Cox' personal coaching book, explaining how you can take charge of your own career
  • American Creation - Joseph Ellis explains the early history of the US, and shows that the early Republic faced the same kinds of "nothing gets done" issues with separation of powers that we see being discussed today.
  • The Discovery of France - Graham Robb's cultural and geographic history of France, which I found fascinating.
  • Beyond Booked Solid - business book, lays out a fairly obvious but nicely concise set of steps you should take to build out from "do it all yourself" to "have a real company"
  • American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln - Se an Wilentz' excellent backgrounder on the early Republic, ending at (and not covering) the civil war. Highly recommended.
  • A Magnificent Catastrophe - Larson's analysis of the divisive Jefferson/Adams campaign that led to the first power transition in US history. Excellent book
  • The Big Switch - Nick Carr's take on the coming cloud transition.
  • Days of the Frence Revolution - Hibbert's classic step by step history of the French Revolution - great read
  • Reflections on the Revolution in France - Edmund Burke's take on the Revolution in 1790, which was astoundingly prescient. The US and the UK could use Burke about now.
  • Empire Express< - the story of the trans-continental railroad project. Anyone who believes that industry/government corruption are at some kind of all time high should read this :)
  • The Great Partition - the tragic story of the India/Pakistan split whe n the British colonial era ended - and how it was largely botched by a Britain eager to "get out of dodge"
  • Osman's Dream - A history of the Ottoman Empire, covering the millenia during which it grew, thrived, and declined
  • The First Total War - Anyone who thinks that total war was invented in the 20th century doesn't know enough about the Napoleanic war s.
  • Brave New War - a scary book about the devolution of war from nation states down to empowered individuals
  • The Siege of Vienna - the high water mark of the Ottoman Empire, when they nearly took Vienna from the Hapsburgs
  • The Culture of Time - a light, enjoyable book about how people around the world view time
  • Blink - Malcolm Gladwell's look at how decisions are often made on far less than a considered evaluation
  • Space Wars - a techno thriller about a future war that takes out the US' spaced based sensors, making the military largely blind.
  • Ungrateful Daughters - The end of the Stuart dynasty, told from the perspective of Ann and Mary (through their personal correspondence)
  • 1491 - a journalist attempts to reconstruct pre-Columbian America based on contemporary accounts and archeological evidence - potentially uncovering what amounts to a lost world>
  • Future Hype - an antidote to the happy talk about "the singularity", with what I take to be a good level of cynicism
  • Storm of Steel - Ernst Junger's classic first person narrative of what WWI was like for the average soldier.