What Book Are You Reading? Issue.8

[Dachs]

Hahaha, I've been using the Fifth Edition to write quizbowl TUs and boni.

Semi-related: sixty-five dollars for an invaluable book on Central Asian history...aaargh...

 

[Babbler]

I also read The Epic of New York City, a history of New York City from Verrazano's voyage to the city to the election of Lindsay as mayor (the book was published in the 1960's). Interesting if uneven at times.

 

[Rashiminos]

I found a paperback version of Trilaterals Over Washington as I was cleaning my room recently, and I decided to read Chapter 10 and assess if there's a relation to recent history circa December 2007.

Or it's more conspiratorial fluff.

 

[Phrossack]

A History of Warfare, by John Keegan. The title is misleading; it's really more about proving Clausewitz wrong.

 

[Dachs]

A History of Warfare, by John Keegan. The title is misleading; it's really more about proving Clausewitz wrong.

aka "misreading Clausewitz"?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Finished The Hunt for Red October last night.

Now beginning Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station, a history of revolutions and socialist thought from the French Revolution to the Russian one.

 

[EvilConqueror]

I started Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon a few days ago. I'm not really enjoying it.

 

[downtown]

A biography of one of my literary heroes, Mike Royko.

 

[Phrossack]

aka "misreading Clausewitz"?

Yeah, even though Keegan points out that Clausewitz actually said that war is the continuation of political intercourse with the intermixing of other means, Keegan goes on to argue that war is not the continuation of policy by other means.

 

[Dachs]

Generally the reading of that particular statement is used to justify political control over the military apparatus, so we don't get ridiculous crap like Ludendorff being the virtual dictator of Germany in the last years of the First World War and subordinating the country to winning the war. The army is supposed to be a tool of the government, not vice versa.

 

[Phrossack]

Exactly, which is what Keegan is saying.

 

[Imperialmajesty]

I'm reading Titan by Stephan Baxter and Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Exactly, which is what Keegan is saying.

...And thus his argument is with people who misread von Clausewitz, not with von Clausewitz himself.

 

[Cutlass]

White Witch, Black Curse. Kim Harrison.

 

[GoodGame]

I'm still reading The Secret Life of Germs, but I've started How to Learn Anything Quickly by Ricki Linksman. It's basically a pragmatic application of right brain/left brain and kinesthetic/visual/auditory/tactile education philosophies. Problem I have with it is it takes such as holy truth and doesn't explain any of the science behind it.

 

[musekick]

The Glass Castle- Jeannette Walls.

 

[El_Machinae]

Picked up the big picture book "Vanishing Animals", because I thought it was beautiful.
My Side of the Mountain was my favourite childhood book, and I finally bought a copy as an adult.
I picked up Math Doesn't Suck for my daughter.

And I've read another chapter of Collapse in the last two months.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

Has anyone read 'The Singularity is Near' by Ray Kurzweil? I picked it up today, though I haven't started reading it yet.

Recently I've read Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond, I re-read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and I started Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I'm also listening to an audiobook of Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (not a good idea to start this one while you're half asleep commuting to work).

 

[El_Machinae]

I've read it. I didn't really like his thesis. He seems to think that there's a drive towards intelligence, naturally. I don't really buy it. I also have serious doubts about the viability of his escalating returns: at least at the scale he presents it.

Right now we're geometrically increasing the number of scientists, and this can explain the current tech-curve. Eventually we're going to be slowing the rate at which new educated innovators are added to the pool, as 6 billion people modernise. As well, the amount of time it requires to become a contributor to scientific knowledge continues to increase.

I like his snapshots of technology. Kurzweil has also done two TEDtalks.

 

[Simon Darkshade]

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, as well as flicking through My Role in Germany's Triumph by Dr. Goebbels.