Books I read in 2016

Last year was my lowest year in ten years for amount of books read.  To be honest, I was working through textbooks and FreeCodeCamp learning to code, which took away from my reading time.  Still, there were a lot of interesting books on this year’s list!

January

1.) 4th Generation Warfare Handbook – William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele

2.) The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom – Candida Moss

 

February

3.) Robopocalypse: A Novel (Robopocalypse #1) – Daniel H. Wilson

4.) Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft – by Elizabeth Bear and Greg Bear et al.

5.) Algebra: Sets, Symbols, and the Language of Thought (The History of Mathematics) Revised Edition – John Tabak, Ph.D.

 

March

6.) Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure – Andreas Kluth

7.) White Needle: 5 (Shadow Squadron #5) – Carl Bowen

8.) Phantom Sun: 6 (Shadow Squadron #6) – Carl Bowen

9.) Uncertainty in Games (Playful Thinking series) – Greg Costikyan

10.) The Magician’s Nephew (Narnia Chronicles) – C. S. Lewis

11.) Gorilla Mindset – Mike Cernovich

12.) Foundation’s Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy #1) – Gregory Benford

 

April

13.) Law: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #180) – Raymond Wacks

14.) Sociology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #12) – Steve Bruce

 

May

15.) The Circle – Dave Eggers

16.) Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War – P. W. Singer and August Cole

 

June

16.) Will I Ever Be Free of You?: How to Navigate a High-Conflict Divorce from a Narcissist and Heal Your Family – Karyl McBride, Ph.D.

17.) The Cartel Hit (Mack Bolan the Executioner #438) – Mike Linaker, Don Pendleton (Series Creator)

18.) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport

19.) The Tournament – Matthew Reilly

20.) Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again – Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko

21.) Scarecrow Returns – Matthew Reilly

22.) Progression – Sebastian Marshall

 

July

23.) Abyss Deep (Star Corpsman #2) – by Ian Douglas

24.) Express in Action: Node Applications with Express and Its Companion Tools – Evan Hahn

25.) Your Many Faces: The First Step to Being Loved – Virginia Satir

26.) Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Conrad Barski and Chris Wilmer

27.) Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money – Nathaniel Popper

 

August

28.) Star Wars: The Rise of the Empire – John Jackson Miller et al.

29.) Re-read GIS for Dummies – Michael N. DeMers

30.) The Blood of Gods (Emperor #5) –  Conn Iggulden

 

September

31.) Battlefront: Twilight Company (Star Wars canon) –  Alexander Freed

 

October

32.) Head First Mobile Web – Lyza Danger Gardner and Jason Grigsby

33.) The Water Knife – Paolo Bacigalupi

 

November

34.) Public Health 101: Healthy People – Healthy Populations – Richard Riegelman, Brenda Kirkwood

35.) Soil: Digging into Earth’s Vital Resource (Exploring Science: Earth Science) – Darlene R. Stille

36.) Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism – Stephen Graham

37.) Planet of Slums – Mike Davis

38.) Proxima – Stephen Baxter

 

December

39.) There Will Be War Volume X – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

40.) JavaScript: The Good Parts – Douglas Crockford

41.) Smashing Node.js: JavaScript Everywhere 2nd Edition – Guillermo Rauch

42.) Foundation and Chaos (Second Foundation Trilogy #2) – Greg Bear

MilSats: Land Rover Does Technicals

Now THIS is what you call a technical!!

MilSats: Afghan Nat’l Army Technicals

A Technical is, per Wikipedia, ” light improvised fighting vehicles, typically a civilian or military non-combat vehicle, modified to provide an offensive capability similar to a military gun truck. It is usually an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle mounting a machine gun, light anti-aircraft gun, anti-tank weapon, or other support weapon.”

DELARAM, Afghanistan–Afghan National Army soldiers conduct a patrol in western Afghanistan. (ANA photo by Sergeant Fathe Noori)

MilSats – May Day and the Russians

Monday is May Day and the Russians will hold their traditional parade in Red Square – which, by the way, is not so named because of communism. Here is a picture of some Spetsnaz (Russian Special Ops soldiers) in the snow.

In the course of the surprise combat readiness inspection units of the separate Airborne Spacial Task Force brigade is providing tactical assault and blocking the Severomorsk-3 airfield (Severomorsk, Murmansk region)

MilSats – Insert by Chopper

Happy Military Saturday, everyone!  See you Monday!

Who needs a parachute, anyway? @31stMEU trains in helicopter insertion off the coast of Okinawa.

Books I Read in 2015

I’m a little late on this one – Usually I put it up in January, but never late than never!

It seems like I read less this year than in previous years, but a lot of what I was doing was working through coding exercises.  Also, we moved in the middle of the year, and a whole lot of bad stuff happened too.  At one point I was working two jobs.  So, life happening plus less time to read combined with working through coding textbooks meant this year was anemic when it came to books.  Still, I hope you find some value in the list below. There are books on history, international affairs, religion, mathematics, epidemiology, and of course, many fiction books.

January

1.) An Introduction to Sets, Groups, and Matrices – Alexander Balfour

2.) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic – David Quammet

3.) Vengeance (Rogue Warrior #12) – Richard Marcinko

4.) On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003 – 2009 – William S. Lind

5.) Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life – John Miller and Scott Page

6.) Man 2.0: Unlock the Secret to Burn Fat Faster, Build More Muscle, Have Better Sex, and Become the Best Version of Yourself – John Romaniello and Adam Bornstein

February

7.) Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician – Anthony Everitt

8.) The Aden Effect: A Connor Stark Novel – Claude Berube

9.)  GIS for Dummies – Michael N. DeMers

10.) Follow That Map! A First Book of Mapping Skills – Scot Ritchie

11.) There Will Be War Volume 1 (Castalia House ebook version) – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

12.) Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks – Ken Jennings

13.) With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North – Carol Reardon

14.) Blowback (Vanessa Pierson #1) – Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett

15.) Men of War: There Will Be War Volume II (Castalia House ebook version) – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

16.) The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate – Scott D. Sagan & Kenneth N. Waltz

17.) The Art of War: A History of Military Strategy (Castalia House ebook version) – Martin van Creveld

March

18.)  When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself – Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

19.)  El Borak and Other Desert Adventures – Robert E. Howard

20.)  Javascript: A Beginner’s Guide (4th Edn) – John Pollock

21.) There Will Be War: Volume III Blood and Iron (Castalia House ebook version) – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

22.) WordPress 24-Hour Trainer (with DVD ROM) – George Plumley

23.) GIS: A Visual Approach – Bruce E. Davis

April

24.) The Killing Ground (Sean Dillon #14) – Jack Higgins

25.) Rough Justice (Sean Dillon #15) – Jack Higgins

26.) Five Marks of a Methodist: The Fruit of a Living Faith – Steve Harper

27.) A Darker Place (Sean Dillon #16) – Jack Higgins

May

28.) Wesley for Armchair Theologians – William J. Abraham

29.) The Wolf at the Door (Sean Dillon #17) – Jack Higgins

30.) Cities of Tomorrow and the City to Come: A Theology of Urban Life – Noah J. Toly

31.) Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate – Rose George

June

32.) Full Force and Effect (Jack Ryan #10) – Mark Greaney (Tom Clancy)

33.) How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus – Larry W. Hurtado

July

34.) There Will Be War Volume IV: Day of the Tyrant  (Castalia House ebook version) – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

35.) Why Homer Matters – Adam Nicolson

36.) How to Cook Like a Man: A Memoir of Cookbook Obsession – Daniel Duane

37.) Immanuel’s Veins (Books of History Chronicles) – Ted Dekker

38.) Saint (Books of History Chronicles: Paradise) – Ted Dekker

39.) Founders (The Coming Collapse) – James Wesley, Rawles

40.) Warlords, Inc.: Black Markets, Broken States, and the Rise of the Warlord Entrepreneur – Edited by Noah Radford and Andrew Trabulsi

August

41.) Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically – Beth Felker Jones

42.) The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Future of Christianity Trilogy) 3rd Edition – Philip Jenkins

September

43.) How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem – Rod Dreher

October

44. The Martian – Andy Weir

November

45.) Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt #19) – Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler

December

45.) 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) – Eric H. Cline

46.) Finding Zero – Amir D. Aczel

47.) Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure – Cedric Villani

48.) End of the Earth: Voyaging to Antarctica – Peter Matthiessen

Busy Week & Currently Reading

Things have been hectic this week and so I haven’t had a chance to write a proper post.  But I promised myself that I would put up a post each week, so here it is.

This week I’ve been reading N.T. Wright, who I’ve seen referenced as the greatest living theologian – book Simply Christian.  I have a summary Aquinas did of his Summa Theologica and several books on St. Francis to read also.

I’ve also been working my way through Java data structures; it’s interesting to see how much more I can understand things with that background.  Tree searches, for example, are a key component in Artificial Intelligence.  I have six chapters in this book, which is more of an introduction; then, I have books dedicated to data structures and algorithms to work through.

I’ve also been keeping up on my reading in international affairs.  I just got a book from the library on counterinsurgency called Hearts and Minds: A People’s History of Counterinsurgency.  I also have been going through a survey book on strategy and I have Louis Freedman’s Strategy: A History waiting for me as well.

So lots of work and reading; tonight, though, is date night at the symphony and Mozart!

A Change in Direction? Or Picking One?

I have struggled with this blog over the years.  In order to have a really good blog, you need a focus area, and I didn’t really have one.  I started just blogging general stuff about my life here in Pittsburgh, did some fiction, then switched to book reviews.  Lately, it’s been pretty much lists of books I have read.

 

I did the reviews as part of my being associated with the Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.  I would love to blog on International Security, but there are already so many good bloggers in that space (that’s not even half of them) and I didn’t feel I had anything to add.  Coming from an engineering background, I also suffer from a lack of credentials.

 

In any case, my friend has been blogging about her experiences in training her horse (and herself) for international dressage and eventing competitions.  It’s giving me the itch to blog again.

 

But that brings me right back to the first point – what to blog about?

 

Lately I’ve been working on picking up an associate’s degree in software development (to add to my already over-degreed self with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and my MBA).  I’m doing this to make myself more employable, but also because…it interests me and I enjoy it.

 

I recently read David Kilcullen’s book Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla.  It’s a fascinating book.  Kilcullen basically notes that the future will be urban, coastal, and networked.  Urbanization continues apace with more than half of the world’s population living in cities, and most of those cities on the coasts.  With technology – especially mobile phones – more and more of them are becoming connected.  This has huge implications for the future – and Kilcullen notes the effect it will have on warfare.  We got a taste of this in Somalia back in the 90s (See: Black Hawk Down) and with the raid on Mumbai in the 00s.

 

So what, you ask, does that have to do with computer programming?  Well, the short answer is, Smart Cities and Big Data.  And the long answer will have to wait for the next blog post…

 

My Books Read in the Last Year

Another year, another book list.  I read less book this year than last, but over two thousand more pages!  Here’s the list:

January

1.) Jesus Through Middle-Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels – Kenneth E. Bailey

2.) Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

3.) Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy – Colin S. Gray

4.) Debt: The First 5000 Years – Peter Graeber

5.) Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat – Hans Christian von Baeyer

6.) What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure – Julie Ellis

7.) Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography – Hew Strachan

8.) Tanks in the Cities: Breaking the Mold – Kendall D. Gott

February

9.) The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World – David Berlinski

10.) The New Science of Strong Materials: or Why You Don’t Fall Through the Floor – J. E. Gordon
11.) Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy – Daniel Altman

12.) Nature’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos – Peter M. Hoffmann

March

13.) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality – Eliezer Yudkowsky

14.) The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters – Rose George

15.) A Magic Broken – Vox Day (Novella)

16.) What Language Is (And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be) – John McWhorter

17.) Shadow of the Hegemon (Ender Wiggin Saga) – Orson Scott Card

18.) Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology – Rosemary Radford Ruether

19.) Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale – Ian Morgan Cron

20.) Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation – Elaine Pagels

21.) The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work – W. Daniel Hillis

April

22.) The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses – C. S. Lewis

23.) Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English – John McWhorter

24.) The Last Stand of Fox Company – Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

25.) The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate – Robert D. Kaplan

26.) The Faith and the Power: The Inspiring Story of the First Christians and How They Survived the Madness of Rome – James D. Snyder

27.) Liberation Theologies: The Global Pursuit of Justice – Alfred T. Hennelly, S.J.

28.) Human Security in a Borderless World – Derek S. Reveron and Kathleen A. Mahoney-Norris

29.) Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos – M. Mitchell Waldrop

30.) The Lessons of St. Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality into Your Daily Life – John Michael Talbot

31.) The Mathematics of Life – Ian Stewart

May

32.) The Artist and the Mathematician: The story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician who never existed – Amir D. Aczel

33.) Blue Remembered Earth (Poseidon’s Children #1) – Alastair Reynolds

34.) The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines & Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy – Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

35.) Beyond Geometry: A New Mathematics of Space and Form – John Tabak

36.) The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood – James Gleick

37.) Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image – Toby Lester

38.) The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, The Making of a Navy SEAL – Eric Greitens

39.) Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler

40.) Worm: The First Digital World War – Mark Bowden

June

41.) African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design – Ron Eglash

42.) Schaum’s Easy Outlines Differential Equations – Richard Bronson

43.) Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation: An Introduction to Theory and History (8th Edn) – Joseph S. Nye, jr and David A. Welch

44.) Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

45.) Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War – Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

46.) How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth – Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart

47.) It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City Life for the (Not So) Simple Life) – Keith Stewart

July

48.) Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World – Christopher Steiner

49.) The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? – Jared Diamond

50.) Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence – Joseph J. Ellis

51.) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty – Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

52.) Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers (Revised and Expanded Edition) – Michael J. Gorman

53.) What the Numbers Say: A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World – Derrick Niederman and David Boyum

August

54.) Beginning Programming – Adrian and Kathie Kingsley-Hughes

55.) Sure Fire (Rich & Jade #1) – Jack Higgins with Justin Richards

56.) Just My Type: A Book About Fonts – Simon Garfield

57.) HTML: Your visual Blueprint(tm) for designing Web pages with HTML, CSS, and XHTML – Paul Whitehead, James H. Russell

58.) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information – Edward R. Tufte

59.) Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency – Col. Gian Gentile

60.) Head First HTML and CSS – Elisabeth Robson and Eric Freeman

61.) Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation – Parker J. Palmer

62.) The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right – Atul Gawande

September

63.) Star Wars: Scoundrels – Timothy Zahn

64.) Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation – Michael Pollan

65.) The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity – Steven Strogatz

66.) Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think – Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier

October

67.) The Tao of Programming – Geoffrey James

November

68.) The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 – R. M. Meluch

69.) Caliphate – Tom Kratman

70.) Kris Longknife: Mutineer (Kris Longknife #1) – Mike Shepherd

71.) Shadow Puppets (Ender’s Shadow series) – Orson Scott Card

72.) Starting Out With Visual Basic 2012 – Tony Gaddis and Kip Irvine

December

73.) Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live & Die for Bigger Things – Ken Wytsma with D. R. Jacobsen

74.) The City: A Global History – Joel Kotkin

75.) Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures – Tony Gaddis and Godfrey Muganda

76.) The Hunted: Tom Clancy’s Endwar #2 – David Michaels

77.) The Humanity of God – Karl Barth

78.) Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla – David Kilcullen

79.) Theology: A Very Short Introduction – David F. Ford

Books I Read in 2012

It’s that time of year again.  My reading was down a little this year due to the fact that I was working full time and reading some longer books.

January

 

1.) Christ Empowered Living: Celebrating Your Significance in God – Selwyn Hughes

2.) Regeneration (Species Imperative #3) – Julie Czerneda

3.) Chaos: A Graphic Guide (Introducing Series) – Zaiuddin Sardar and Iwona Abrams

4.) Catching Fire (The Hunger Games#2) – Suzanne Collins

5.) Astrobiology: A Brief Introduction – Kevin W. Plaxco and Michael Gross

6.) Thinking in Systems: A Primer – Donella H. Meadows

7.) Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3) – Suzanne Collins

8.) Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone – Lucas John Mix

9.) War – Sebastian Junger

 

February

 

10.) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C. S. Lewis

11.) The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy – Sasha Issenberg

12.) Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics – John Derbyshire

 

March

 

13.) Stuff: The Materials the World is Made Of – Ivan Amato

14.) Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design – Henry Petroski

15.) One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way – by Robert Maurer, Ph. D.

16.) Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration – Paul Gilster

17.) The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade – Pietra Rivoli

 

April

 

18.) Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking – Charles Siefe

19.) Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis – Lauren F. Winner

 

 

May

 

20.) The Silver Chair (Narnia) – C. S. Lewis

21) Caesar’s Legion:  The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar’s Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome – Stephen Dando-Collins

22) Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think – Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

23) The Detachment (A John Rain novel) – Barry Eisler

24) Fifty Shades of Grey – E. L. James

25) Fifty Shades Darker – E. L. James

26) Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next – Greg Lindsay and John D. Kasarda

 

June

 

27) Private Dancer – Stephen Leather

28) Fifty Shades Freed – E. L. James

29) Dubai Dreams: Inside the Kingdom of Bling – Raymond Barrett

30) A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy – Miyamoto Musashi

31) Dubai: Gilded Cage – Syed Ali

32) Amped – Daniel H. Wilson

 

July

 

33) China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa – Serge Michel, Michel Beuret, Paolo Woods

34) All Fall Down – Vern McGeorge

35) City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism – Jim Krane

36) Looking for trouble: Adventures in a Broken World – Ralph Peters

37) When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405-33 – Louise Levathes

38) Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration – Clint Willis, ed.

39) Night Without End – Alistair Maclean

 

August

 

40) Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil – John Ghazvinian

41) Birds of Prey: The Battle Within – Gail Simone et al (Comic Book Graphic Novel)

42) Filters Against Folly: How to Survive Despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent – Garrett Hardin

43) The Twelfth Imam – Joel C. Rosenberg

44) Batman: Battle for the Cowl – Tony S. Daniel et al (Comic Book Graphic Novel)

45) Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul –  Grant Morrison et al (Comic Book Graphic Novel)

46) Birds of Prey: Metropolis or Dust – Sean McKeever et al (Comic Book Graphic Novel)

47) Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil – Nicholas Shaxson

48) Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic & Spiritual Challenges in Time? – Joel C. Rosenberg

49) Knocking on Heaven’s Door:  How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World – Lisa Randall

 

 September

 

50) Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West – Tom Holland

51) The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love – Kristin Kimball

52) Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise – Michele Owens

53) Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success – By John R. Wooden et al.

54) Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Life – Joel C. Rosenberg

55) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food – by Barbara Kingsolver

 

October

 

56) Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future – Ian Morris

57) Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus – Robert D. Kaplan

58) Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens – Nicholas Shaxson

59) Fractions and Decimals Made Easy (Making Math Easy) (with Jacob) – Rebecca Wingard-Nelson

60) Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Prodigy (Robot City #4) – Arthur Byron Cover

61) Fraction Fun – (with Jacob) David A. Adler

62) The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization – Jonathan Lyons

63) Working With Fractions – (with Jacob) David A. Adler

64) Hopping On the Number Line (Little World Math Concepts) (with Jacob) – Nancy Allen

65) Estimation (A Young Math Book) (with Jacob) – Charles F. Linn

66) Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam – John A. Nagl

67) What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East – Bernard Lewis

 

November

 

68) Pump Six and Other Stories – Paolo Bacigalupi

69) The Great Divorce – C.S. LewiS

70) Philosophical Tales: Being an Alternative History Revealing the Characters, the Plots, and the Hidden Scenes That Make Up the True Story of Philosophy – Martin Cohen

71) Contemporary Security Studies, 2nd Edition – Allan Collins, editor

72) What Do Muslims Believe: The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam – Ziauddin Sardar

73) Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church – James K. A. Smith

74) Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books – Azar Nafisi

75) Engineering Systems: Meeting Human Needs in a Complex Technological World – Olivier L. de Weck, Daniel Roos, and Christopher L. Magee

76) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order – Steven Strogatz

77) Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson

78) Celtic Vision: Prayers, Blessings, Songs, and Invocations from the Gaelic Tradition – Esther de Waal (editor)

79) Five Golden Rules: Great Theories of 20th-Century Mathematics and Why They Matter – John L. Casti

 

December

 

80) Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire – Isaac Asimov

81) Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security and Post-Conflict Development – Megan H. MacKenzie

82) Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes – Charles Hartshorne

83) The Teeth of the Tiger – Tom Clancy

84) Exit Plan – Larry Bond

85) e: The Story of a Number – Eli Maor

86) Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic – Tom Holland