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

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

Tweets of the Week

I’m starting to filter these so they’re not so long, and hopefully of more value to you.

Rosa Brooks ‏@brooks_rosa :  A Drone of One’s Own – By Rosa Brooks | Foreign Policy http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/21/a_drone_of_ones_own#.UUuYTV2p-Sc.twitter …

 J. Scott Shipman ‏@jscottshipman :  Thus far; excellent: Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King http://www.amazon.com/dp/0142000159/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_HbYsrb007PG0M …

Text Message Retention Policies http://bit.ly/15x1aTC

What a novel concept: What’s Missing from the Iraq Debate? Iraqis – By Marc Lynch http://atfp.co/YIN7q0

*headdesk* x 100 : Are Urban Explorers Really a Threat to Our National Security? http://bit.ly/YIMWuT

When Technology Overtakes Security http://bit.ly/ZzZDLK

Global Cities of the Super-Rich http://bit.ly/ZAWefG

Booming Asian Cities Are Tugging The World’s Center of Light East http://bit.ly/Y0aqQr

Ebay style feedback could secure military networks http://bit.ly/ZefEDL

Rachel Held Evans ‏@rachelheldevans :  Christianity Today Gleanings: International Justice Mission Wins ‘Landmark’ Sex Trafficking Conviction in India http://buff.ly/ZLzys6

Calestous Juma ‏@calestous :  Global Evolution of Biomanufacturing http://bit.ly/10iNpsi

Small Wars Journal ‏@smallwars :  The Trajectory of Intelligence Practice from DESERT SHIELD to IRAQI FREEDOM to Today http://bit.ly/YpHxcQ  #Iraq #Intelligence

On Modern-Day Slavery: Today We’ve Disappeared by April Yamasaki http://feedly.com/k/XpULGi

Daniel Solomon ‏@Dan_E_Solo :  All politics are local, gendered edition: what role for women in northern #Mali’s insurgency? http://bit.ly/YFL3z1 . (via @sahelblog)

After the Aircraft Carrier: 3 Alternatives to the Navy’s Vulnerable Flattops http://bit.ly/YVOUet

5 Trends That Will Drive The Future of Technology http://bit.ly/Y4cTvm

Three wars that will define America’s future: Silicon, Iron, and Shadow – By David W. Barno http://atfp.co/15ZYu2Z

Tyrannicide and the Lost Republic http://bit.ly/ZsL4cP via @zenpundit

Pitt professor lands $3.4M NIH grant for wearable artificial lung http://bit.ly/WE3rg8

FinSpy surveillance software package: http://bit.ly/15YL732

A consumer’s guide to 3D printers: See:… http://bit.ly/Y0ed2o

Summary article on the state-sponsored Gauss malware: Gauss http://bit.ly/11eYDAy

China’s BGI to Sequence 2,200 Geniuses In Search For “Smart” Genes http://bit.ly/XWYEX9

Marissa Mayer and Einheit:   Desperate measures http://bit.ly/109rYK8

China replaces Britain in world’s top five arms exporters: report http://reut.rs/ZC2qTC  via @reuters

10 Years After the Iraq War, How Has Baghdad Changed? http://bit.ly/116BzjM

This is VERY cool:  Turning a Persian Rug Into a City http://bit.ly/YkzYqU

How Many Steps Do You Really Look Ahead?  http://bit.ly/YNngjW

To COIN or Not? – An FP Roundtable http://atfp.co/115qVcR

Argo http://bit.ly/11a77ZG  @zenpundit gives it a thumbs up.

Potential drought resilience strategies for the Horn of Africa http://bit.ly/WRwcY2

Everyday Leaks From Sewer Systems Lead to Alarming Amounts of Sewage in Our Waterways http://bit.ly/Wy89Mo

Lessons in Self-Defense for Women, From Tahrir Square http://bit.ly/134LTOc

Big Data and You http://bit.ly/ZDWBoH

Ummm…YES!  Should We Set Up Drone Guidelines? http://bit.ly/Wy56Ea

Guess who’s coming to dinner…Bruno Maisonnier: Dancing, tiny robots! http://bit.ly/WufigW

Scary stuff:  How Drones Can Live off the Land for Years http://bit.ly/WufcpF

Biomedicine Update: Progress on the AIDS/HIV Front http://bit.ly/YkJg3d

The Rise of the Cossacks Amidst Russia’s Decline http://bit.ly/ZKsA5i

Agriculture and Husbandry: The Slow-Motion Singularity http://bit.ly/ZKrma0

Washington “Cancels” Fourth Stage of European Phased Adaptive Approach http://bit.ly/ZAKAjP

Science of Digital Fabrication – Materials and Mechanisms: 3D Printing http://bit.ly/XQgg6I 

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

Down the Rabbit Hole: International Security and Gender

“…through understanding and placing notions of gender at the centre of any debate on security we unleash a series of interlocking understandings of the way people of either sex relate to fear, violence, insecurity, violence, and the institutions of war and peace.”

 

–Caroline Kennedy-Pipes, “Gender and Security”

Source: Contemporary Security Studies, 2nd edn, by Alan Collins, Oxford University Press, NY, NY, 2010

 

 

I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole with this one.  Dr. Megan MacKenzie and I had a discussion on Twitter about women in combat (I wrote a blog post here) and for years, I interacted with Kelly Smith, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, who is a feminist.

 

Now you have to understand where I’m coming from – I’m a white, male, Christian, conservative.  You can probably guess that I know little of feminism and what I do know, I generally don’t agree with.  Yes, yes, women are equal to men and have the same rights, of course I believe that.  It’s the more, shall we say, liberal aspects that I tend to disagree with.

 

Anyway, having recently finished Contemporary Security Studies, I find that my knowledge of philosophy is woefully lacking for understanding the various schools of thought (constructivism, post-marxism, neoliberalism, etc.).  In particular, the Copenhagen School seems to be very influential these days and so I’ve gone back and started reading to try to fill the gaps in my knowledge.  Reading Dr. MacKenzie (see the first chapter of her book, Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone) introduced me to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as well as feminist theory – and believe me, it never occurred to me that feminist theory would have ANYTHING at all to do with the subject – I mean, I grew up on Rambo and (the original) Red Dawn under Reagan.

 

Also, I went to Seminary many moons ago, and briefly had my face rubbed in Feminist Theology, but I bailed – I wasn’t ready, and I freely admit it – to engage the subject.

 

Now I am, and so into the exploration of gender and security and theology and technology and how they relate to feminism I go.  Half of the world is female, and many female scholars working in International Relations and Security have studied these concepts, so I think it’s worth it to at least understand it, even if I don’t agree with it.  I’m starting with Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender.  I’ll keep you posted…

Books I’m reading

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife by John Nagl

I’m filling in a gap by reading this book.  It’s referred to in a half-dozen counterinsurgency books and on of course on COIN blogs as well.  I’ve read Kilcullen and other’s, and I figured it’s about time to read Nagl’s book too.  It’s interesting, reading it from the perspective of the course of events in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is the paperback edition from 2005, and Nagl does have a foreword written that notes some of the lessons he learned serving in Iraq and where he got it wrong and right in the book.

 

Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture by Elizabeth Henderson and Robyn Van En

Traditionally security is evaluated from the vantage point of military force, and maybe less often economics.  Two areas that I’ve been reading lately are financial security (which is different from economic, and which I’ll touch on later) and food security.  My family joined a CSA this year, and it’s opened my eyes to the problems with our food system in the United States – everything from long supply lines to the health of our people, things that directly impact our security.

I’ll dig more into all three of these topics in future posts.

My Books Read in the Last Year

I read quite a bit last year, with an emphasis on linguistics, Counterinsurgency, complexity, and mathematics.  Fiction, as always was scattered throughout the year.  Lots of good links below; I encourage you to check them out, along with the reviews I did of several of them…

January
1) Your Child’s Growing Mind: A Guide to Learning and Brain Development from Birth to Adolescence – Jane M. Healey, Ph.D
2) Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple) – Jeffrey Kluger
3) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
4) A New Kind of Science – Stephen Wolfram
5) Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power – Robert D. Kaplan
6) The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity – Richard Florida (My review here)
7) Language: The Big Picture – Peter Sharpe (my review here)
8) Understanding Physics: Volume 1: Motion, Sound, and Heat (Understanding Physics) – Isaac Asimov
9) Seven Firefights in Vietnam – John A. Cash, et al.  (My review here)

February
10) Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages – Guy Deutscher (My review here)
11) Chaos Theory Tamed – Garnett P. Williams
12) Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity – John Gribbin (My review here)
13) The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa: With E. D. Swinton’s “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift” – Michael Burgoyne and Albert Marckwardt (My review here)
14) The Age of the Unthinkable , Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It – Joshua Cooper Ramo
15) The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) – Graham Greene
16) Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq – Patrick Cockburn
17) Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life – Len Fisher
18) Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language – Seth Lerer (My review here)
19) Migration: Species Imperative #2 – Julie Czerneda
20) Euler’s Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology – David S. Richeson
21) Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means – Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (My review here)
22) Chicago Blues – Edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann

March
23) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Dan Pink
24) The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why – Richard E. Nisbett
25) Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey From NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer – Mireya Mayor (My review here)
26) A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines – Anthony Bourdain
27) Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World – Liaquat Ahamed (My review here)
28) Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions – Lisa Randall
29) The Mother Tongue – English And How It Got That Way – Bill Bryson
30) Raising Musical Kids: A Guide for Parents – Robert A. Cutietta

April
31) Thought Contagion – Aaron Lynch (My review here)
32) Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia 2) – C.S. Lewis
33) Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market Edition) – Duncan J. Watts
35) The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention – Guy Deutscher
36) Hardwired – Walter Jon Williams
37) The Next Decade: Where We’ve Been . . . and Where We’re Going – George Friedman

May
38) Almost Human: Making Robots Think – Lee Gutkind
39) Understanding Physics: Volume 2: Light, Magnetism and Electricity – Isaac Asimov
40) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) – Robert B. Cialdini
41) Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do – Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
42) The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon) – Daniel Silva
43) Pittsburgh Noir (Akashic Noir) – Edited by Kathleen George
44) Freedom (TM) – Daniel Suarez
45) Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots – Gareth Branwyn
46) The Traveler (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 1) – John Twelve Hawks
47) Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back – Douglas Rushkoff
48) Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource – Peter Rogers and Susan Leal
49) Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants – Dennis Okholm

June
50) Counterinsurgency – David Kilcullen
51) Hunter’s Run – George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, Daniel Abraham
52) The Killing Ground (Sean Dillon) – Jack Higgins
53) One Shot (Jack Reacher, No. 9) – Lee Child
54) The Hard Way (Jack Reacher, No. 10) – Lee Child
55) Why Things Break: Understanding the World By the Way It Comes Apart – Mark E. Eberhart

July
56) Earth Strike: Star Carrier: Book One – Ian Douglas
57) Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the Peloponnese – Robert D. Kaplan
58) The Post-American World: Release 2.0 – Fareed Zakaria
59) Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer – Novella Carpenter
60) The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization – Bryan Ward-Perkins
61) The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century – Thomas X. Hammes
62) Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved – Robin Wilson
63) How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel – Piers Bizony
64) The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives – David Bainbridge
65) The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World – Peter Schwartz

August
66) The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine – Francis S. Collins
67) The Scar – China Mieville
68) The Profession: A Thriller – Steven Pressfield (My review here)
69) Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature – Marcus du Sautoy
70) The Five Chinese Brothers (Paperstar) – Claire Hutchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese
71) Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America – Matt Taibbi
72) How to Talk to Your Child About Sex: It’s Best to Start Early, but It’s Never Too Late — A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents – Linda and Richard Eyre
73) The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris – David McCullough
74) Havoc – Jack DuBrul
75) Sundiver (The Uplift Saga, Book 1) – David Brin
76) Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy – Steven Metz

September
77) The Rest of the Robots – Isaac Asimov
78) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things – William McDonough and Michael Braungart
79) 7th Sigma – Steven Gould
80) 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need to Know – Tony Crilly
81) The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life – Thomas W. Malone
82) Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier – Edward Glaeser
83) Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself – Dan Pink

October
84) The Future of Management – Gary Hamel with Bill Breen
85) 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith – Sonia Arrison
86) The Riemann Hypothesis: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics – Karl Sabbagh
87) Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (Great Discoveries) – David Foster Wallace
88) The Final Warning (Maximum Ride, Book 4) – James Patterson
89) Re-read Where Eagles Dare – Alistair MacLean
90) The Caryatids – Bruce Sterling

November
91) Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality – Jonathan Weiner
92) Mathematical Mysteries: The Beauty and Magic of Numbers (Helix Books) – Calvin C. Clawson
93) The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity – Amir D. Aczel
94) Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes – Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
95) Reamde: A Novel – Neal Stephenson
96) The Poincare Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe – Donal O’Shea

December
97) Euclid’s Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace – Leonard Mlodinow
98) Millennium Problems – Keith Devlin
99) The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
100) Godel’s Proof (Revised Edition) – Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman
101) Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon #8) – Daniel Silva
102) The Bourne Legacy – Eric van Lustbader
103) Beautiful Outlaw: Experiencing the Playful, Disruptive, Extravagant Personality of Jesus – John Eldredge
104) Count Down: The Race for Beautiful Solutions at the International Mathematical Olympiad – Steve Olson
105) The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets – Alan Boss

Review – Pink Boots and a Machete by Mireya Mayor

I recently finished reading Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey From NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer by Mireya Mayor. What does that have to do with International Security or Strategic Foresight, you ask? Well, consider this:

* 184 species of mammals, 182 species of birds, 162 species of fish, and 1,276 species of plants are critically endangered.
* Between 1990 and 2000, 3 million hectares of forests were cleared in Africa, Latin America, and the Carribean.

(Source: Contemporary Security Studies, 2nd edn, by Alan Collins, Oxford University Press, NY, NY, 2010)

Dr. Mayor is a Cuban-American whose mother escaped from Castro’s Cuba. With that kind of a pedigree, it’s no surprise that she grew up to become an explorer. But she never forgot her feminine side either – frilly dresses and time as a cheerleader for Miami (the Dolphins – Egad. We all have skeletons in our closet, eh?). But even as a child she loved to explore the outdoors, from crabs on beaches to bugs under the bed.

Mireya went on her first expedition to Guyana with a Hello Kitty backpack and pink boots. And a little black dress in her backpack…”just in case.” Her next trip was to Madagascar, where she investigated lemurs. As time went on, she ended up working for National Geographic, discovered a previously unknown primate, and earned a Ph. D. In one of the best chapters in the book, she describes what it was like to deal with three strong-willed men on a Jon Burnett (of Survivor fame) production (Expedition: Africa) that required her and the men to retrace Stanley’s footsteps across Africa to the place he found Dr. Livingstone. She was instrumental in the trip, and wasn’t just along to provide scenery but instead was a key member of the team.

And that is the best thing about the book. She talks about how hard it is to be taken seriously as a pretty face in the science field. She never slides into the trap of hiding her womanhood. She works hard and forces people to accept her for her skills and knowledge. She pushes through adversity and shows true grit. But she also still packs that little black dress…just in case. So in addition to the travelogue and the scientific thrills, she records the human side of her life, which helps you to see the real person she is.

In the last chapter of the book, Mireya talks about marriage and parenting. I was torn on this one. She has two daughters she doesn’t see for months at a time. She notes that she wouldn’t be a whole person if she had to give up exploring and that her daughters wouldn’t get her best if she wasn’t a whole person. Maybe. Although, their father is with them, so it’s not like they’re alone. But what is important is that they’ll learn how important it is to do something you love, how hard work can help to get you there, and finally, how important it is to be yourself. They may even learn an intriguing use for the stuffing in a tampon!

Nowadays, Dr. Mayor is active in conservation efforts. I hear a lot of rhetoric on both sides about this issue. But as I noted above, environmental security will be an issue in the Twenty-First Century, as China and India gear up their industrial production, as everyone continues the race for resources, and as third world countries try to raise their standards of living. Now, more than ever, it’s important to make sure that our children will still have wild places to see – and maybe, occasionally, a new species to discover!

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It’s an easy read, and never boring. Since budget limitations precluded maps in the book, I would suggest having an atlas nearby, especially for the locations on Madagascar (and if you don’t know where THAT is, you REALLY need the atlas!). I also hope Dr. Mayor will write other books in the future, such as on the primates of that island, or maybe on conservation efforts around the globe.

You can follow Dr. Mayor on Twitter – she’s pretty quick to respond! – at @mireyamayor
She also has a facebook page for both herself and the book
Finally, her official site is right here.