What Book Are You Reading?

[Wolfbane]

[joshnich]

Nothing quite as impressive .... American Heiress by Jeffery Toubin 

 

a pretty good read...especially for those who lived on n the Bay Area at that time!

[oldtimer]

Just started a Baldacci pot boiler.  The Guilty.

[jimjimbo]

This is what you get with grandkids of 6, 5, 3, and 1.5...

 

 

[HDBRbuilder]

Finished Captain Cool! this past weekend and currently on last chapter of Stand in the Door!.  Both are great reads!  Both are also first editions in great shape and very difficult to find (Especially Captain Cool!)....i.e., COSTLY!

[Wolfbane]

11 hours ago, jimjimbo said:

This is what you get with grandkids of 6, 5, 3, and 1.5...

 

 

This is on my reading list here to:

 

 

Meets the criteria. Especially if you are doing bed time duty. 

[Rivervalleymgb]

Strategy : A History by Lawrence Freedman

In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment - subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends - provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point. A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

[Travis In Austin]

On 11/14/2016 at 11:24 AM, Wolfbane said:

Awesome book, I love his stuff.

 

He did take a bit if a hit on The History of the English Speaking Peoples, but he has a way of making things so interesting, at least to me.

[Travis In Austin]

Embarrassed to say I am taking a short break from the serious stuff and doing a little light reading, but I like his stuff.

[Wolfbane]

27 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

Awesome book, I love his stuff.

 

He did take a bit if a hit on The History of the English Speaking Peoples, but he has a way of making things so interesting, at least to me.

 

Roberts was pretty brutal with his comments in Chapter 24 'Trapped' which recounted the Invasion of Russia. He quotes Field Marshal Montgomery as saying 'Rule one on page one of the book of war, is "Do not march on Moscow."

 

Montgomery was certainly no Bonaparte.

[HDBRbuilder]

9 hours ago, Wolfbane said:

Montgomery was certainly no Bonaparte.

In TOTAL agreement on this!  Montgomery was overly ambitious, overly cautious, self-aggrandizing, and tended to fight a war of attrition..."The British will fight to the very last Canadian, Kiwi, Aussie, Indian, etc."  He was directly responsible for the demise of the British Airborne with the Polish Airborne Brigade in Operation Market Garden, because he failed to adhere to METT-T in its planning...he failed to take into account the difficulty of the armor avenue of advance, he failed to take into account last minute intelligence reports prior to the operation, and he failed to take into account the loss of surprise for the follow-on Airborne drops....among other things he failed to do.  It was HIS operation, he was responsible for the failures.  If not for overwhelming superiority in numbers, every operation he ever ran would have been a failure.

[oldtimer]

Agreed.  Monty was a complete ***.

[tigerwoodKhorns]

I just finished Red Notice, a true story of an American investor in Russia who had Russia's oligarchs basically steal everything that they invested and torture and kill the attorney that stayed behind after the investors all had to flee the country.  Great story and real insight into how Putin works. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-Justice/dp/1476755744

 

 

[Rivervalleymgb]

I have just started One Second After about an EMPLOYEE strike on the US.

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[Rivervalleymgb]

That was supposed to be EMP

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[Zen Traveler]

[Rivervalleymgb]

I listen to audible books due to the amount of driving I do. Judy likes action thrillers, so we listen to a lot of those. We are on the last book in the Mitch Rapp series written by Vince Flynn.  A "superman" operative that does the impossible. The interesting take on his books are the self-serving profiles of Washington politicians. Our next series will probably be the Jack REacher series of books having thoroughly enjoyed the first book a couple of months ago. 

[Rivervalleymgb]

Another set of audio books I have enjyed over the years are the "Great Courses" series written by professors and consisting of a series of lectures on specific topics.

[Chris A]

I never read just one book at a time.  Two-to-three is an average.  Reading takes valuable time and isn't something that I invest in lightly.  (Fiction--for me--makes me feel that I'm wasting my time.)  Why not read something that's actually useful?  I've taken heat from my colleagues over the years for this view.

 

I've spent some time on this recently:

 

 

Diamond is quite deceptive (in an insightful way).  When you read his stuff it looks like window wash.  It's not.  Slow down and consider what he's saying and you'll start to realize the real value of what you're reading.  Guns, Germs and Steel, and The Third Chimpanzee have stuck in my head like an earworm.  These books fundamentally changed my perceptions of who we are (i.e., the human race, in general).   They've affected my basic views of human cultures and of history itself.

 

What I'm now reading (small bits at a time):

 

 

This one is interestingly on-topic for a loudspeaker web forum (), and while the author perhaps has issues with breath of the imagination and general lack of experience with horn-loaded loudspeakers...nevertheless the book should make you do double takes on what you consider to be good audio.  I imagine that if you're the type of person that reads "audiophile magazines", this book will help you to forever stop wasting your time on them--similar to the effect that Floyd Toole's book on loudspeakers has.

 

Chris

[Zen Traveler]

1 hour ago, Chris A said:

Reading takes valuable time and isn't something that I invest in lightly.  (Fiction--for me--makes me feel that I'm wasting my time.)  Why not read something that's actually useful?

I agree completely with this statement! Then again, my wife reads for relaxation and takes a different view--At least she lets me enjoy my music upstairs at night while she quietly reads on the couch downstairs as we both unwind....I read in the morning while enjoying my first couple cups of coffee.