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"Let's steal an election."
At least, that's how Nate Ford would say it. After the events of Red Seas Under Red Skies, Locke Lamora is dying from a unique alchemaic poison. The only cure comes with a heavy price, a job for the fearsome Bondsmages of Karthain, managing the election for their pet city. And to make things interesting, running the other side is Sabetha, Gentleman Bastard and the love of Locke's life. Expect high stakes, secrets to be revealed, and things to catch fire.
As usual, the story is balanced between the heist and the past, with Locke growing of age and staging his first caper as a travelling theater company. The plotting is a little more languid than the other books, but the characterizations is deeper. Locke and Sabetha have a really toxic love: passion, respect, and hidden knives all mixed up into a poisonous brew, and it somehow rings true to me. Real love is messy, real love is downright toxic sometimes, and Lynch is exactly right about the kinds of trouble clever boys can get themselves into putting exceptional women on pedestals. He also has some useful and hard earned wisdom about treating women, as you know, people, and listening to them. I tend to view almost any description of Sabetha from Locke's perspective as unreliable as all hell, but it comes out as realistic and satisfying in the end.
The Republic of Thieves is a fine step up from Red Seas Under Red Skies and has me waiting for the next installment.
At least, that's how Nate Ford would say it. After the events of Red Seas Under Red Skies, Locke Lamora is dying from a unique alchemaic poison. The only cure comes with a heavy price, a job for the fearsome Bondsmages of Karthain, managing the election for their pet city. And to make things interesting, running the other side is Sabetha, Gentleman Bastard and the love of Locke's life. Expect high stakes, secrets to be revealed, and things to catch fire.
As usual, the story is balanced between the heist and the past, with Locke growing of age and staging his first caper as a travelling theater company. The plotting is a little more languid than the other books, but the characterizations is deeper. Locke and Sabetha have a really toxic love: passion, respect, and hidden knives all mixed up into a poisonous brew, and it somehow rings true to me. Real love is messy, real love is downright toxic sometimes, and Lynch is exactly right about the kinds of trouble clever boys can get themselves into putting exceptional women on pedestals. He also has some useful and hard earned wisdom about treating women, as you know, people, and listening to them. I tend to view almost any description of Sabetha from Locke's perspective as unreliable as all hell, but it comes out as realistic and satisfying in the end.
The Republic of Thieves is a fine step up from Red Seas Under Red Skies and has me waiting for the next installment.
Acceptance to grad school should come with a copy of this book.
Single boils down the massive undertaking of the dissertation into a simple process that applies to both the humanities and social sciences. Pre-write effectively by taking interactive and citable notes, along with a strong skeleton of an outline. Stay on task by writing a little every day, and staying engaged with the problem so you don't need to cognitive warm back up. Stay enthusiastic by tracking progress, figuring out how research matters early on, and encouraging success. There's also good advice on picking committee members who'll help you succeed, and running writing groups of related students. Some of the thoughts on how to edit documents are a little old-fashioned, but not the idea that you have to find something that works for you.
One foot in front of the other, a few hundred words a day, and even the tallest mountain can be climbed.
Single boils down the massive undertaking of the dissertation into a simple process that applies to both the humanities and social sciences. Pre-write effectively by taking interactive and citable notes, along with a strong skeleton of an outline. Stay on task by writing a little every day, and staying engaged with the problem so you don't need to cognitive warm back up. Stay enthusiastic by tracking progress, figuring out how research matters early on, and encouraging success. There's also good advice on picking committee members who'll help you succeed, and running writing groups of related students. Some of the thoughts on how to edit documents are a little old-fashioned, but not the idea that you have to find something that works for you.
One foot in front of the other, a few hundred words a day, and even the tallest mountain can be climbed.
Probably the best scifi anthology I've read this year, and that includes Hieroglyph and War Stories. Bruce Sterling and MIT team up to put together a collection of hot short fiction. Where it's on, it's really on, and the stories open with strong offerings from Lauren Beukes (Zoo City), Christopher Brown, and Pat Cadigan. Even the misses are solid stories in their own right.
Since this is the MIT Technology Review, it's interesting to see what hot and what's out. Drones and the Internet of Things are very in; likewise biotech, hacking, and using biotech to hack the human condition. Nation-states are out, intelligence agencies are in. Big money is still here, Horatio Alger is dead in an unmarked grave. Sharp, spooky, and insightful, these are the scifi stories you should be reading this year.
Since this is the MIT Technology Review, it's interesting to see what hot and what's out. Drones and the Internet of Things are very in; likewise biotech, hacking, and using biotech to hack the human condition. Nation-states are out, intelligence agencies are in. Big money is still here, Horatio Alger is dead in an unmarked grave. Sharp, spooky, and insightful, these are the scifi stories you should be reading this year.
I Am Legend starts with two premises: Vampires are real, and Richard Neville is the last man left alive in a world of the undead. A classic of horror and science-fiction, with movies adaptations starring Charleton Heston and Will Smith, it doesn't live up to its reputation.
The first problem is with the horror. Maybe Neville's anguish at the death of the world was hot stuff in 1954, but the atmosphere hasn't aged well. I strongly hold to the theory that the undead map onto political ideologies, and vampires are about Conservative fears of exotic foreigners seducing and corrupting our virginal national bodily fluids (Liberal fear zombies--first being forced to turn against other individuals for survival and then becoming part of a horde of mindless consumers). The creatures of I Am Legend lack the seduction of the true vampire or the relentless pressure of the zombie horde. Neville is basically Robinson Crusoe, scavenging the suburbs for things to fortify his home.
The second problem is the science-fiction. "Evil spirits from hell" doesn't serve to explain why there are undead monsters anywhere, and I Am Legend invents a bacteria that gives all the classic traits of vampirism (drinking blood, fear of sunlight, garlic, religious iconography), but without much depth to it. Compared to say, Stross's The Rhesus Chart there's no science.
The one thing that does work is the final sting, on the meaning of the phrase "I am legend." There's some absurdity on spoilers for a 60 year old book with two movie adaptations, but the impact would be diminished if I talked about it. That's the only reason this gets three stars instead of two.
The first problem is with the horror. Maybe Neville's anguish at the death of the world was hot stuff in 1954, but the atmosphere hasn't aged well. I strongly hold to the theory that the undead map onto political ideologies, and vampires are about Conservative fears of exotic foreigners seducing and corrupting our virginal national bodily fluids (Liberal fear zombies--first being forced to turn against other individuals for survival and then becoming part of a horde of mindless consumers). The creatures of I Am Legend lack the seduction of the true vampire or the relentless pressure of the zombie horde. Neville is basically Robinson Crusoe, scavenging the suburbs for things to fortify his home.
The second problem is the science-fiction. "Evil spirits from hell" doesn't serve to explain why there are undead monsters anywhere, and I Am Legend invents a bacteria that gives all the classic traits of vampirism (drinking blood, fear of sunlight, garlic, religious iconography), but without much depth to it. Compared to say, Stross's The Rhesus Chart there's no science.
The one thing that does work is the final sting, on the meaning of the phrase "I am legend." There's some absurdity on spoilers for a 60 year old book with two movie adaptations, but the impact would be diminished if I talked about it. That's the only reason this gets three stars instead of two.
Figes creates a sweeping political history of the Crimean War, drawing on his expertise in Russian history to do more than retell the standard myths. He places the war as a sort of tectonic event in the Eastern Question-the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the various actions of European powers to take advantage of that decay. For decades prior to the war, Russia had kept Turkey in what I can only describe as an abusive relationship-giving passports to Orthodox Ottoman subjects, carving off chunks of territory, and the like. Turkey played to the western powers, France and England, to counter Russian aggression, until finally in 1853 Tsar Nicolas pulled the trigger on the invasion. The politics are adeptly handled, and Figes has a real feeling for the pro and anti-war positions in each country.
However, as a military history, this book is distinctly weaker. Figes livens up the battles with plenty of firsthand accounts, including the immortal Tolstoy, but provides little insight into the minds of the commanders or soldiers. This is mostly what I wanted, since Crimea is in my opinion the stupidest war in history. The Charge of the Light Brigade barely begins to cover it: the Allies conducted TWO amphibious invasions without bothering to scout out the beaches first. In fact, scouting and intelligence seemed entirely absent from both sides of the war. The critical question, "Why invade Crimea at all? Why besiege Sevastopol at immense cost?" Is glossed over with a nod towards having sailed an army to Turkey and lost thousands of men to cholera, the Allies had to Do Something or lose the respect of their troops and the public. It may suffice to say that the commanders on both sides were amateurs, idiots, drunks, and on their deathbeds (all true), but it doesn't explain how they made so many godawful decisions.
In the end, after close to a million casualties on all sides, the system worked. Diplomacy prevented a wider war. France gained the most prestige. Britain many exemplars of the rising bourgeois morality. Russia lost some territory but also had a chance for half-hearted reforms. The Ottoman Empire got some breathing space and mostly used it to return to the status quo ante. Austria lost the most, despite avoiding the fighting, as its historic alliance with Russia was broken, and they had no allies to stop the rise of Germany and Italy from Austrian territory. The Eastern Question, Serbia, and Pan-Slavism remained unresolved, paving the way for World War 1 and the modern world.
And as an aside, what with current events circa 2014 and the Russian Annexation of Crimea, you might want to read more into this book than is warranted. All I can say is that there is a long long history of Westerners treating Russians as "savages and barbarians" and misreading Russian intentions. That said, do not underestimate the extent to which Sevastopol is holy ground to a certain type of pan-Slavic mystic.
However, as a military history, this book is distinctly weaker. Figes livens up the battles with plenty of firsthand accounts, including the immortal Tolstoy, but provides little insight into the minds of the commanders or soldiers. This is mostly what I wanted, since Crimea is in my opinion the stupidest war in history. The Charge of the Light Brigade barely begins to cover it: the Allies conducted TWO amphibious invasions without bothering to scout out the beaches first. In fact, scouting and intelligence seemed entirely absent from both sides of the war. The critical question, "Why invade Crimea at all? Why besiege Sevastopol at immense cost?" Is glossed over with a nod towards having sailed an army to Turkey and lost thousands of men to cholera, the Allies had to Do Something or lose the respect of their troops and the public. It may suffice to say that the commanders on both sides were amateurs, idiots, drunks, and on their deathbeds (all true), but it doesn't explain how they made so many godawful decisions.
In the end, after close to a million casualties on all sides, the system worked. Diplomacy prevented a wider war. France gained the most prestige. Britain many exemplars of the rising bourgeois morality. Russia lost some territory but also had a chance for half-hearted reforms. The Ottoman Empire got some breathing space and mostly used it to return to the status quo ante. Austria lost the most, despite avoiding the fighting, as its historic alliance with Russia was broken, and they had no allies to stop the rise of Germany and Italy from Austrian territory. The Eastern Question, Serbia, and Pan-Slavism remained unresolved, paving the way for World War 1 and the modern world.
And as an aside, what with current events circa 2014 and the Russian Annexation of Crimea, you might want to read more into this book than is warranted. All I can say is that there is a long long history of Westerners treating Russians as "savages and barbarians" and misreading Russian intentions. That said, do not underestimate the extent to which Sevastopol is holy ground to a certain type of pan-Slavic mystic.
Ray Bradbury is an odd duck. Claimed by science fiction on the eternal strength of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, his heart was always with another genre entirely: a nameless thing that I can best approximate as 'weird stories' or perhaps 'slipstream.' Bradbury is obsessed with that liminal moment where the mundane becomes the supernatural, where ordinary life touches some transcending strangeness. This anthology is his collection of writers working in that field--primarily mid-century Americans, spiced with major names like Kafka, Steinbeck, E.B. White and Roald Dahl.
As with most anthologies, the quality of the stories is a little uneven, ranging from quite good to trite and forgettable. There's a kind of genteel shabbiness to the book (perhaps amplified by my rather battered nth-hand copy), with the general tone being mordant rather than macabre. One thing that strikes me, based on my other reading, is in some ways the richness of the literary scene. There weird tales come from dozens of sources, with grand old New Yorker leading the charge. To think a 'serious magazine' would publish strange fiction!
As with most anthologies, the quality of the stories is a little uneven, ranging from quite good to trite and forgettable. There's a kind of genteel shabbiness to the book (perhaps amplified by my rather battered nth-hand copy), with the general tone being mordant rather than macabre. One thing that strikes me, based on my other reading, is in some ways the richness of the literary scene. There weird tales come from dozens of sources, with grand old New Yorker leading the charge. To think a 'serious magazine' would publish strange fiction!
Ocean's 11 meets fantasy adventure. On the plus side, heists, heists, heists! and some moments of truly funny sardonic wit.
On the minus side is, well, everything else about the book manages average. The characters are nicely differentiated in ability, but two-dimensional (except for the villain, who is occasionally delightfully ambitious and evil). There's lot of action and combat, but not much sense of physicality. Magic is plentiful and the setting unique, except that it's still just "magic as technology in not-America" (with so many damn crystals). It's not a bad book, and it's not like this a genre with a lot of options, but I feel like this could be tighter and more imaginative.
On the minus side is, well, everything else about the book manages average. The characters are nicely differentiated in ability, but two-dimensional (except for the villain, who is occasionally delightfully ambitious and evil). There's lot of action and combat, but not much sense of physicality. Magic is plentiful and the setting unique, except that it's still just "magic as technology in not-America" (with so many damn crystals). It's not a bad book, and it's not like this a genre with a lot of options, but I feel like this could be tighter and more imaginative.
Engineers of Victory is an immensely frustrating book. Brilliantly conceived and written by an author who is obviously a talent, it nonetheless fails to address to its thesis or contribute to scholarship.
Kennedy's thesis is that WW2 was won in those critical months between the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 and early 1944. More specifically, it was won by "Organizers", men at the middle levels of the military, government, and vital industries who invented new weapons systems, sent them into the field, and used them to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. He takes as his case studies the Battle of the Atlantic, strategic bombing in Europe, the rollback of Blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front, the amphibious assaults in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, and the logistical and naval victory in the Pacific. There's nothing to argue with there: Clearly something did happen between the dark days of the early war and the triumphant conquests of 1945, and looking at the causal factors as a matter of organization, rather than the psychology of great men (FDR, Eisenhower, and Churchill. Always Churchill) or the superiority of a certain weapon over a comparable model (M4 Sherman vs Panther vs T-34, Go!) is an neat take. After all, it's like Napoleon (supposedly) said: "Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics" (and procurement, and maintenance, and training...).
All the pieces of a really interesting story are there, but Kennedy fails to connect them, or even bring in his anonymous organizers. For a book that alleges to valorize the unsung heroes in the middle, it mentions shockingly few of them. For example, the Battle of the Atlantic would be a great place to talk about Alfred Loomis of the MIT Radiation Laboratory and centimeter radar, or Patrick Blackett's work on operational research in anti-air and anti-sub warfare, along with strategic bombing. Blackett gets one mention in the context of the Casablanca Conference (Roosevelt and Churchill again), and the MIT Radiation Lab isn't mentioned at all.
Omission of vital details are constant. It seems like wherever there's a chance to dive deeply into a topic, and the men and women who organized the Allied victory, the book bounces off and away into a digression of something that we've heard 100 times before on a History Channel documentary. This is a popular book and I don't expect heavy theory, but a passing mention of the literature on organization or innovation would be nice, or perhaps positing this book as a vindication of Robert Merton's sociology of science, and its position that only liberal democracies could take full advantage of science and technology. I'm not even an expert on WW2, and I feel like I could put together a more insightful book on the subject talking about radar-assisted naval gunfire, logistics in distant theaters, and special operations missions as starting points, and then blending in some STS and strategic theory. I expect a history of this caliber to offer a deep dive into new material, or a broad synthesis of exist evidence in favor of some novel insight, or at least to satisfactorily meet its thesis, and Engineers of Victory does none of that. It's downright embarrassing.
Kennedy's thesis is that WW2 was won in those critical months between the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 and early 1944. More specifically, it was won by "Organizers", men at the middle levels of the military, government, and vital industries who invented new weapons systems, sent them into the field, and used them to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. He takes as his case studies the Battle of the Atlantic, strategic bombing in Europe, the rollback of Blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front, the amphibious assaults in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, and the logistical and naval victory in the Pacific. There's nothing to argue with there: Clearly something did happen between the dark days of the early war and the triumphant conquests of 1945, and looking at the causal factors as a matter of organization, rather than the psychology of great men (FDR, Eisenhower, and Churchill. Always Churchill) or the superiority of a certain weapon over a comparable model (M4 Sherman vs Panther vs T-34, Go!) is an neat take. After all, it's like Napoleon (supposedly) said: "Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics" (and procurement, and maintenance, and training...).
All the pieces of a really interesting story are there, but Kennedy fails to connect them, or even bring in his anonymous organizers. For a book that alleges to valorize the unsung heroes in the middle, it mentions shockingly few of them. For example, the Battle of the Atlantic would be a great place to talk about Alfred Loomis of the MIT Radiation Laboratory and centimeter radar, or Patrick Blackett's work on operational research in anti-air and anti-sub warfare, along with strategic bombing. Blackett gets one mention in the context of the Casablanca Conference (Roosevelt and Churchill again), and the MIT Radiation Lab isn't mentioned at all.
Omission of vital details are constant. It seems like wherever there's a chance to dive deeply into a topic, and the men and women who organized the Allied victory, the book bounces off and away into a digression of something that we've heard 100 times before on a History Channel documentary. This is a popular book and I don't expect heavy theory, but a passing mention of the literature on organization or innovation would be nice, or perhaps positing this book as a vindication of Robert Merton's sociology of science, and its position that only liberal democracies could take full advantage of science and technology. I'm not even an expert on WW2, and I feel like I could put together a more insightful book on the subject talking about radar-assisted naval gunfire, logistics in distant theaters, and special operations missions as starting points, and then blending in some STS and strategic theory. I expect a history of this caliber to offer a deep dive into new material, or a broad synthesis of exist evidence in favor of some novel insight, or at least to satisfactorily meet its thesis, and Engineers of Victory does none of that. It's downright embarrassing.
The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974
Donald E. Welzenbach, Gregory W. Pedlow, Cia History Office
Exactly what it says on the title, this is the comprehensive and official account of the CIA's U-2 and OXCART projects, including technological, organizational, political, and operational. All the things you'd expect to be in are there: Kelly Johnson being a boss, the Gary Powers Shootdown, Coffin Corner. I particularly enjoyed plans for prototypes A-1 through A-11, and the various insane schemes considered in trying to get a radar invisible plan up to 70,000 feet and mach 3.
Only downside is that the writing is a little dry, and a lot of the photos in my FOIA copy are blurry messes. That said, if you enjoy reading government reports about aerospace projects, this is a good one.
Only downside is that the writing is a little dry, and a lot of the photos in my FOIA copy are blurry messes. That said, if you enjoy reading government reports about aerospace projects, this is a good one.
Nothing in life is easy for some people. Miles Vorkosigan is back from the dead, but he has a tendency towards seizures in stressful moments, which leads to him nearly botching a rescue mission, falsifying logs to cover up his medical problems, and getting cashiered on Barrayar. It may be the perfect time, because the legendary chief of Imperial Security, Simon Illyan, has come down with a brain disease which is destroying his memory and sanity, and only Miles has the necessary guile to find out out who is trying to decapitate Barrayar. What follows is a mole hunt that John le Carre could be proud off, interspersed with Miles' ruminations on identity and purpose. This book feels a lot more grounded than Mirror Dance and Brothers in Arms, and it feels like Miles has made a definite positive bend in his character arc, but the book as a whole is transition. It'll be interesting to see what happens next.