Young World Rising fits neatly into the genre of Thomas Friedman-esque kool-aid. Salkowitz combines some good observations on global demographics, technology, and business to describe a scenario in which the Millennial generation in the 3rd World uses information technology to found a thousand new businesses catering to the 'bottom of the pyramid', bringing about a global transformation of wealth. On the one hand, he makes some good points, and the reporting of Asia and African business is very interesting. On the other hand, his model ascribes nearly saintly qualities to the Net Generation, and makes entrepreneurship seem far easier than it actually is. How much more room is there for more IT-enabled, socially savvy, networked business-cum-development agencies?

This is one of those books that defines academic, an immense collection of chapters from distinguished scholars on a big topic. The theme of the book is systems innovation, what it takes to be innovative on a national scale. Unfortunately, this book is extremely dense and very broad. If you're new to the field, you'll almost certainly be confused to inaction. If you're a practitioner, you probably know everything in it already. One chapter warns against "theories of innovation become so complex that they are impossible for policymakers to understand or implement." Indeed.

Freeman and Lourca present an overview of technological progress, a process they describe through Kondratiev Waves, repeating cycles of economic development based on some fundamental technology and its offshoots. From water power and iron in Britain, to the modern computer revolution, these fundamental technologies have drastically reshaped economies. "As Time Goes By" explores five Kondratiev Waves, as well as the history of cliometric. While a little dated, this is still an essential book for anyone interested in the history of innovation.

James Blish is one of those secondary light of Golden Age sci-fi, perennial outshone by the likes of Heinlein and Asimov. Not quite deep or enjoyable enough to make it as a Grand Old Man, not outre enough to become a cult favorite or member of the New Wave, he wrote workmanlike enough-like stories. The ones in this collection range from the truly sublime (A Work of Art, Surface Tension), to the eminently forgettable, to the plain bad. The two stories mentioned are worth reading, but they'be been anthologized in better collections

This book is pretty good for what it is, a history of the computer written in 1988. The best sections of the book center around early mainframes, with minicomputers given a less thorough treatment, and microcomputers (modern PCs) barely being mentioned at all. Flamm does a good job distinguishing the role of national innovation systems, although the Japanese were probably under-represented. An interesting history for the computer inclined.

RPG books are still books, right?

Wraith Recon is a fantasy setting focused on magitech equipped commandos in a setting heading into another world war. While it's an interesting premise, and one very close to the game I'm running right now, Wraith Recon doesn't go very deep into its ostensible topic. Most of the game is taken up describing a rather generic setting, where 4 out of 4 'primitive cultures' settle disputes by fighting to the death. The final chapter on military adventures is okay, but the sample adventure is literally Apocalypse Now, which I love, but I'd have prefer to see something more unique.

There's a space, I think, for Fantasy Adventurers meet Tom Clancy technothriller. We'd need to know how magic works, and how it has altered medieval tactics. We'd have to see how small units can play a role on a battlefield traditionally decided by mass attacks. And we'd have to have a better idea of how the chain of command works with PC cussedness. Wraith Recon doesn't give us that.

Breeding Contempt is probably one of the most comprehensive monographs on America's long, dark experiment with coercive sterilization. Largent traces the idea from its origins from haphazard attempts by doctors to improve the public welfare by eliminating moral and sexual deviants, to its Progressive-era heyday as the cutting edge frontier of applied biological science (and the nexus of power and knowledge that is always created by applied science), and its legal and social challenges and decline through the 50s and 60s.

The even-handed and symmetric history is the strongest part of the book. Largent does not draw clear boundaries between medical/scientific/legal interventions, and between sterilization for punitive, eugenic, and therapeutic purposes, rather exposing as much of State's intervention on human bodies as possible. However, two major issues are raised, and not fully resolved: the popular dismantling of the eugenics movement by linking it to the Nazis as a project carried out by scholars and not ordinary Americans, as is the standard history, and the recent return of sterilization for pedophiles, in the form of chemical castration. On the whole, however, this is a fascinating, detailed, very readable, and (mercifully) short scholarly work.

#3 in the linear foot of Vietnam War. "Raising the Stakes" covers the period between the downfall of the Deim regime starting in 1962, and the deployment of the Marines in 1965. While raising the stakes gives a good overview of the period, as always, this is one of the most studied periods of the war, because it was the last real chance to avoid the full-blown quagmire that the war became. What I mean by this is that there are probably specialty books that cover the most interesting parts of this period: "Dereliction of Duty" for the view from DC, "A Bright Shining Lie" for the Battle of Ap Bac and the downfall of Diem, and military histories for the air war and special forces.

What this book covers in detail are the immediate post-Diem chaos, with coup after coup (normally just glossed over until Ky and Thieu in many books), the failures of the Diem regime, and the various special forces units. However, I would have preferred a tighter focus on Diem, or the policy-makers in DC who set the war on it's course.

I read this book to try and gain insight into the mentality of submariners; men who would willingly enter steel tubes which might flood, implode, or fill with poison gas, even without enemy intervention. Or barring that, at least some insight into tactics, strategy, and technology. Ultimately, I was disappointed. Not that this is a bad book, but it's a series of after-action reports liberally sprinkled with exclamation points. I can't tell you anything more about submariners except that they require luck, courage, and nerves. The submarine sequences in Cyptonomicon were far more interesting.

Well, not every book can be amazing.