In this book, Laws introduces a way of analyzing texts as a series of 'beats', mostly procedural or dramatic, which serve either to increase or resolve tension and danger for the protagonists. While this is supposedly a guide for GMing, the advice is rather scanty: alternate upbeats and downbeats, procedural and dramatic moments, and follow a long slide of downs with a triumphant up. The majority of the book (80%+) is a very detailed beat by beat summary of Hamlet, Dr No, and Casablanca.

The subtitle of this book says "The complete social history of LSD: the CIA, the sixties, and beyond." In a nutshell, this is an entirely accurate summary. Lee and Shlain trace the strange journey of LSD from an experimental military chemical, to a psychiatric wonderdrug, to a driving forces of the 60s counter-culture, and possibly its demise. This book is more journalistic than academic, but it is deeply sourced and informed. The authors are pro-psychedelic but fully recognize the limits of chemical enlightenment, and how the flashbulb cosmic glow of LSD inspired a revolution that blossomed in the headlines but failed to hold the streets. The 60s were a trip, but all trips end. Especially those helped along by agent provocateurs of the CIA and FBI.

At least we can still dream of better world, some times.

Simply an amazing game. Fiasco emulates the kinds of movies where hapless people engage in criminal misadventures that invariable hilariously and tragically fall apart with elegance and grace. The system is a paragon of rules-light mechanics, avoiding task resolution nearly entirely in favor of getting the group to generate a fascinating and bizarre cast of characters, and having them stumble towards catastrophe. Both readable and playable, Fiasco is on of the best indie RPGs I've played.

Before he was a beloved children's author, Dr Seuss was a political cartoon. Those are words to inspire terror, because we all no that there is no such thing as A Good Cartoon, and that in the infinite parade of Lesters, McCoys, Asays, and Ramirezes, There is Always More and it is Always Worse. Thank the almighty Bors that Seuss remains Seussian, even when dealing with various serious subjects like Hitler and WW2.

Really, there is nothing as delightfully Suessian as Hitler's dachsund powered war machine stalling in the Russian winter, or Benito Mussolini as a propped up, battered, relic addressing an empty square. Seuss goes after fascists overseas and at home, excoriating isolationists like Charles Limbaugh for abandoning the world to monsters, while at the same time demanding an all-out effort to win the war, by bringing Labor and African Americans into the war effort. The only sour note are the depictions of the Japanese. It's a shame that a man could produce a cartoon about driving out the bug of racial prejudice one week, and then show the Japanese as slant-eyed monkey devils the next. But that's why history is history. An essential book for adult lovers of Dr Seuss, political cartoon aficionados, and WW2 buffs.

This is the definitive history of the psychology of the atom, from the discovery of radium to Fukushima. Weart shows how nuclear science has since its inception blended together various hopes and fears, taking on various aspects of a universal narrative that could be summarized as "the scientist/alchemist unlocks immense secrets to build utopia, but due to his human flaws winds up corrupting nature and destroying himself instead." The concrete realities of the atomic bomb and the nuclear power industry provided an anchor for these fears, and other more primal fears.

This book is at its best discussing the psychology of the scientific aspirations of the 1920s and 30s, and the ways that public opinion swirling around changing nuclear developments from 1945-1980. For example, 'duck and cover' is commonly regarded as a grim joke, but it would have offered reasonable protection against the early 10-25 kilotonne atomic bombs. Only with megatonne+ fusion city busters did the 'winnable' nuclear war become truly insane.

Conversely, Weart is weak on the facts. Not necessarily wrong, I'm moderately well-read on Cold War nuclear strategy, and nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and there wasn't anything that seemed out of place, but these complex topics are covered in only the most cursory ways. There's nothing to let you decide if, for example, there were in fact proper safeguards against an accidental nuclear exchange (we came too close several times), or if the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a better oversight agency than Japan's TEPCO.

One thing that may rub some people the wrong way is Weart's general pro-nuclear stance. He is of the opinion that nuclear power is the safest form of electricity generation, and certainly far safer than coal, and that most of the fears over the health risks of radiation are overblown compared to both natural background radiation and other toxins in the environment. I agree with him, but a committed anti-nuclear activist is probably going to throw the book aside. Weart attempts to build a bridge between the pro-nuclear technocratic community, and various anti-nuclear factions of environmentalists, libertarians, and pacifists, but he is definitely standing on one side.

I'll freely confess to being an armchair warrior, but this is one of the best books I've read on counter-insurgency: clear, detailed, exciting in parts, and with no jargon. Tinquier has unassailable experience, as the commander of a 20,000 strong Montagnard army in French Indochina, and then later some of the most effective French airborne forces in Algeria. True, France lost both those wars, but defeats are profound learning experiences.

Trinquier explains how insurgencies develop from a small political-military core into mass movements capable of bringing down governments, how they aim to outlast their conventional foes, and how they can be defeated. He argues that the guerrillas are the most expendable part of the organization, and that defeating them is irrelevant. The logistical core of the movement is the true target, and finding it requires building a complete civilian intelligence service, that links everybody to their house and social position (household, hamlet, village, district, etc), and then to a system that gathers human intelligence and funnels it to the military police. As a first step, Trinquier suggests locating and arresting the rebel tax collectors, since they must have contact with the population and are inevitably unpopular. Then, the enemy network can be tracked, located, and rolled up.

His attitude is brutally realistic. Fans of a 'clean wars' will be disturbed by his advocacy of torture ("The terrorist expects to be tortured in the same way the infantryman expects to be machine-gunned, or the aviator shot at by flak." to paraphrase), and the use of scorched earth tactics against insurgent base areas. On the other hand, he also puts protection of the population at the center of the strategy, and makes legitimate government a cornerstone of a successful campaign.

Absolutely vital for anybody interested in guerrilla warfare