Scan barcode
gregbrown's reviews
336 reviews
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
5.0
Fantastic book on Robert Oppenheimer and all his contradictions.
Only tangentially touches on much of the technical and organizational detail of the Manhattan Project compared to Rhodes' masterpiece, but is a thoughtful exploration of how Oppenheimer built up the social organization of the mesa, weaving a strange mix of scientists together and keeping them isolated and oriented towards the shared goal of an atomic bomb.
Somewhat necessarily spends too much time futzing about who was a Communist Party member (or what that even meant) to little insight, but unavoidable to set up the pivotal role of the 1954 hearing. Ultimately, Oppenheimer's biggest and most tragic mistake was placing his faith in an evil country, one that gleefully snatched away his accomplishments to use for mass murder before eventually turning on him.
Only tangentially touches on much of the technical and organizational detail of the Manhattan Project compared to Rhodes' masterpiece, but is a thoughtful exploration of how Oppenheimer built up the social organization of the mesa, weaving a strange mix of scientists together and keeping them isolated and oriented towards the shared goal of an atomic bomb.
Somewhat necessarily spends too much time futzing about who was a Communist Party member (or what that even meant) to little insight, but unavoidable to set up the pivotal role of the 1954 hearing. Ultimately, Oppenheimer's biggest and most tragic mistake was placing his faith in an evil country, one that gleefully snatched away his accomplishments to use for mass murder before eventually turning on him.
Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness by Elizabeth D. Samet
More digestive than illuminating, Samet assembles a bric-a-brac of other author's takes that mostly make you wish you were reading those books instead.
I probably would have enjoyed this book if she stuck to a stronger or more centralized thesis, instead of meandering through postwar accounts, literature, and cinema to argue that WW2 and returning veterans affected them—no shit! So much of the book's actual meat is leaning on secondary sources making the same points, almost always with much more detail and real force. And the organization is just a disaster, feeling like she wanted to throw in every bit of research and personal interest that could be related to the book.
Just a very uneven reading experience, with small chunks where I was digging it between much larger stretches of hating the author.
I probably would have enjoyed this book if she stuck to a stronger or more centralized thesis, instead of meandering through postwar accounts, literature, and cinema to argue that WW2 and returning veterans affected them—no shit! So much of the book's actual meat is leaning on secondary sources making the same points, almost always with much more detail and real force. And the organization is just a disaster, feeling like she wanted to throw in every bit of research and personal interest that could be related to the book.
Just a very uneven reading experience, with small chunks where I was digging it between much larger stretches of hating the author.
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild
5.0
Excellent book on World War One that exceeded my expectations, chronicling not only the anti-war movement in Britain but also the shape of the war as a whole. Probably my favorite I've read on the conflict so far.
Hochschild does a great job focusing on both the individual interesting personalities in the movement—many with family vocally for the war—while drawing in the current events and larger context that drove them to keep escalating their opposition. He really captures the way media and society was mobilized to gin up energy to keep fighting, and ensure loyalty by soldiers and civilians despite the mounting horror that ensued.
There's a certain fated melancholy that pervades the book: we know they failed and we know the war ground on for four years, chewing up millions more lives than any expectations and leading directly to an even larger and deadlier conflict two decades later.
Hochschild does a great job focusing on both the individual interesting personalities in the movement—many with family vocally for the war—while drawing in the current events and larger context that drove them to keep escalating their opposition. He really captures the way media and society was mobilized to gin up energy to keep fighting, and ensure loyalty by soldiers and civilians despite the mounting horror that ensued.
There's a certain fated melancholy that pervades the book: we know they failed and we know the war ground on for four years, chewing up millions more lives than any expectations and leading directly to an even larger and deadlier conflict two decades later.
No Name in the Street by James Baldwin
5.0
Better than The Fire Next Time, and up there with Nobody Knows My Name, this extended essay brings us Baldwin's memories of his childhood along with his experiences in the back-half of the sixties and early seventies. Baldwin's prose delights, soothes, and startles as needed, and the most interesting part was juxtaposing black insurgency to Vietnam—simply because it's an idea he couldn't have developed before events proceeded this far.
Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick
4.0
Reached for this book in desperation after my other reading stalled out in the pre-child frenzy, and PKD comes through again.
Feels similar to The Man in the High Castle in being an account of a post-disaster society—except where that was an Axis victory in WW2, this covers the aftermath of worldwide nuclear armageddon. Like his other books, Dick is fascinated with the way an improvised society finds way to adjust and accommodate difficulties, along with some strange abilities and delusions bleeding into reality. Maybe one of the more heartwarming and hopeful endings I've seen from one of his books, even if it took some strange twists to get there.
Feels similar to The Man in the High Castle in being an account of a post-disaster society—except where that was an Axis victory in WW2, this covers the aftermath of worldwide nuclear armageddon. Like his other books, Dick is fascinated with the way an improvised society finds way to adjust and accommodate difficulties, along with some strange abilities and delusions bleeding into reality. Maybe one of the more heartwarming and hopeful endings I've seen from one of his books, even if it took some strange twists to get there.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner
A nice-enough book about the birth, life, and successors of ARPANET—really, the origins of computer networking in general.
The authors do a good job of illustrating the varying institutions, personalities, and challenges (both bureaucratic and technological) standing in the way of networking computers together for the first time. It's very much in the pop-history vein, but predates the more recent trend of taking cutesy angles so nothing gets annoying. I get why some readers are upset it didn't dive into the technical issues a little deeper, but this isn't that kind of book!
Biggest downside: the book was written in 1996, and doesn't include much material past the 1970s. Usenet goes unmentioned, and the World Wide Web gets a glancing reference in the epilogue. So much of what we think of as "the internet" didn't come about until the '90s, so writing midstream is going to give you some problems on knowing what to include (Mosaic) and what wouldn't last (gopher).
The authors do a good job of illustrating the varying institutions, personalities, and challenges (both bureaucratic and technological) standing in the way of networking computers together for the first time. It's very much in the pop-history vein, but predates the more recent trend of taking cutesy angles so nothing gets annoying. I get why some readers are upset it didn't dive into the technical issues a little deeper, but this isn't that kind of book!
Biggest downside: the book was written in 1996, and doesn't include much material past the 1970s. Usenet goes unmentioned, and the World Wide Web gets a glancing reference in the epilogue. So much of what we think of as "the internet" didn't come about until the '90s, so writing midstream is going to give you some problems on knowing what to include (Mosaic) and what wouldn't last (gopher).
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson
4.0
Anderson's account of how nationalism is formed seems pretty convincing to me. He shows it as a capping layer on existing qualities like shared languages and administrative states—first spontaneously arising in the US, France and other countries, but soon recognized as a modular concept that could be willfully imported and applied to strengthen the legitimacy of the state.
Where this falls flat, though, is in explaining how nationalism continues to function after its creation. Because Anderson is arguing that nationalism layers on top of existing qualities (and replaces previous dynastic and other modes of understanding the state), it seems like a pretty content-thin conception. But to claim it continues on in this form is a little... unbelievable... especially when Anderson goes so far to claim that nationalism has no link to racism. At best, you could argue that it's an incidental and asymptomatic carrier—but I and many others would go further.
Also he has the annoying habit of occasionally including some French and other foreign language excerpts for flavor... without providing a translation? I hope they weren't too important to the argument!
Where this falls flat, though, is in explaining how nationalism continues to function after its creation. Because Anderson is arguing that nationalism layers on top of existing qualities (and replaces previous dynastic and other modes of understanding the state), it seems like a pretty content-thin conception. But to claim it continues on in this form is a little... unbelievable... especially when Anderson goes so far to claim that nationalism has no link to racism. At best, you could argue that it's an incidental and asymptomatic carrier—but I and many others would go further.
Also he has the annoying habit of occasionally including some French and other foreign language excerpts for flavor... without providing a translation? I hope they weren't too important to the argument!
Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
2.0
Like hanging out with Donald Kaufman's Donald Kaufman.
Philosophy and Social Hope by Richard Rorty
5.0
Rorty's account of philosophy here was profoundly exciting to read, and I think his approach of Pragmatism here is almost unassailable. It just nulls out so many of the tricky problems in philosophy, gives it a place with the other disciplines, and accords much more with how persuasion actually functions in the real world.
There are complaints that he "misrepresents" Dewey, James, etc. by only borrowing the parts he likes—but that's literally his philosophical criterion for everything, to characterize things by how useful they are instead of some nebulous idea of representation! And as we see from his writing in this book, Rorty is very generous in spirit to each of these writers, examining their works as situated in their time and place and particulars and subject to the constraints thereof.
And that point, that you can't lift something out of its web of relations, ends up biting Rorty a bit here because I think his account of US history is wrong and unduly whiggish, sanding down American Exceptionalism down to just Emersonian hope and insisting on building his political program around it. He's writing here in the mid-90s, when you could still plausibly tell that account using the popular understanding of our history without bending things too much. But then the Bush years happened, bringing the War on Terror and all the ensuing invasions and sadism.
One would hope that if Rorty had survived until today, he would have a more plausible political account to give—one that doesn't prop up the same hopelessly-violent patriotism as pre-game flyovers and post-9/11 flag-fucking.
There are complaints that he "misrepresents" Dewey, James, etc. by only borrowing the parts he likes—but that's literally his philosophical criterion for everything, to characterize things by how useful they are instead of some nebulous idea of representation! And as we see from his writing in this book, Rorty is very generous in spirit to each of these writers, examining their works as situated in their time and place and particulars and subject to the constraints thereof.
And that point, that you can't lift something out of its web of relations, ends up biting Rorty a bit here because I think his account of US history is wrong and unduly whiggish, sanding down American Exceptionalism down to just Emersonian hope and insisting on building his political program around it. He's writing here in the mid-90s, when you could still plausibly tell that account using the popular understanding of our history without bending things too much. But then the Bush years happened, bringing the War on Terror and all the ensuing invasions and sadism.
One would hope that if Rorty had survived until today, he would have a more plausible political account to give—one that doesn't prop up the same hopelessly-violent patriotism as pre-game flyovers and post-9/11 flag-fucking.
A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies by Martin J. Sherwin
5.0
Excellent, if somewhat outdated by being 50 years old. Sherwin provides a brisk look at the fractured decision processes around the bomb's development and use. He skips most of the technical details (read Rhodes' masterpiece for that), cataloging how the changing diplomatic situation shaped the plans for the nuclear program, and vice-versa.
As for the big question—how did we decide to drop the bomb on Japan—it reminded me a lot of Sherwin's later (even better) Cuban Missile Crisis book. In both cases, decisions were arrived at before anyone had time to ask the questions, simply because they grew out of assumptions that were too baked in at that point. Thankfully for us all in the '60s, the Kennedy Administration had the time and attention to re-evaluate things before deciding to strike. Truman simply didn't have the capacity or interest, and the actual decision-makers were marginally more flexible.
As for the big question—how did we decide to drop the bomb on Japan—it reminded me a lot of Sherwin's later (even better) Cuban Missile Crisis book. In both cases, decisions were arrived at before anyone had time to ask the questions, simply because they grew out of assumptions that were too baked in at that point. Thankfully for us all in the '60s, the Kennedy Administration had the time and attention to re-evaluate things before deciding to strike. Truman simply didn't have the capacity or interest, and the actual decision-makers were marginally more flexible.