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mikefromco's reviews
64 reviews
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison
slow-paced
3.0
This book is already suffering from being outdated. It’s fine, it has a decent historical approach to a modern situation.
It just sticks to the Thucydides Trap motif for so long it becomes incredibly dry and basically have waves the Cold War away as not the same when it’s far far more similar than Athens and Troy.
Just dry and I wasn’t a fan.
It just sticks to the Thucydides Trap motif for so long it becomes incredibly dry and basically have waves the Cold War away as not the same when it’s far far more similar than Athens and Troy.
Just dry and I wasn’t a fan.
The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Such a great addition to the scholarship on Black disenfranchisement from systemic racism with an easy to read style but still scholarly approach! Excellent book with both explanations of the issues, historical context, and then solutions and suggestions for repairing such issues stemming from the wealth gap.
Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law by Preet Bharara
fast-paced
4.5
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
challenging
fast-paced
2.75
I really don’t have anything to add that shc's review didn’t say better.
Just too quick for the nuance this topic really should require.
Just too quick for the nuance this topic really should require.
Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Paul Scharre
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.0
This book reads like an extremely long WSJ/Bloomberg article.
It’s very current (published in 2023) and that’s both good and bad, I suspect it will be badly dated even five years from now but right now it’s really quite good. Has a bit of a right wing skew but very small, just kind of an assumption that the military is a good thing and the US should remain be dominate power.
Extremely honest discussion of misuse of AI re: Uyghurs and other minorities and the risks of bad training data.
This book was very dry at times but combined with Chris Miller’s Chip War I really feel I better understand this area of tech and geopolitics better.
It’s very current (published in 2023) and that’s both good and bad, I suspect it will be badly dated even five years from now but right now it’s really quite good. Has a bit of a right wing skew but very small, just kind of an assumption that the military is a good thing and the US should remain be dominate power.
Extremely honest discussion of misuse of AI re: Uyghurs and other minorities and the risks of bad training data.
This book was very dry at times but combined with Chris Miller’s Chip War I really feel I better understand this area of tech and geopolitics better.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People by Thomas Frank
challenging
medium-paced
2.5
This is one of the interesting pre-Trump left populist books that spends a shocking amount of time whining about liberalism and a even more shockingly little amount of time stating what should be different. Except for saying over and over again “it doesn’t have to be this way” the book does little to actually articulate how it could be different and/or how.
Very much an early contribution to the post-Trump election “dirtbag left” populist trend this one doesn’t quite do as effective job as many of its brethren have done in articulating what should be different.
I also listened to the self-read audiobook and the cadence of the entire book was just a very bitter whining which made this difficult to sit through.
Very much an early contribution to the post-Trump election “dirtbag left” populist trend this one doesn’t quite do as effective job as many of its brethren have done in articulating what should be different.
I also listened to the self-read audiobook and the cadence of the entire book was just a very bitter whining which made this difficult to sit through.
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart
Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.
Just a very self-help pop-politics type book that didn’t even really try to add anything that hasn’t been said better by others.