Book Reviews

** Finally Worth the War ** A good book should distract from real life even when you’re not reading it. After eleven entries, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series finally does. The story is no longer a slog limited understanding for middle management; I can now see what James S. A. Corey borrowed—structure, politics, propulsion—and why. Weber’s universe remains brutal. You wouldn’t want to be Honor’s comrade, guard, or even a civilian from her home system. She has plot armor; everyone else in Manticore dies by the dozen. The Mesan Alignment, still twirling its mustaches, veers too far into conspiracy caricature, but the battles themselves are crisp and consequential. ...

** Domestic Drudgery, Galactic Glory ** At All Costs is Weber at his most uneven. Much of the book bogs down in domestic drama and organizational grind—material that felt tedious, especially as escapist reading. I would say I skipped sections without guilt, but actually o just kept falling asleep. Weber simply isn’t compelling in the register of family life and middle management. Where he excels is in politics and naval warfare. As the Republic of Haven grows more morally ambiguous, the series gains depth; villains and heroes blur. Weber writes these macro-level tensions with an authority missing from his micro-level character work. ...

** Badass Engineer, Failed President, Subpar Biography ** Herbert Hoover was a world-roaming engineer, mining executive, and world-famous humanitarian before he entered politics. He organized massive food relief in Europe after the First World War, once carrying a passport “from no nation but his own signature.” Few presidents had such a record of achievement before taking office. Yet once in the White House, he became defined by limits. His incremental, ideologically cautious approach was not disastrous in itself, but it was never enough to halt the Great Depression. He didn’t cause the collapse—its roots lay in postwar instability and systemic excess—but he could not persuade Americans that recovery was possible. In economics, perception is reality, and his stubbornness failed to inspire confidence in his plans for recovery. ...

** Burn It Down, Lightly ** At first this feels familiar. Scholomance, Iron Widow—another angry, gifted teenage heroine in the dark-academia mold. But here the author makes an unusual choice: the protagonist is a little racist, and stays that way even against evidence. The flaws aren’t polished out. The story treats moral injury almost playfully, keeping a lightness even while circling serious themes. By the second half the book takes riskier turns, moving quicker than Scholomance’s trilogy toward the inevitable conclusion: if the system is corrupt, torch it. Yet impassioned speeches don’t magically fix anything, and the attempt to burn it all down produces more death, including both main characters. ...

Read on a day where I’m looking for anything to distract me from being sick. Useful more for the tips than for the thesis. Surprisingly little content on day to day teaching philosophy, mostly notes on mid-80’s curriculum. Yet in a world where the perils of technology can outweigh the benefits, much of this remains relevant into the modern day. Attributes a lot of malice to modern education that is unwarranted, my main takeaway is that the Colfax family were able to benefit from a robust library, and perhaps most importantly, parent pickiness about the materials that they used to teach their kids with. Then a little bit of kids learning how to do things on their own and the Colfax family is off to the races.

Diplomacy, Budgets, and Blasters At the beginning of War of Honor I was wondering if I should settle for the mediocrity of this series. Ten books in, this is the first one I was motivated to finish. The appeal has never been the plot of any single book, but the long meta arc. Here Weber leans into a more Clausewitzian view, where diplomacy, economics, and domestic politics weigh as heavily as fleets in motion. Maybe it took the previous nine books of exposition, but now things are getting interesting! Post-war budget cuts become a plot point, a refreshing detail reminiscent of Truman, Eisenhower, and FDR biographies. The multiple points of view add texture, especially the poker game commanders play with limited information. ...

Give me berries Something small, short, a bust of flavor and relish the memory These are blackberries, prickled with thorns of death, greed, hopelessness Unripe and bitter Some might like the flavor I don’t Let me forage elsewhere

The world lost something when Dan Wang moved back from China to Canada. A perspective worthy of Hessler, with insight worthy of James Scott. A simple thesis that means a lot. More thoughts to come

Huawei is the one global tech giant that is unmistakably Chinese — which makes it a perfect subject for a corporate history. House of Huawei captures some of the intrigue, but avoids the hardest questions. The company’s governance, famously opaque, is treated as an afterthought. Yet Huawei’s “employee shareholding system” is not a detail; it is a microcosm of how power and opacity work in China. Likewise, its culture is only sketched but not filled in — a sharper, hungrier version of a typical Chinese firm, willing to push the limits but not fundamentally alien. ...

** Are we the baddies? ** Rockets fall. Lie flat, open your mouth, blunt the shockwave. Witness empire up close—papers for bodies that were lives that were souls. Countless. What do you do with this moral shockwave, how do you speak? I’ve been there. One Day is Omar El Akkad’s grappling with moral injury. He is incandescent over Gaza, his pain so bright it blinds everything else. But incandescence without clarity burns indiscrimanently—and without purpose. At its best, this could have been Between the World and Me for Arab‑Americans. Instead, he spends his force arguing universal culpability. I remember feeling that after Iraq. ...