Book Reviews

Disappointing. The first half of strong with a history of autonomous weapons, and a great taxonomy of the different types of autonomy, hinting at how the lines are both more blurry and more historic than I expected. With a strong setup, I was hoping for a cogent analysis of how the potential for increased autonomy via ML could change the economics or reality of warfare, instead the author gives a regurgitation of sci-fi tropes and overwrought philosophizing about the morality of autonomous weapons. Scharre convinced me that peacetime pontificating was not the most relevant line of inquiry after describing US moral reluctance to engage in submarine warfare, completely scrapped mere hours after Pearl Harbor. In government and private industry, I’ve watched years of careful thought scrapped when faced with the reality of defeat. ...

Didn’t get the hype. A pretty standard retelling of norse myths, felt kinda like reading a short story textbook more than anything else.

A rousing collection of faux-history wikipedia entries and tax policy musings, interwoven with a gossip column and dragons. I really enjoyed it.

This is the ‘surgeon generals warning’ of international studies, and I’m astounded I managed to get a degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations without this being required reading. Many of the points ring true, and the book is worth reading eveif you already kwthe general thesis. Only reason it’s not 5 stars is that it was a tough book to get through. The language was dense and the author assumes a lot of prior knowledge that I often didn’t have.

At first I thought it was a bit pretentious, but by the end I felt that Kalanithi got to the non-fiction equivalent of the hero’s journey. Death is the inevitable conclusion to all our lives, and our journey to the end is something worth contemplation. A great book to read along with Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’. Short and powerful, highly recommended.

Does a great job trashing standard dogmas, but felt like it introduces new dogmas in their place. I kept hoping for some objective way to measure single vs. mixed use, and never found it. The section on cars was great (and sadly ignored) and what I found most interesting were definitions of slums and the chapter explaining the positive value of old buildings. Definitive required reading for anybody thinking about neighborhood or city planning.

Fast read, but felt incomplete. I liked Moretti’s ability to make me think of America as a collection of countries, each on a different trajectory of economic development, and that those trajectories are getting further apart. However I kept expecting some notes on the countervailing forces that prevent innovation centers from growing exponentially away from the rest of the country: these are things like exorbitant real estate costs, high costs of living, and local economies that do not rationally expand to accommodate newfound wealth. So we get a description that paints the world as if there will be exponential growth in innovation centers, and I would have liked to se him address the potential reasons that growth could end up looking like an S curve. ...

I should have waited and read the other reviews first.

Hyperion was great, but only half the story. This book changes the narrative structure to a first person account from M. Severn, and a third person narrative of what was happening at the time tombs. I wasn’t invested in either Severn, Gladstone, or any of the central characters in the book, and the stories I was interested in seemed to be cutoff halfway. At a little over halfway into this book, I bailed and went for the plot summary.

Came into this book with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. A series of short stories that hang together better than cloud Atlas, with something of a foundation style overarching plot. I enjoyed bother the cantos and the main plot, just sad to find out at the end that this book doesn’t even make am attempt to reach closure.