After spending a year in Baghdad, one of the most common subjects that comes up with other political analysts is that the closer you get to the issue, the more you know that you don’t know anything. This book is about how one can take some simple numeric shortcuts to arrive at the same conclusion, and make predictions vastly more accurate than typical individuals, aggregated individuals, or even us analysts. ...
Tactics weren’t convincing, politics weren’t convincing. but I was already sucked into the universe. I felt like an AI given a command to finish out the series, unable to not obey the command, but not necessarily happy about it.
Meh. Pride and prejudice and programs and politics. Should be my thing, but not really my thing.
I was tempted by a tagline calling this book a combination of Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, and Game of Thrones. This book is not like Game of Thrones, and making such a comparison isn’t good for Red Rising. The worldbuilding was shallow and the politics dubious. Yet, like Ender’s Game or Hunger Games, once the games began, it was easy to keep the pages turning. As far as pure entertainment goes, this is probably the best book I’ve read this year. I appreciated the tone of anger and guilt that ran through the whole novel, and have already started in on the second book.
Did you ever wonder, after seeing the episode 7 trailer, how a star destroyer could crash into a planet without disintegrating mid flight? Turns out the story behind that star destroyer wreckage better than any of the movies. This book is a young adult mass market novel based on a rewriting the story spinoff of Pop-scifi movies yet still manages to be unique and relevant. This book combined the classic young adult stories around elite academies, except that the academy was on the wrong side of the history of the new republic. Then it tackled patriotism, morality, loyalty, honor, and love for the next few hundred pages. It tied nicely into episodes 4-6, and made the new Star Wars universe feel a little more like an actual universe. ...
Paul does a good job descripbing quality fade, and I like the subject. But the author was very broad in describing ‘Chinese people’ or ‘Chinese Factories’ a big red flag. His descriptions were the typical sort of a westerner in China, and the fact that he got his tones wrong in the Audiobook makes me immediately suspect any conclusions drawn from what seems to be a narrow experience.
Not a book about China. This is a book about what it is like to be a foreigner in China, and Hessler nails it. I spent 20 months in Beijing hell-bent on learning Chinese, and I would recommend this to anybody who wants to understand people like me. I really think that Hessler has the right attitude towards China. Unlike [a:James Fallows|11573632|James Fallows|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Evan Osnos|6810849|Evan Osnos|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412556895p2/6810849.jpg], Hessler is vividly aware that he is not a neutral observer of China, and takes pains to understand his own position from a different perspective. ...
Meh. Not as good as Nudge, even Habit had more depth. the focus on product was nice, but I felt like the author was trying really hard to fit examples to his framework rather than letting the studies speak for themselves. That being said, I wouldn’t feel bad recommending this to somebody who is just getting started with ux but didn’t want to go in depth.
Not recommended. The author seemed overly concerned with describing ‘China’s Disruptors’ as a monolithic unit. The entire narrative was surface level, like reading a bunch of business magazine articles. The author didn’t indicate a strong grasp of the industries he was describing. One example was his comparing Xiaomi’s software releases to Huawei’s hardware releases as if they were the same thing. Other descriptions of Xiaomi did not align with my understanding from talking to employees at the company. A much better book to read in the same vein is [b:Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business|23014882|Alibaba’s World How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business|Porter Erisman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428639304l/23014882.SY75.jpg|42580970].
Refreshing. Picked up this book on a recommendation from Jason ([b:Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter|15824230|Blocked on Weibo What Gets Suppressed on China’s Version of Twitter (And Why)|Jason Q. Ng|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1371519351s/15824230.jpg|21555036]), and I was not disappointed. The combination of stories from Americans and Chinese locales was jarring at first, but I think in the end made this book much more powerful. I didn’t feel like there was any theme to the book, but there was the ability to see the world through the author’s eyes, and get insight into village life on either side of the pacific. Unlike many American books on China, I felt like the author understood enough of the context to convey in a neutral manner what life was like, rather than add layers of American culture into the translation. (Such as [b:Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|18490568|Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China|Evan Osnos|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1418113377s/18490568.jpg|26174286] or [b:China Airborne|13151308|China Airborne|James M. Fallows|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333577776s/13151308.jpg|18329333])