Recent Books -- Black Box of Doom, War Below, Kingmaker, Reentry, Hidden Globe, Pilgrim Machines, World Turned Upside Down, Let Them, Nobody's Hero
20 January 2025
- I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin. A thriller about a possible domestic terror threat which goes sideways. Moments of fun but ultimately a little wearing.
- The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder. A good look at the state of lithium and rare earth mining in the US, and the tough balance we face between environmental concerns and the need for these materials. We probably can’t continue to blindly outsource this issue to the rest of the world.
- Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell. Wow, I new very little about Pamela Harriman’s life. Simply amazing.
- Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age by Eric Berger. Great book about SpaceX history and the development of the Falcon rockets and the rest of the SpaceX lineup. I wish we had more of the Elon in this book and less of the Twitter/political Elon.
- The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. Some interesting information about how bankers and lawyers move money around the world, but just kind of drags on.
- Pilgrim Machines by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne. Very fun romp through the galaxy as humanity expands towards the galactic center.
- The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership by Clyde Prestowitz. Ends on a strong note with strong policy recommendations for the US. Along the way, it was sometimes a little too strident, but overall a worthy read.
- The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Would have been a nice blog post. Not a book.
- Nobody’s Hero by M. W. Craven. Kind of a standard potboiler/thriller. Not much innovation here.
