We’ll Always Have Paris: Stories
by Ray Bradbury, 2009

This is a series of short stories, written by Ray Bradbury, of Fahrenheit 451 fame. Unfortunately, I was fairly repelled by this collection. Too many of them had odd, “in the closet” homosexual underpinnings for my taste. There were a handful that were interesting, including “The Twilight Greens” and “Remembrance, Ohio”, but not enough to justify the duds. I’d recommend many of Bradbury’s other books, but not necessarily this one.

I listened to these stories via CD while driving to/from work.

Earth Awakens: The First Formic War
by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, 2014

The third book about the First Formic War, which pre-dates the war the kids fight in Ender’s Game. I wrote about the second book here. This book follows the efforts of our heroes to destroy the invading alien ship and save humanity. It succumbs to the tried and true method of killing all the secondary characters in predictable ways while the heroes survive ridiculous encounters repeatedly. There is one exception to that, as one main character does die of radiation poisoning toward the end of the book.

This book was more great action from Card and Johnston. It is the 18th book written or co-written by Card that I have read. While I initially expected the First Formic War books to be a trilogy, there is a cliff-hanger at the end of this book that suggests there is more to come.

The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland
By Gretchen Heefner, 2012

I was hoping for a description of military strategy and technology. I got an opinionated piece about disruptions in farmers’ lives and dependency on the military-industrial complex. At least I learned some things about the scale of missile building, the process of deciding upon and acquiring sites for missiles, and the lengthy draw-down in silo force post-Cold War.

I feel the author lost some perspective in writing the book. How many people were really impacted by missile silos? Maybe 10,000, spread across the western half of the country? Those missiles were our main deterrent against nuclear war. And they worked. Perhaps we went a little overboard in terms of number of missiles, but it’s hard to argue with the results. We won the Cold War. While I agree that the military industrial complex wastes lots of money, I think this book was too negative in its appraisal.

While it definitely wasn’t the intention of the author, I am now interested in visiting the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota. Perhaps we’ll stop on the way to Montana to visit two of my college friends.

I listened to the audio book version of this book.

Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
By Tyler Cowen, 2013

A few weeks ago, I covered The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen. This book is the follow-up, which discusses the implications of changing technology, demographics, and information availability on incomes, education, and politics.

Cowen is a strong believer in the disruptive ability of machine intelligence. Call it artificial intelligence, call it data mining, call it automated pattern recognition, call it Skynet. Whatever you call it, machines, programmed by smart people, are getting smarter and infiltrating more areas of life and business. The main premise of the book is that the few individuals who can work best with the machines in the future will be high earners. Everyone else will be worse off. Thus ends the middle class. Thus ends average.

Computers may be excellent at computation and statistics, but they typically need a human to interpret and implement their analyses. Those who can work well with computers, be they programmers or just technically-savvy subject matter experts, will be well-placed to succeed. With the depth of information available on the internet, it will be possible for self-starters to educate themselves and position themselves well with technology. It will be a meritocracy.

Closely related: Humans Need Not Apply.

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization
By John Robb, 2007

I’ve been interested in the problems of securing essential utilities and improving national security for a few years. This book gives a modern view of terrorism and suggests new strategies for security. I found some of the insights very interesting. Terrorists in the twenty-first century have entered a new era and attacks have some attributes that were not seen previously. First, with the interconnectedness of society, attacks on infrastructure (electricity, oil, etc.) have huge multiplier effects, which allow terrorists to cause thousands or millions of dollars in damage for every dollar they spend on the attack. Second, terror cells are quickly evolving their tactics by watching other cells. Effective techniques are quickly duplicated and improved. Third, the enemy in the war on terrorism is rarely a nation-state. Small groups have the ability to wage war, and they are able to use our country’s size against us in battle. Many small groups tend to cluster together under one umbrella cause (hatred of the US/infidels or defense of homeland from western crusaders) and fight, though there are individual differences in motivation or technique between groups. Using the established practice of targeting leaders of these groups won’t work because they are so easily replaced and because no one leader controls a significant portion of the various terror cells/groups.

The book explains why the US had such trouble with guerrilla insurrection and infrastructure instability in Iraq post-Saddam. New techniques of attack and defense are necessary in the new world of terrorism. On the defense side, we need to build open platforms upon which different groups can innovate and layer security. If the electric grid were better understood by the average innovator, it would be open to improvements in security and redundancy. Putting all of our faith in one organization, such as the Dept of Homeland Security, to protect us from attack will result in disaster every time. Personally, I’m most worried about the electrical grid going down in an attack. Think about how dependent EVERYTHING is on electricity. If a significant portion of the country went dark for a month, chaos would ensue. I hope we don’t see anything like that in the future, but I expect it to happen eventually.

The Lottery and Other Stories
By Shirley Jackson, 1949

Certainly haunting. Mostly still relevant. Illuminates the gossip and crazy people that live in small towns and the inhuman interactions and pace of city life.

It’s a book of 26 short stories, the last of which is “The Lottery” and fairly famous. I read “The Lottery” in a short story class in high school. A lot of the stories ended in a frustrating manner, but Shirley Jackson probably meant for that to happen. She didn’t seem too concerned with happy endings or pleasing the reader.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future
Michael J. Fox, 2010

Short book/audiobook of Michael J. Fox’s insights into receiving an education on the job. We listened to the audiobook on the way to vacation. It was written as an extended graduation speech to graduates, and this book contains a few nuggets of wisdom about succeeding in the face of adversity and seizing opportunities. Fox is known as an optimist, but fancies himself a realist in the book and describes how he reacted and thrived in the face of early-onset Parkinson’s disease. The book is a little interesting, but not life-altering.

While advertised/packaged as a gift for graduating high-school seniors, Maria and I think it is more relevant as a gift to high-school underclassmen. Get ‘em early.

Think Like A Freak
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

I read this book over the span of perhaps 3-4 hours one afternoon. It was short. In following the Freakonomics blog, I had already seen/read podcasts of 3 of the book’s 8 chapters; I don’t think there were many surprises for me in the book. I also happened upon Stephen Dubner giving a public lecture in the atrium of IU’s business school in March/April, where he talked about the content of one of the chapters of the book.

I think the best advice from the book is to look for small problems to solve. Big problems are typically hard to solve, and you won’t be the first person to try to conquer a big problem. But a little problem may have been overlooked and may offer significant opportunity.

Do you think Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner get into recurring fights about the proper way to spell their first names?

Engineering Happiness: A New Approach for Building a Joyful Life
By Manel Baucells and Rakesh Sarin, 2012

Maria and I were already pretty aware that happiness is what we should strive for in life, not money. This book confirmed a lot of my suspicions about what brings real happiness in life.

I was delighted to see, on page 6 of the introduction, the line “Our approach to studying happiness is rooted in the literature of decision analysis and management science.” That’s what I do!

The book talks about managing shifting expectations, understanding the different kinds of “goods” in life (basic, adaptive, cumulative, conspicuous, and reframing), and focusing on the positive. I thought it was well-written and a fast-read, but a lot of the concepts from psychology and behavioral science weren’t new to me. I’d recommend this book to people who feel like they want to be happier and are not well-versed in the current happiness research.