Friday, January 01, 2016

Books read in 2015

Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2015:
  • George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation & Deception
  • Jeffrey S Bardin, The Illusion of Due Diligence: Notes from the CISO Underground
  • Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
  • Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
  • Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
  • Karen Dawisha, Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?
  • Laura DeNardis, The Global War for Internet Governance
  • Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
  • Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
  • William J. Drake and Monroe Price, editors, Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap
  • Jon Friedman and Mark Bouchard, Definitive Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence
  • Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It
  • Marc Hallet, A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers
  • Shane Harris, @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex
  • Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
  • Reed Massengill, Becoming American Express: 150 Years of Reinvention and Customer Service
  • James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers, and Guests (two new chapters)
  • David T. Moore, Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis
  • Richard E. Nisbett, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking
  • Tony Ortega, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper
  • Whitney Phillips, This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
  • Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web
  • Jon Ronson, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries
  • Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed
  • Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
  • P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
  • David Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System
  • Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries
  • Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
  • Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
I made progress on a few other books (first two last year,  next four from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with very long nonfiction e-books):
  • Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations
  • John Searle, Making the Social World
  • Peter Gutmann, Engineering Security
  • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
  • Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
  • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
  • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
  • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
  • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
  • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
  • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
Top ten for 2015:  Browder, Chernow, Coleman, Ronson (Shamed), Schneier, Phillips, Nisbett, Ortega, Miller and Shales, Thaler. I bought and read Bardin's book because Richard Bejtlich identified it as a "train wreck," and it was.

(Previously: 2014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

6 comments:

Hume's Ghost said...

The only book on your list I've read is The Unbreakable Miss Lovely (excellent.) I bought a copy of Chernow's Hamiliton in 2006 but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

Lippard said...

Chernew's book gave me a new perspective on Thomas Jefferson. I had seen one example of him writing one thing in letters while doing something completely contrary to his statements behind the scenes in Chris Rodda's _Liars for Jesus, Vol. 1_--Chernow gives the impression that this was somewhat habitual with Jefferson, at least while he was Washington's Secretary of State and where Hamilton or the Federalists were concerned.

Alan said...

Jim, are you saying Jefferson was actually a politician?

Danny Mittleman said...

Jim, it's your blog so you can do whatever you want. But I'd love it if you chose to star (or something) the books you recommend, having read them.

Danny Mittleman said...

Ah, you have a top ten list. My bad for not noticing :-) Feel free to delete this and the previous post.

Lippard said...

Danny--I also give star ratings on Goodreads.