Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Books read in 2018

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2018.
  • Charles Arthur, Cyber Wars: Hacks that Shocked the Business World
  • Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South
  • Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
  • Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics
  • Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations
  • Rebecca Burns and David Dayen, Fat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story
  • John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
  • Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis, and Kurt Andersen, Spy: The Funny Years
  • Stephen Ellis, This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime
  • Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies
  • Paul French, City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
  • Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate
  • Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
  • Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
  • David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism
  • Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
  • Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
  • Sarah Jeong, The Internet of Garbage
  • Steven Johnson, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
  • Louise M. Kaiser and Randolph H. Pherson, Analytic Writing Guide
  • Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
  • Susan Landau, Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age
  • Peter T. Leeson, WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird
  • Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States
  • Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk
  • Liliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
  • Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (new updated 2017 edition)
  • Tim Maurer, Cyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power
  • Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
  • Roger Naylor, The Amazing Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon
  • Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life
  • Ellen Pao, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
  • Dana Richards, editor, Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism
  • Louis Rossetto, Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet (1st edition, #1453, Kickstarter)
  • David E. Sanger, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
  • Eli Saslow, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist
  • Harold Schechter, The Pirate (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Harold Schechter, Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Harold Schechter, The Brick Slayer (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Harold Schechter, Panic (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Harold Schechter, Rampage (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Harold Schechter, The Pied Piper (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
  • Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
  • Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
  • P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media
  • Ali Soufan, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State
  • Robert Timberg, The Nightingale's Song (bio of John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter)
  • Mick West, Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect
  • Rick Wilson, Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever
  • Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
  • Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House
  • Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
I made some progress on a few other books:
  • Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (will probably finish today)
  • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
  • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
Top for 2018:  Singer and Brooking, Bergman, Balko and Carrington, Gawande, Carreyrou, Sanger, Simler and Hanson, Soufan, Isikoff and Corn, Fagone, French, Schüll, Michael Lewis, Mason, Benkler et al., West, Wu, Saslow, Naylor. I didn't care for the Klosterman book at all--quick read, but a waste of time.

(Previously: 2017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)