Books read in 2019

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.

• Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
• Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (3rd edition, draft chapters)
• Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld
• Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West
• Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
• Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
• Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
• C.J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat
• Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang
• Nina J. Easton, Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade (bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh)
• Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
• Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
• Ian Frisch, Magic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
• Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
• Reba Wells Grandrud, Sunnyslope (Images of America series)
• Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
• Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
• Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq
• Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
• Jonathan Lusthaus, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime
• Ben MacIntyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
• Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
• Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
• Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA
• Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media
• Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
• Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City
• Alexander Stille, The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi
• Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
• Erik Van De Sandt, Deviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals (Ph.D. thesis)
• Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
• Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Top for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.

I started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:

Myke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)
Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age
Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

Two books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:

Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (due out January 14)
Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (due out April 21)

(Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)

CIA torture program

It was interesting to go back through the old posts on this blog about the CIA torture program in light of the new film, The Report, which can be seen on Amazon Prime.

One of the early posts on this blog resulted in a debate in the comments about the ethics and efficacy of torture, which the 2014 Senate torture report (PDF link) and the film resolve decisively against torture.  The CIA torture program was ineffective and unethical.

Jeremy Scahill's interview with Daniel Jones about the CIA program and the Senate investigations and report is quite illuminating, and highly recommended listening, as is the podcast associated with the film.

A couple other items of interest:

Jason Leopold's exposure of an accidentally leaked draft letter from John Brennan to Dianne Feinstein apologizing for hacking the Senate investigation.

Senator Mark Udall's questioning of CIA general counsel Caroline Krass during her Senate confirmation hearing.

New York Times book review of Frank Rizzo's memoir, Company Man, which confirms that George W. Bush was not briefed on the torture program but was a "stand-up guy" by lying and claiming that he was.

The Phoenix Lights, 1945

From John Keeling, by way of the May 2019 Fortean Times (p. 28):

In 1945 a jittery American public was mistaking Venus for Japan’s FU-GO balloon bombs on an alarmingly regular basis. 9,000 of the 30 ft balloons with incendiary bomb payloads had been launched against the US in the hope of causing large-scale forest fires and spreading terror....On June 6^th, Phoenix and several other Arizona communities had their first ‘Jap balloon’ panic. Telephone lines to the press, police department, sheriff’s office and weather bureau were reportedly jammed....Luke Field and Williams Field fliers, checking the object from planes, were able to report back definitely that there was no balloon where reported. And Phoenix Junior college’s 5 inch refractor telescope clearly identified the object as Venus. According to the Associated Press, Tucson had the same experience, with Davis-Monthan fliers being ‘sent to cut down the invader.’

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: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)

Books read in 2017

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2017. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books, though I've made no attempt to collect all papers, blog posts, and reports I read here), with no paywall or fee.

• Lilian Ablon, Andy Bogart, Zero Days, Thousands of Nights: The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits
• Ben Buchanan, The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations
• J.D. Chandler, Hidden History of Portland, Oregon
• Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
• Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes
• Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners & Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
• Mike Edison, Dirty, Dirty, Dirty: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers--An American Tale of Sex and Wonder
• FINRA, Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry
• Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
• David Gerard, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts
• Joscelyn Godwin, Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State
• Jonathan Goldsmith, Stay Interesting: I Don't Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do They're True and Amazing
• Heidi Grant Halvorson, No One Understands You: And What To Do About It
• Jon Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, and Derek S. Reveron, editors, China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain
• William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference
• Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
• Nick Middleton, An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States
• Kevin Mitnick, The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
• Andrew Monaghan, "The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept: Evolving Continuity," Chatham House, 2013 (PDF)
• Milton Mueller, Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace
• Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
• David Ronfeldt, Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis
• Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
• Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country
• Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story
• Doug Stanhope, This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
• Charles Stross, Halting State
• Charles Stross, Rule 34
• Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes
• Timothy Walton, Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present
• Kristan J. Wheaton and Melonie K. Richey, Strawman
• Ilya Zaslavskiy, How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West (PDF)

I may or may not have made progress on a few other books (first four from 2017, next two from 2016, one from 2015,  next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):

• Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life
• Dana Richards, editor, Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism
• Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Structured Analytics Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
• Louis M. Kaiser, Analytic Writing Guide
• Andreas Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies (now 2nd ed)
• Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
• John Searle, Making the Social World
• 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 for 2017:  Rid, Buchanan, Sherman, Mayer, Clarke and Eddy, Conover, Middleton.

I completed three Coursera courses in 2017, two of which I recommend:

• University of Michigan, Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age (psychology, statistics, and philosophy; a companion to Richard E. Nisbett's book, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking which I read last year; the course is taught by Nisbett)
• Universiteit Leiden, The Changing Global Order (international relations theory and history)

(Previously: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)