Blogfriend Sean Meade has had an excellent review in Defense Technology International of the book Halsey’s Typhoon:The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm and an Untold Rescue.
As the PDF like format defies easy quoation, I strongly encourage you to read Sean’s review in full here.
Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye tapped me with the 123 Meme. The Rules of the 123 Meme are as follows:
1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
Dave had a fine selection, a book`that coincidentally sits closely nearby on my own shelf. As a result, I decided to go with what was nearest in terms of the unshelved,” handy”, unread bookpile from which I pick up and read at odd moments or choose from to read seriously from start to finish. At the top of the pile is Robert Dallek’s Nixon and Kissinger:Partners in Power. The anecdote has an eerie timeless quality about it:
When Nixon and Kissinger told Hoover that the May 9 and earlier leaks”were more than damaging, they were potentially dangerous to national security,” Hoover began tapping the phones of three national security officials identified by Henry – Henry Davidson, Morton Halperin, and Hal Sonnenfeldt – and one other Defense Department officer, Colonel Robert Pursley, a Laird assistant. Within days, two other NSC staff members came under scrutiny as well: Richard Moose and Richard Sneider. FBI agents also began listening to the phone conversations of four journalists- Beecher and Hedrick Smth of the Times, and an English correspondent based in Washington, Henry Brandon of the Sinday Times of London, and CBS newsman Marvin Kalb.
By the power vested in me by the 123 Meme, I infect the following bloggers:
Shane Deichman of Wizards of Oz
Bruce Kesler of Democracy Project
Dave Davison of Thoughts Illustrated
Cheryl Rofer of Whirledview
Dr. Daniel Nexon of The Duck of Minerva
A while back, Dr. Tom Barnett shared his reading bibliography for writing Book III. Since then, I’ve seen book posts by Brad at Potbanger’s, HistoryGuy99 at HG’s World and at The Strategist. All well worth taking a look at and moreover, they have all inspired me to set my newest additions into Slideshare, a picture being worth a thousand words.
| View | Upload your own
John Robb puts on his futurist hat and engages in some imaginative scenario thinking (PDF) over at Global Guerillas. Note John’s comment:
“The goal of this brief is to get people thinking about the future in a way that helps them make decisions today.”
John has the methodology right. Most experts, habituated to the over-use of analytical thinking, will try to nit-pick scenarios like these to death from the inception , either reflexively or intentionally in order to avoid having to reexamine cherished ideological assumptions, instead of engaging in the thought experiment. This is the major cultural-cognitive reason bueaucracies and academic institutions are notoriously poor at thinking outside the box or anticipating anything other than directly linear outcomes of policies.
Analytical-reductionism was a reasonable enough epsitemological approach for the 19th and 20th centuries of the “Second Wave”, “Mass Man” industrial-bureaucratic nation-states. It’s not enough for the more heterogeneous, alinear, high-velocity, “complex networks as evolving ecologies” of the 21st century. We need other cognitive tools in our kit alongside analysis.
One of the pleasures of Christmas is that a majority of my friends and relatives with whom I exchange gifts save themselves trouble and get me something I can actually use, i.e. – gift cards for new books. That, coupled with accumulated Amazon gift certificates from the past year, means I will be on a book-buying bonanza next week. Huzzah!
Helpfully, Dr. Barnett has been on a reading marathon lately in preparation for writing the body of Book III and has published an extensive bilbiography of his effort with micro-reviews of most of the books. Worth checking out if you are a bibliophile like me:
ADDENDUM:
Ha! Could not wait, so I just ordered the following from Amazon:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah by Olivier Roy
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
Customized Web Site & Blog Design
