Spring Break
What are you reading?
Frank Dill weighs in
Liz Purvis
Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment
Frank Dill, Director of the RWC Science Lab, submitted the following examples of books he is reading:
"In no particular order...
"The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century," by Thomas P.M. Barnett. It's kind of scary; you read this book and then watch CNN and you're like, wow, this was preordained. Somebody has been planning all this.
"American Mania: When More Is Not Enough," by Peter C. Whybrow. How compulsive shopping may be genetic and why it'll never make you happy.
"Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time," by Greg Mortenson. This book manages to inspire you and at the same time make you feel totally inadequate. It tells the story of a guy who nearly died while trying to climb K2, the world's second highest peak, and then to thank his rescuers has gone on a mission to build schools for the youth of the third world.
"Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam," by John A. Nagl. While the first part of the title is quite catchy, the book is pretty dry and academic. It does clearly lay out how the US military failed to learn from the Vietnam experience during the initial occupation of Iraq. General Petraeus is doing a much better job and probably read this book on his way to writing the new army field manual on "COIN" operations. Time will tell if it's too little too late.
"IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Summary for Policy Makers"
www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf. This is not technically a book but rest assured data will be pulled from here for a great number of books on global warming. I find it's always good to read the source data before somebody bends it for their own purposes. The evidence presented here is both comprehensive and compelling. Unfortunately the news in the report is not good. Including gems like the concentration of green house gases is higher now than at any time in the past 10,000 years.
Sorry, no time for fiction. I have to keep up on all the chaos happening in the world today. Besides didn't somebody once say that truth is stranger than fiction?"
"In no particular order...
"The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century," by Thomas P.M. Barnett. It's kind of scary; you read this book and then watch CNN and you're like, wow, this was preordained. Somebody has been planning all this.
"American Mania: When More Is Not Enough," by Peter C. Whybrow. How compulsive shopping may be genetic and why it'll never make you happy.
"Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time," by Greg Mortenson. This book manages to inspire you and at the same time make you feel totally inadequate. It tells the story of a guy who nearly died while trying to climb K2, the world's second highest peak, and then to thank his rescuers has gone on a mission to build schools for the youth of the third world.
"Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam," by John A. Nagl. While the first part of the title is quite catchy, the book is pretty dry and academic. It does clearly lay out how the US military failed to learn from the Vietnam experience during the initial occupation of Iraq. General Petraeus is doing a much better job and probably read this book on his way to writing the new army field manual on "COIN" operations. Time will tell if it's too little too late.
"IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Summary for Policy Makers"
www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf. This is not technically a book but rest assured data will be pulled from here for a great number of books on global warming. I find it's always good to read the source data before somebody bends it for their own purposes. The evidence presented here is both comprehensive and compelling. Unfortunately the news in the report is not good. Including gems like the concentration of green house gases is higher now than at any time in the past 10,000 years.
Sorry, no time for fiction. I have to keep up on all the chaos happening in the world today. Besides didn't somebody once say that truth is stranger than fiction?"
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