Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution, by H.G. Wells. This is his history up to the 22nd century that's related through the dreams of a League of Nations' official, who time-travels--so to speak--in this manner. Fascinating stuff. Best part? A 28-weeks-later like zombie plague that halves the world's population after a predicted second European war that Wells says, writing in 1933, would begin in 1940 and end in 1949. I am now tempted to get the Raymond Massey movie "Things to Come."

The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course, by Richard N. Haass. Pretty good ruminations on the necessary course corrections following Bush by the State Department's "Kennan" of the first term.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Interesting, but it chokes on its own peculiar vernacular. The breakdown for me comes in the end-of-book chart where the "skeptical empiricist" faces off against the "Platonic approach" and we're told thinking comes in one of those two forms--namely, those who get the randomness of "black swans" and those hopelessly incapable of understanding them. I go down the list and find my patterns jump back and forth between the characteristics. Disappointed that I cannot be pigeonholed, I am none too surprised to see Taleb in the conclusion basically say the same thing about himself, admitting that he is both attracted to and repulsed by this randomness-is-everything mindset he proposed in the book, so we're told to stop worrying about small failures and focus only on the big ones. Okay, say I, putting down the book reassured.

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, with forewords by David Petraeus, James F. Amos, John Nagl and Sarah Sewell. Naturally, I loved this one. I had gotten a sneak-peak preview from Conrad Crane himself at Leavenworth in Dec 05 when I was there interviewing Petraeus for the "Monk of War" piece (and addressing the student body) and finally perusing the book was quite enjoyable. The Sewell foreword is the best by far. Really rocks.