What Are You Currently Reading? 2015

[Backwards Observer]

Guerrilla Strategies by Gerard Chaliand


Death In The Rice Fields by Peter Scholl-Latour


How To Cut Toxic People Out of Your Life by AJ Harbinger (The Art of Manliness[!] online article)

[Backwards Observer]

We Kill Because We Can by Laurie Calhoun


This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things by Whitney Phillips

[Azor]

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder

[Backwards Observer]

Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World by Ian Bremmer


Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century by John Higgs

[Bill Moore]

Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, by Robert Kaplan

http://www.amazon.com/Asias-Cauldron...KPT8AFK0GCTS5V

For those unfamiliar with the strategic challenges in the South China Sea and the surrounding area that is driving the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific this book is an excellent primer. I can almost guarantee that old Asia hands will also learn something new from reading this book. It is an easy weekend read, yet it covers an wide range of relevant historical issues in an easily understood manner. While it tends to focus on the state actors, it also touches among the growing Islamic Fundamentalism in Malaysia (and elsewhere), and the potential expansion of radicalism in the region that may further contribute to regional instability.

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, by Peter W. Singer and August Cole

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-No...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

This is a novel about a future war between China (post communist China) and the U.S. It focuses on how the opponents use high technology weapons, drones, cyborg tech, cyber, and operations in space among other things. I agree with the critiques that if you're looking for a good fiction book with developed characters this isn't your book. Character development was shallow, but if you want to explore how future wars may be fought this is an interesting read.

Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Peter W. Singer

http://www.amazon.com/Cybersecurity-...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

If you are a military planner, homeland security planner, any sort of national security strategy advisor, then you need to read this book to ensure you have a realistic grasp of what cyber threats really are and the implications of those threats. Singer does a great job of putting them in context. This definitely is not a sky is falling book, but it is a clear eyed view on the nature of the challenge we face in this domain.

[Azor]

I'm about 1/3 though...

I have to say I'd rather keep my techno-thrillers focused on the technology, not superficial characters.

There's supposed to be a high-tech, high-speed war in a global battlespace, and yet we see actually very little of the opening salvo. However, the book opens with a killing that at this point has nothing to do with the plot.

I do appreciate the emphasis on cyber technology and drones, however, a key element of "Red Storm Rising" was that smart weapons would be exhausted within weeks during a great power war.

Looking at the sheer quantity and quality of tools and technology needed to decimate decades-behind and less-than-peer militaries in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iraq again and Libya, it seems to me that any Sino-American conflict would start to go low-tech rapidly, especially for the Chinese side. Yet somehow China is ahead qualitatively and quantitatively...

Looking at other conflicts (e.g. in the Donbass and Syria), the RMA has not helped Russia defeat insurgents with small arms, technical, the odd refurbished T-55, and TOWs...

Mixed emotions at this point...

[Backwards Observer]

The Voice of Asia: The Changed Outlook of the Asian World Toward the West by James A. Michener


An Eye for the Dragon: Southeast Asia Observed: 1954-1970 by Dennis Bloodworth