What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[carl]

Ganulv:

The most interesting part of that New Yorker story were these lines spoken by the narrator:

As SEAL Team Six, we were at the top of that scheme. Our ideas about the war were the war.

To me that sort of encapsulates in two sentences the supreme and invincible arrogance of the big military, a supreme confidence even though what is being done hasn't worked and isn't working. The stats are good though.

[Firn]

The Signal and the Noise.

A great book. The Baseball chapter was a bit long for my European taste, the poker one maybe too and I have some slight ceveats in other areas. However the positives dominate. Coming from a somewhat different angle it gels well with Kahnemans studies and surprisingly enough with aspects of the works of Ben Graham and Buffet. He ends with the words:

The more eagerly we commit to scrutinising and testing our theories, the more readily we accept that our knowledge of the world is uncertain, the more willingly we acknowledge that perfect prediction is impossible, the less we will live in fear of our failures, and the more freedom we will have to let our minds flow freely. By knowing more about what we don't know, we may get a few more predictions right

Should work well most of the time for investors...

[ganulv]

The Baseball chapter was a bit long for my European taste

I assure you that you don't have to be European to be bored by baseball.

[Backwards Observer]

Modern Strategy by Colin S. Gray. Straightforward and readable so far. A useful mainstream foundational primer for the layperson.

The moral of this chapter, perhaps, is that we learn from history both that we cannot learn from history and that human beings continue to be literally capable of anything. The sadness of strategic history that sparks sentimental popular songs with rhetorical lines such as 'when will they ever learn?' promotes the hard-nosed question, 'learn what?' The horror of war has been known to mankind for ever. If full recognition of that horror were all that we humans had to learn, then the social institution of war might have been long banished. Unfortunately, things are not quite that elementally simple. (from Modern Strategy by Colin Gray)

Modern Strategy by Colin Gray - amazon

[Old Eagle]

Using Gray as a text next term.

[davidbfpo]

When Sir Michael Howard, the pre-eminent British military historian (who is still attending conferences in London) writes a book review I notice; ah, yes I've not read the book he reviews!

Some four decades ago, the TLS sent me a book to review by a young lecturer at Sandhurst entitled The Face of Battle. It impressed me so much that I described it as “one of the best half-dozen books on warfare to have appeared since the Second World War”. I wondered at the time if I had made a total fool of myself, but I need not have worried. The author, the late Sir John Keegan, proved to be one of the greatest military historians of his generation. It would be rash to put my money on such a dark horse again, but I shall. Emile Simpson’s War From the Ground Up is a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military; from the most recently enlisted cadet to the Chief of the Defence Staff and, even more important, the members of the National Security Council who guide him.

He ends with:

It is impossible to summarize Emile Simpson’s ideas without distorting them. ...... In short (and here I shall really go overboard) War From the Ground Up deserves to be seen as a coda to Clausewitz’s On War. But it has the advantage of being considerably shorter.

The book is 'War From The Ground Up: Twenty-first-century combat as politics' by Emile Simpson. 285pp. Publishers: Hurst. £25. 978 1 84904 255 0 and in the USA by Columbia University Press. $32.50. 978 0 231 70406 9.

Link to fuller review:http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1239841.ece

Two reviews on Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Ground-U...at+as+politics and no reviews on Amazon USA:http://www.amazon.com/War-Ground-Up-...=emile+simpson

[Firn]

I assure you that you don't have to be European to be bored by baseball.

I`m actually hard to bore if the matter is discussed with some intelligence but that chapter was a bit much...

In any case I gave Common stocks a read.

I enjoyed it even if pretty nothing was new, but Fisher did a superb job when he wrote it and forcefully states many an important point.

[ganulv]

albeit only a few pages, chapter 35 of Roland Huntford’s Two planks and a passion. The book is a very well done history of skiing up to 1945. (There is a final chapter with a post-War history of skiing that feels a little tacked-on, but that period has already been covered by a number of books, in any case.)

[jmm99]

For fun - you might like its brand of ironic humor - try Tikkanen's "The 30 Years' War" (used at Amazon and at AbeBooks).



Tikkanen was a young 18-19 year old soldier in the last two years of the Continuation War (1943-1944) - and a very dissatisfied soldier at its end.

Regards

Mike

[ganulv]

For fun - you might like its brand of ironic humor - try Tikkanen's "The 30 Years' War" (used at Amazon and at AbeBooks).

That does sound like it would be in my wheelhouse, I'll have to give it a look. Thanks!

[Firn]

albeit only a few pages, chapter 35 of Roland Huntford’s Two planks and a passion. The book is a very well done history of skiing up to 1945. (There is a final chapter with a post-War history of skiing that feels a little tacked-on, but that period has already been covered by a number of books, in any case.)

Interesting, that might be worth a read. Still can't figure out what the author has against our alpine style. Downhill is great fun indeed and 'Alpine touring' as it seems to be called in English, is a fantastic sport, which sadly costs quite a bit of lifes every winter.

Touring has become big in the last ten years or so. Some of my relatives did practice it regulary over 40 years ago. Technology has come a long way indeed. The review was a bit meh, seriously:

Huntford reproduces a 4,000-year-old rock drawing from Russia that depicts three Stone Age hunters on skis stalking elk. It's an astonishing image, like seeing a stick figure on a Jet Ski in the caves of Lascaux.

...

[ganulv]

Interesting, that might be worth a read. Still can't figure out what the author has against our alpine style.

I get the impression that he enjoys the emphasis being put on being out in the wilderness rather than on fancy technique. I didn't get the impression from the book that he had anything against Alpine per se; he is honest about the fact that apart from Telemark that no Nordic style ski or technique is really up to a big run in the Alps.

Downhill is great fun indeed and 'Alpine touring' as it seems to be called in English, is a fantastic sport

In the U.S. there are two kinds of touring. Alpine touring emphasizes descent and usually means free heel skis and stepping up to climb (with skins, if need be) with randonee bindings offering the option to clamp down the heels on the way down. Light or Nordic touring allows for kicking and gliding as well as moderate turns during descents (the skis have a little width and metal edges).

which sadly costs quite a bit of lifes every winter.

Avy beacons, probes, and shovels are de rigueur in the western part of the United States, even for a lot of lift-served pistes.

Technology has come a long way indeed.

I spotted a pair of Kandahar bindings (aka bear traps, aka ankle-breakers) while I was rummaging around yesterday. Yikes!