Every now and then some of you ask me about suggested reading. These questions tend to fall about now or before the summer, so here’s some ideas by topic in no particular order. You can find them all at Book People or at your local independent bookseller. (You don’t need to buy them from Amazon and I for one would prefer you didn’t.)
Technology
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
The Future of Violence by Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum
The Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger (a history of DARPA)
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil
China
The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury
On China by Henry Kissinger
North Korea
Nuclear Showdown by Gordon Chang
Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Chol-hwan Kang
Contemporary Middle East and South Asia
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
The Siege of Vienna by John Stoye
The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins by Robert Baer
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence
Fiction
Greenmantle by John Buchan
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Military
My Share of the Task by GEN Stanley McChrystal
Cochrane: The Real Master & Commander by David Cordingly
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty and the Battle of Trafalgar by Adam Nicholson (probably the best short book on Nelson and Trafalgar)