Things I read

I’ll update this list periodically.

Books

• Winston Churchill’s My Early Life: 1874-1904 (2026-03-30)
• The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (2026-03-13)
• The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (2026-03-06)
• An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (2026-01-19)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (2025-11-08)
• Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company (2025-06-18)
• Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (2025-06-07)
• Zhou Enlai: A Life (2025-05-26)
• The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947 (2025-01-09)
• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (2024-12-24)
• The World of Yesterday (2024-11-21)
• Flying for Peanuts: Tough Deals, Steep Bargains, and Revolution in the Skies (2024-11-21)
• Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley (2024-11-21)
• Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945 (2024-10-22)
• American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2024-09-13)
• Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 (2024-08-18)
• Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (2024-06-23)
• Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (2024-05-25)
• Gandhi Before India (2024-04-28)
• The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China (2024-03-17)
• A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind (2024-01-31)
• Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (2024-01-29)
• To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (2024-01-15)
• Spain In Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (2024-01-02)
• Where Did the Universe Come From? And Other Cosmic Questions (2023-11-30)
• Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955 (2023-11-24)
• The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War (2023-11-16)
• Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (2023-05-28)
• The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University (2023-04-04)
• Iva: The True Story of Tokyo Rose (2023-04-03)
• A Cargo Pilot’s Life: Tails from Corrosion Corner (2023-02-11)
• Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II (2023-01-30)
• Nimitz (2022-12-22)
• Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (2022-11-24)
• Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal (2022-11-15)
• Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler (2022-10-22)
• Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II (2022-10-13)
• The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann (2022-09-18)
• Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn (2022-09-10)
• Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve (2023-11-08)
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2023-10-20)
• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power (2023-10-10)
• A Fiery Peace in a Cold War (2023-07-05)
• A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam: Incredible life and story. (2023-05-15)
• In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950-1953 (2023-04-15)
• The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (2023-02-02)
• Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao (2022-10-20)
• American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer: An example of a great leader who had minimal leadership experience but did have deep technical expertise (and the respect of his peers). (2022-09-05)
• Confessions of a Recovering [Civil/Traffic] Engineer: After reading this book, every time I get to a traffic signal, I wonder if it could be a roundabout (or what would need to change so it could be a roundabout). (2021-12-20)
• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
• The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
• Plane Crash: The Forensics of Aviation Disasters: I love everything about aviation. This book had great explanations of the physics of flight and helped me build intuition for doing mental math on lift, drag, etc. It has deeper explanations of aviation disasters and near-disasters than I’ve been able to find elsewhere (such as on Wikipedia, The Aviation Herald, or Airliners.net). (2021-07-15)
• Gorbachev: His Life and Times: A natural choice after loving the Khruschev book. I enjoyed reading this book, but I’m not sure how much of a reformer Gorbachev was before he became the General Secretary. Was glasnost and perestroika his plan all along (and he kept it semi-secret until he got the top job)? (2021-07-12)
• Khruschev: The Man and His Era: I wanted to learn more about Khruschev after reading about the political risks he took to avoid a more serious confrontation in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He famously exposed and criticized Stalin, and what was new to me is that he became quite critical of the USSR after his ouster. Those in power undoubtedly have agency and responsibility for their actions, but they don’t always feel that they do (or perhaps that is a rationalization). (2021-06-14)
• Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Really interesting to hear about the internal discussions inside both the US and Soviet governments. JFK’s approach was unpopular even among his close advisors and played right into their criticisms of him. Both JFK and Khruschev took real political risks here. (2021-05-21)
• Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: My grandmother grew up in Texas, and Caro’s vivid explanations of what life was like there in the 1920s helped me understand what she experienced. Caro sets the context for the various stages of and places in LBJ’s life so well that I have a better understanding of how it would have felt to live through those times. Also, LBJ led an epic life. For just one example: he campaigned around Texas in a helicopter at a time when most people had never seen a helicopter and they were quite risky. Does that fit your model of LBJ as a boring politician? What would the analogue be for a politician today? (2021-05-13)