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An extremely influential work that I should have listed here long ago.

I heard this was very influential for C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Clive Barker. I'm curious to see what's in here, given that it's just over a century old.

This book covers the technology and tradecraft a reporter would need to safely handle leaked data. I've worked in this area since 2009 and this is hands down the best resource I've ever seen - a comprehensive exposition on the methods with lots of easy to follow hands on exercises. I already knew about 80% of what Lee suggests, the things I personally found most valuable were the introduction to Docker Compose, as well as the Aleph and Dangerzone tools. I run a Substack where I publish on similar matters, I'm used to writing for those who've newly developed an urge to dig deeper, and Lee does an excellent job of picking starting points accessible to all, then building on them.

I read this book not long after it was publish, maybe the fall of 2003. I recall it being a good read - the U.S. had pranced into Afghanistan without much of a plan, then blundered into Iraq. I never imagined breaking contact with the irregular forces of Afghanistan would be a humiliating retreat twenty years later, but I had already begun to suspect it would be bad. The lessons in this book had to be relearned the hard way by coalition forces. Asymmetric conflicts are going to be an ongoing problem and it's worth revisiting this one and comparing it to the collective war diary of NATO forces in the country that began twenty years later.

Unger comes up with a lot of intriguing stuff about Russians in New York during the Cold War, but there's a lot of build up in this book and then ... no solid conclusions.

Just getting started on this one.