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There’s a lot in this book to like. It’s very well researched and the writing can be engaging. Photos, woodprints (artists depiction of events that appeared in newspapers), and contemporary documents are sprinkled throughout, and this gives a great feel for the era. The reader really gets a sense of the messiness in the closing days of the Civil War and complicated allegiances that existed in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, where the North met the South.

But there’s a number of major things that kept me from enjoying the book and ultimately not being able to recommend it.

John Wilkes Booth could recite obscure passages from Shakespeare directly from memory and the author tries to match that prose throughout. A few Shakespeare references here and there would have been fine, but they’re frequent and they’re distracting. For example, Booth scrambling for his horse elicits a reference to “Richard III” and when Booth takes a steamer named “John S. Ide” we’re told that’s “an unusual name that combined the assassin’s first name with an insinuation of the ides of March and Julius Caesar’s misfortune.” I audibly groaned when I read that last part.

A lot of the writing can feel disjoint, almost to the point where I wonder if paragraphs were written independently of one another and then just arranged in sequence without readjusting for a narrative thread. I frequently caught myself going back and forth in the text because something wasn’t clear to me.

For instance, a Mr. Such-and-Such suddenly becomes Mrs. Such-and-Such. Either that’s a typo or we’re now talking about the person’s wife. The wife was… present during this conversation? Where was the reader introduced to the wife? Thumbing back a page or two and re-reading, we see that this conversation occurred at Mr. Such-and-Such’s house, so apparently his wife was there with him, I guess. By the end of the book, I stopped attempting to clarify and simply plowed through.

And finally, a major thing that bothered me (and this is, perhaps, unique to me) was the speculation that was supplied as fact. The author did a fantastic job with research, and we’re told at the beginning of the text that quotes are drawn directly from historical sources like testimony and the work of investigators. But there’s a lot that’s filled in based on what the author assumed was happening.

Booth did not live to tell his tale, so we have no way of knowing what he saw, heard, felt or thought. None of the author’s assumptions are ever unreasonable, and they wouldn’t have changed the historical chain of events regardless, but we still don’t know they’re true, and that sort of bugged me for something that is supposed to be nonfiction.

Ultimately, I learned a lot from the book, so much so that I was a little embarrassed I wasn’t already more familiar. But I just felt like it was a chore to read and I’d recommend those interested in the topic to search elsewhere before picking up a copy.

Annie Jacobsen has put together what is basically a well-researched novel to guide the reader through the mechanics of nuclear deterrence. Rather than having a simple recitation of facts of how elements of deterrence (or the failure thereof) would work, she creates a fictitious scenario that weaves those explanations together into a narrative. The result is one of the most compelling things I’ve read in years.

I’ve seen repeated criticisms of the book mention that some elements of the scenario aren’t well developed, but the author’s goal was to illustrate what a nuclear attack would look like, not write a 1200 page Tom Clancy tome. There are elements of the story that can be a little far-fetched, but they’re still reflective of real plans that real people working for our real government have really put in place, and some of those plans are pretty wacky.

The text is dense with technical details - what systems are deployed, how they work, and what they can’t do. The “can’t do” part is especially important as a lot of the strategy of nuclear deterrence originates from blind spots and shortcomings of various sensors, weapons, and safety systems. The author does a really wonderful job depicting the sort of confusion that can come about when you combine technical weaknesses with human indecision.

There’s great insight into how the structures of the military and intelligence community come together in these scenarios. What the organizations are, who the organizations are ran by, what the role of that organization is and isn’t, and where those people and organizations are physically positioned are explained in accessible detail. Historical elements about how those organizations evolved are woven in for context.

I’m deducting one star because the author routinely throws in embellishments that can be a little distracting. The is absolutely no reason to attempt to embellish the effects of a nuclear weapon - it is truly mindbogglingly horrifying. Those embellishments elicited an eye-roll when I would have otherwise just sat and reflected for a moment.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in national security. The abundant references also serve as a great guide to further reading.

George Tenet helmed the CIA from the last days of the Clinton administration through the first few years of the GWOT. This book is less a memoir than an attempt to provide context to reporting during that period.

Tenet barely mentions his career prior to becoming director of CIA. Time is spent on the middle east peace process during Clinton's tenure, but the bulk of the book focuses on the GWOT and almost nothing else that was happening during that period is mentioned.

There's a lot of insight into how the CIA was tracking terrorism heading into 9/11, as well as the CIA's immediate response to 9/11. The failures that lead into the invasion of Iraq are also covered extensively.

Tenet discusses what was widely reported during the time (or what the general understanding of the public was, anyways) and then provides behind-the-scenes details of what was actually happening. You really get a sense of the pace and confusion of the era and I came away with a significantly better understanding of the things that went wrong and why.

With that being said, the book was definitely intended for historians and much of the text is spent on meetings. There's very little insight into the CIA's activities after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, so if you're looking for a broader understanding of that Agency's role in the world during the early years of the GWOT, this isn't necessarily where to look.

"At the Center of the Storm" is a very apt title to the book, but there were simply too many things happening during that period to cram into a single volume, and the end result can feel a little disjoint. It's a truly excellent source of context for the period, but unless you lived through the era, or are a student of same, it might be a struggle to work through.

This book feels like it was written for people that spend a lot of time arguing about Superman on the Internet. There's a ton of great info in here, but it's uneven and really could have used some editing.

As an example of the unevenness: There's a full chapter on "Superman Lives", a Tim Burton movie which was never made, and about twenty pages spent on the Synderverse, three films which were actually made. About 1/3 of the writing on the Snyder films cover how people on the Internet didn't like the movies.

A lot of the coverage is disjoint and can make details difficult to follow. There's significant time spent on "Smallville" (which is fair, as the show was on for a decade), but unless you've actually seen "Smallville", you're going to have a hard time tracking what people are talking about.

There are a lot of quotes stuck into the text that don't relate to the broader thread, like someone was nice enough to give the author an interview, so he felt obligated to get their content in somewhere. Much of the artistic context is provided by someone who has a podcast who saw the relevant material one time.

Grammar errors, punctuation mistakes, word usage that's clearly a transcription error... it's just kind of a mess. Not worth the massive length.

It's hard to believe this is the first book Tom Clancy ever published. It's exactly as compelling today as it was 40 years ago.

The amount of technical detail and military nuance Clancy crammed in his books was always impressive, especially for someone who did his research before the days of the World Wide Web and who had no military service himself. He didn't write textbooks, but if anyone wants to get a sense of the scope and scale of the US Armed Forces, Clancy is where they should start.

His debut novel has some pretty big plots holes and other ends that don't quite meet. It suffers in the fact that not a whole lot of actual conflict happens until the end. Clancy also establishes his habit of "single-use characters" here, where several pages are spent developing someone into a relatable human only to never see the character appear in the story again.

Flaws aside, the book survives the test of time and is still easy to recommend to military fiction aficionados.

In 2006, Robert Gates left his dream role as president of Texas A&M University and took what may have been the least desirable job outside of a war zone at the time. He proceeded to become the only Secretary of Defense in the position's history to serve under two different presidents, and presidents from two different parties at that. This memoir covers that time.

The book is dense with detail, both personal as well in describing the mechanics of the Department of Defense. Stress drips off the page and the reader is left to wonder how the Pentagon ever successfully does anything amidst the competing priorities of Washington.

Almost every big name in US politics during that period is mentioned in the book, and while Gates has a track record of being generous in his recollections, he doesn't pull punches when it's warranted. His discussion of the inner workings of the White House, especially under Obama, are pretty forward and he doesn't mince words when describing interactions with Obama's National Security Staff.

Large portions of the text are clearly written for historians, as they stick in names, dates, places, times, and particulars of conversations that don't really do much to advance the narrative. It's a big book, and those chunks can get a little laborious to work through. Even with all the detail that is present, there's noticeable omissions here and there, although one can't really fault the author as there's no way of capturing every topic of interest in a single text.

Gates has a casual writing style and frequently injects his sense of humor with plenty of chuckle-worthy anecdotes. Despite the size and density of the book, I rarely got bored and ultimately came away with a much deeper appreciation of the role of Secretary of Defense.

A must read for anyone interesting in how D.C. fights wars.

Robert Gates had a voluminous career in government, beginning in CIA in the '60's and ending with his role as Secretary of Defense under by Bush 43 and Obama. This book covers the period from the beginning of his career to his confirmation at Bush 41's Director of Central Intelligence.

During that period, Gates moved back and forth between the White House and CIA, working with and alongside many of the titans of Cold War foreign policy. His book covers those people in human terms based on first-hand experience. While the text is dense with places, numbers, and dates, it always keeps its focus squarely on the people and their thinking.

He's a talented writer and the book remains an easy read despite being heavy on contextual details. His sense of human is always present, and he has zero issue telling embarrassing stories about himself or amusing anecdotes of the people he served with. It's a rare work that manages to be informative as a historical text and equally entertaining.

Gates witnessed, and frequently played roles in, some of the biggest US maneuvers of the Cold War and his book is a must read for students of intelligence or geopolitics.

The book starts out with Morita's personal history and the very early days of what became Sony. It's a dramatic beginning: Morita's background in physics and position in the Imperial Navy gave him insight into exactly what happened at Hiroshima before the government stated so publicly. His response was to immediately focus on the future, which involved splitting from his centuries-old family business to build a business that will sell... whatever it is you're supposed to sell to a country that's been reduced to ash.

His forward-thinking and optimism in those moments gives me pause and he elaborates on the origin of that mindset later in the book. His explanations put a lot of Japanese history into context.

Much of the rest of the book is focused on how he looks at business, how the Japanese look at business, and how those views differ from Americans. The book is only 300-and-some-odd pages, but the density of knowledge is impressive.

Sony itself is largely on the periphery. Morita will happily discuss the technical side of things, but those details are fleeting, and readers looking for a history of technological evolution (such as myself) aren't going to find much on that topic.

Still though, when someone of Morita-san's stature takes the time to explain things, you'd do well to listen. The book is an amusing read: he has a brisk writing style and is frequently funny. Lots of nuggets of knowledge, not only in business but in life, are packed in here.

I enjoyed my time with the book, even though it wasn't the technical history I was initially looking for.

Michael Vickers has a resume that's tough to believe. From being a commando in the post-Vietnam era, to leading the military aspects of the largest covert action program in US history, to a ring-side seat on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and more, he has had an incredible place on the pointy-end of US history.

The book was written more as a historical text than what I would traditionally call a "memoir": it's more of a recollection of events, sequence, and rationale than Vickers as an individual. While there's some anecdotes thrown in here and there, he has a very straight-laced approach that occasionally borders on tedious. He offers incredible insight into the "what" while offering very little on the "who".

I'm deducting one star just because this really feels like it should have been a series of books, and I'm holding out hope that Vickers will write more. He also spends the last few chapters discussing future strategies and wandering into topics that he either abbreviates to the point of being meaningless or that he just doesn't understand very well.

Minor qualms aside: this is a must read for any student of special operations, intelligence, or US military history.