I am better than no one.
Nor am I any worse.
This realization does not, however, obviate any practical situational considerations that may come into play, such as the need to defend myself if you come at me with a knife.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Thursday, September 17, 2026
THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY by Garrett M. Graff
THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY by Garrett M. Graff
After such solemn 25th-anniversary remembrances, I have to recommend Graff’s amazing oral history, which I read last year.
Compiling hundreds of voices into a minute-by-minute chronology of how September 11, 2001, unfolded, Graff has woven a cinematic narrative that I think is an important document, not only for those who weren’t around when it happened, but also for those of us who were, giving all of us the context we need for a fuller understanding.
Get THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: an oral history of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff here: https://a.co/d/05k0lX2z
CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS by Krista Diamond
This debut novel is, in my opinion, a home run.
It has it all: wonderful writing, a propulsive plot, the kind of verisimilitude I could really sink my teeth into, and characters I felt I knew, especially as a longtime resident of Sin City.
Now, describing its story makes Close Relationships With Strangers sound tawdry. After all, it's about a paparazzi photographer from Las Vegas trying to score in Los Angeles while fighting the urge to return to his hometown, and the book includes such trusty tropes as a Las Vegas girlfriend who does burlesque and various scenes of Hollywood hedonism.
But Diamond makes a lot of interesting choices as she tells her tale, such that even her cliches are given full-shrift, so much so that I found myself nodding in agreement during my second read-through.
Whatever a given section consists of, whether it’s trenchant social commentary or biting dialogue or phantasmagoric scenery, Diamond handles it with such mastery that I dreaded the book's ending.
But Diamond nailed that, too. It's an ending that stuck with me & drew me into re-reading the book immediately, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I cannot recommend this novel enough. Go read it!
Get CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS by Krista Diamond here: https://a.co/d/0aqr0LlV
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
DEAR AMERICA: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
Dear America: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
This memoir by the incredibly accomplished journalist & filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas was a real eye-opener for me.
While we share some superficial biographical similarities (a filipino heritage, an adolescence spent as a stranger in a strange land), Vargas’s story is far more dramatic. Yet Vargas’s voice is so earnest & forthright that one cannot help but feel for him.
Thus, the details of Vargas’s life are all his own, but his struggle is something we can (and should) identify with.
Vargas tells his story chronologically, beginning with his childhood in the Phillippines and detailing how his mother sent him to the United States to live with his grandparents when he was 12 years old.
It isn’t until a few years later that Vargas learns a shocking truth: he is undocumented! He was essentially smuggled into the U.S. without his knowledge by his mother & grandparents, and the way he finds this out is harrowing. It’s also Kafkaesque, the way he bumps up against some routine bureaucracy that knocks him into a kind of bizarro-world where everything looks the same but everything has changed.
Suddenly, Vargas’s coming-to-America saga becomes an existential horror, as our hero realizes that his quest for a better life has become a trap.
To make matters worse, he has no one to advise him. Vargas is surrounded by well-wishers whose ignorance of our immigration system only serves to confuse him. Everyone seems to think that his status problems are merely a matter of filling out the right paperwork and paying the proper fee. (Hint: that’s not how it actually works unless you’re rich!)
But then the problems that beset Vargas invoke a calling in him. Complaint gives rise to advocacy. What could be more American than that?
The rest of Vargas’s story is publicly accessible (just look him up!) but should be better known. In my opinion, Vargas is a hero, and this book is just one reason why.
Get Dear America: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas here: https://a.co/d/07tZwwFq
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
PROJECT MAVEN by Katrina Manson
Innovations in intelligence-gathering have always changed how we conduct wars, from spyglasses to surveillance satellites, and what we currently call artificial intelligence, along with the evolution of autonomous vehicles, is no exception.
Project Maven is an account of how the U.S. Department of Defense has been coping with these changes (or not), incorporating dozens of interviews and documents into a provocative and troubling narrative.
Focusing on the efforts of a Marine Corps intelligence officer who, in 2017, recognizes the importance of the emerging capabilities of AI, this book also details the bureaucratic complications created by accelerating technological innovation & its implications on various battlefields across the globe.
It's about what you’d expect when the “move fast & break stuff” mentality of the tech sector runs up against opaque & often petty machinations of Pentagon bureaucracy, enlisting the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir into a competitive melee that often had even the military branches themselves working at cross-purposes.
After all, when budget cycles run in years while combat adaptations occur daily (case study: Ukraine), how is a government supposed to keep up? This is how we get caught building multi-million-dollar missile interceptors that get outfoxed by over-the-counter drones. This is how an armored tank gets neutralized by a guy wielding a video-game controller.
As we automate more and more of our combat processes (from surveillance to target acquisition to kinetic response), moral quandaries crop up, all based on the question of whether we should allow a machine to decide when & how to kill a human. (Btw, we basically already are.)
It seems, barring some unforeseen development, that gone are the days of an armed squad of soldiers humping through terrain in order to make contact with the enemy, and this book is a wakeup call to everyone who hasn’t realized this. The real question is whether or not automated warfare (one side’s AI versus another side’s) will result in more warfare or less.
Indeed, there are indications that if AI technology keeps evolving in the direction we can foresee, the very definition of warfare itself may change. Instead of nation-states conducting military conflicts over contested territory, what if warfare becomes a constant state of global violence conducted everywhere by unclear assailants?
This book doesn’t posit any answers because it’s frankly too early to tell. What Project Maven does do, however, is vividly illuminate the complexities at hand.
Get Project Maven here: https://a.co/d/0fjtQbi1
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