Books I've read recently

Submitted by David on Thu, 2010-06-10 20:06

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East: A rather interesting book focused on the events surrounding the June 1967 war between Egypt and Israel that also drew in Jordan and Syrian participants. Seemed fairly balanced. I wished that it got more into the later events, but I guess that would be a subject for another book.
(Discovered this evening while watching the June 9th Colbert Report that the author of said book is the current Israeli ambassador to the US. Still seems balanced though...)
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men: Suggests that a few factors - some of them seemingly crazy - might be at the root of problems in this area. I thought the nature deficit disorder one kind of interesting.
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It: A book looking at the effects of computer models and high-speed trading on stock market operations. Had some good points, but at times it seemed more like an anti-tech rant.
Nine Dragons: Junk fiction like junk food is worth consuming a bit of every now and then. Michael Connelly with a bit of an international twist.