JD

Heavy on facts & numbers, light on actual battles

Revisado: 04-12-24

I found this book quite tedious in that it read like a compendium of diaries, memos, force readiness numbers, and after action reports. Almost a complete lack of oral histories of the actual battles. It makes a solid point (almost to the point of ad nauseam) about why Barbarossa was doomed (the unbelievably inhospitable Russian terrain, weather, and lack of supply chain, and sheer numerical inequalities), but the book gives very little insight into what it was actually like to be at this dreadful front. Plenty of anecdotes of generals bickering and disagreeing with Hitler on strategy, but what did a lieutenant or NCO have to say about the actual fighting? And almost zero perspective of what the Russians were thinking. The best military history books tell stories, rather than download a relentless torrent of facts and figures about troop strength and readiness and battle of the memos and Panzer deployments.

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DESPERATELY needed an editor

Revisado: 04-15-22

A decent read, but spoiled by some silly, PC narratives. The main conceit of the book, that innovation depends on collaboration, totally ignores Thomas Edison's scores of patents, and hugely overrates the spoiled, opium-addled Ada Lovelace's contributions, even by Isaacson's metrics; he says John Mauchly deserves the credit for the first computer because he brought it to market with the UNIVAC - but what did Lovelace bring to market? Poor Charles Babbage - the true visionary computer engineering genius of his era - never lived to see his computer brought to fruition.

The book also spends far too little time on Gordon Moore's vision. Of all the innovators, Moore combines the engineer with the vision and the drive to make it all come true (although he did lack the managerial talents). Moore's Law deserves more play here.

And Isaacson just skips over the amazing, elegant engineering of Woz's Apple I. All the silly blathering about Lovelace, but he couldn't include a paragraph about what made the Apple I so unique and groundbreaking?

Also some weird errors, like the part about Steve Jobs coming back from India and getting hired by Atari. But Jobs was already working for Atari before he went to India.

Also, a really strange omission was the disruption of the iPhone. By the time this book was published, Apple was already emerging as the most profitable company on earth because of iPhone, and mobile had begin to totally displace the desktop computer, including its landing of existential torpedoes into Microsoft and Intel and HP, and even Google (which launched Android to counter iPhone).

Isaacson strikes me as someone who isn't as smart as he thinks he is just because he writes books about really smart people.

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Missed opportunity

Revisado: 03-19-22

This book really needed an editor, and authors who understand recent tech history better. They wasted far too much time on Moore's ancestors (yawn - why do biographers do this?!), while giving short shrift to the massive climax of Wintel PC's. Far too little on how the Wintel desktop phenomenon came about, including IBM's failings (licensing the PC, OS/2, etc) that led to Intel's monopoly on PCs, as well as barely mentioning Intel's Faustian partnership with Microsoft, without which, it's unlikely this happens. I was waiting for this huge explosive point in the industry (and the world, when PC's began to appear on everyone's desk), but the book just breezed past the x86 moment. How did all of this Wintel dominance happen? How did Wintel beat the company that started the personal computer revolution (Apple)? The PC phenommenon was treated as just another iterative chapter in Moore's Law, not the climax of it.

Perhaps even worse, the author never once mentioned how mobile (i.e., ironically, Apple) killed the desktop and how Intel utterly missed the mobile revolution, and has yet to recover from it. The book was published in 2015, and it was obvious by that time that mobile was majorly disruptive to desktops. The authors do note the growing popularity of smartphones and the iPhone, but not ONCE do the authors mention this was where Moore's Law arguably died (mobile chips are what killed Intel's momentum).

It would have been great to hear Moore's take on Intel's mobile failures, since by this time, Intel's directors had foolishly tossed Moore aside as some useless old fossil. Surely Moore has some opinions on how these arrogant younger executives totally whiffed on mobile?!

Also, nothing on the huge irony of how AMD - which probably wouldn't even exist today if not for Intel deliberately second sourcing the 286 - emerged as Intel's biggest rival today. Would love to have heard Moore's current take on this as well as his opinions on Jerry Sanders, but NOTHING! Not even a paragraph on Sanders leaving to found AMD, and Moore's reaction to it!

Instead, the author wasted multiple chapters on the Moore foundation, something Gordon Moore really took little interest in from a management standpoint. And no, 100 years from now, nobody is going to be writing about Moore's (or Gates') charitable foundations (a lot of people hate Gates' creepy post-Microsoft activities). Moore's legacy is probably being the person most responsible for populating the entire world with the most ubiquitous man made device in history, the transistor. An extremely rare combination of technical genius and visionary, (plus a monomaniacal drive and work ethic), which allowed Moore to be able to understand and implement the transistor's disruptive future.

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Great story, weak author

Revisado: 01-08-20

The story of Freddie is great. Unfortunately, the author decided to interject his own politics right up front, making a not so subtle implication that Donald Trump living up to his campaign promises to enforce immigration laws inAmerica is somehow analogous to the Nazis perpetrating the Holocaust. Just outrageous, and a disservice to both Freddie and the victims of the Holocaust.

The author also seems to make the rather offensive implication that American hesitancy to enter WWII was due to anti-semitism, which is outrageous. Not once did the author even mention that the entire “Lost Generation” was named for its reaction to the horrors of WWI and was a large reason for American isolationism in the 1930’s and 40’s.

The author also throws around the term “Nazi” to describe every single German official or soldier in the story, which is historically inaccurate and quite confusing to the reader. Rather than distinguishing between Wehrmacht soldiers of the regular German army from the SS and Gestapo, everyone was just a “Nazi” according to the author. This contrasts with most authors and historians accounts, and is confusing for the reader and frustrating. One wouldn’t call every Russian soldier a “Communist,” but rather, a member of the Red Army. It was just confusing and something you’d expect in a high school essay not a professional writer.

I also thought the book could have had a more professional reader.

The story of Freddie was great though.

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Scary, dark horrific monster tale, with some flaws

Revisado: 07-16-19

I'd never heard of the subject of this book (whose name I'd rather not further glorify). But clearly, he is one of the scariest and most evil people who's ever walked the earth. He doesn't fit the mold of what we've been told of most psychopaths or serial killers (a doting father who was concerned about the effects of his crimes on his daughter?). Truly chilling, and estimates of his victims are probably significantly understated (he said he was active for 14 years, almost nonstop, but a "mere" 11 victims? Seems unlikely). Honestly the kind of book that makes you want to buy an alarm system for your home. It also teaches you that compliance with violent criminals is a VERY questionable tactic. NEVER get in a car. Better to be shot running away than dragged off to God knows what! Fight, run, and yell! (and hopefully shoot or stab if you are armed).

Some flaws in the book. The narrator is insufferable with her cartoonish male voice. Considering that most of the figures in the book are male, and so much of the book is from actual transcripts, a male reader would have been more appropriate. But this female reader affected the same dumb male voice that almost seemed satirical and anti-male. It was a distraction. We are PAYING for this reading, so freaking do it well!

Also, it was just kind of weird how the book was sourced. I know it was unavoidable, but unlike some other true crime, this was mostly leaked and on background source material, with a definite point of view and axes to grind. I realize that since the investigating agencies were all pretty much non responsive, and you had detectives that couldn't be quoted in the first person (except for interview transcripts) for legal or career reasons, the author was limited in her approach. The transcripts were an interesting perspective; if only they read with a real male voices instead of the same dumb female male impersonator voice!

A nitpick, I could tell the author was a big city, probably liberal girl who'd never been around a gun or a firearms enthusiast or hunter in her life. She made it sound like the fact that the subject of the book was a gun enthusiast and hunter or someone who raised and killed his own livestock somehow selected him for being a serial killer, when 99.99% of gun owners and hunters and farmers are decent law abiding people. I'd imagine the average southern or rural reader will be rolling their eyes at some of the breathless implications Callahan makes about guns and hunting (I'm not a hunter, grew up in a big city, but even I laughed at this). Also her comments about Black Talon cartridges was a real howler. They're just hollow points, not "cop killer" or "mass shooter" bullets.

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