Fall-Winter 2024 Reading List

Matt Franz

Nov 30, 2024 — 5 min read

(Another Mid-Century tree has lost its limb at the local elementary school)

There is only one more month left until 2025. I'm not sure what to think about that. But at least the election is over. America decided, even if I'm not thrilled by the result.

We celebrated two birthdays in the family over the Thanksgiving break. None of us are getting any younger. Our oldest is no longer on our insurance. I turn 55 next year. Speaking of birthdays, we bought tickets for my son and two of his friends to attend the Ravens kickoff back in September. We all got terribly sunburned but it was worth it, even if we lost. First time at a Pro football game since the 1980s.

I visited Manhattan for the first time since 2022 and ate the most expensive steakhouse (and a Kosher one, at that) I've ever eaten, then wandered through Wall Street around midnight and past the 9/11 memorial before catching our Uber back to mid-town.

There are still seasons. We even had snow flurries this month and this morning was the coldest day so far. We finally committed to join a new church.

(October and November are pledge time in the Episcopal Church.)

I avoided spending more than $150 on Black Friday specials, but did buy another Raspberry Pi I didn't really need. You can never have too many home K3s clusters, right?

I should have listend to the clerk about the M.2 not fitting in the hat!

The weekend before the election, my youngest and I camped in the Michaux forest west of Gettysburg again. (The first time was in June 2023, before the shit hit the fan at Ping).

The calm before the storm.

I've stopped listening to The Bulwark for the most part. I've tuned out of Amerian politics because it is too depressing, but I have been trying to get involved in a local Indivisible group. Canadians at least understand. I would be ashamed to travel to Europe at the moment.

It has been a few weeks and months of sickness. Food poisoning. Chest colds. Concussions. Too many school absent notices. (If you didn't know, wisdom teeth removal costs around $3K without dental insurance.) Yet we are very fortunate.

This is the first November since 2022 to be part of layoffs, but others have not been so lucky. I have one more trip to Toronto before the end of the year? Is it five or six? I've stopped counting. This type I'll take the train to Newark like I always did to India. The stock market is up (for now) and my 401K has never been higher and I've started looking at my social security payout given I'm less than a decade from being able to starting to use it.

But onto the books.

Society & Politics

I've not yet finished Strongmen and Power and Progress, but both were obviously a reaction to socio-technical events: the reality of a authoritarian regime in the U.S. and the never-ending drumb-beat of techno-optimism. I still hope to finish Out of the Darkness, a post 1942 history of Germany--especially relevant given the resurgence of anti-democratic forces in Europe.

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2020)
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson (2023)
Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 by Frank Trentmann (2024)

History

Having fond memories of my trip to Europe in September and October 2023 (well, minus the part of getting COVID and hearing about my boss getting let go) I revisited the war in France, completing To Lose a Battle having read this text much faster than A Savage War for Peace. This led me to The Road to Dunkirk and The Mastermind of Dunkirk and D-Day and Brothers in Arms. Nimitz at War has been a treat, once again drawing clear lines between the Patton-MacArthur strain of (generally toxic) military leadership and the Eisenhower/Marshall/Nimitz school.

The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II by John Mosier (2011)
Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay by Craig L. Symonds (2022)
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram (2002)
Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to V-E Day by James Holland (2021)
The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II by Antony Beevor (2018)
The Road to Dunkirk: The British Expeditionary Force and the Battle of the Ypres-Comines Canal, 1940 by Charles More (2013)
Mastermind of Dunkirk and D-Day: The Vision of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay by Brian Izzard (2020)
To Lose a Battle: France 1940 by Alistair Horne (2007)
Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A. Cohen (2006)

Tech & Business

Sometime it is good to review the basics on product development and security. Since I helped review and write an O'Reilly book a few years ago, I still have a subscription and it allows to me to read more technical books. Threat Modeling (Tarandach and Coles) was a nice update on Adam Shostok's book from 2014. Even before the reality that Elon would be influencing the next administration, I started reading Character Limit and is as depressing as you'd think it would be, but I'll continue plodding through it.

Threat Modeling: A Practical Guide for Development Teams
by Izar Tarandach and Matthew J. Coles (2020)
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac (2024)
Technical Program Manager's Handbook by Joshua Alan Teter (2024)
Product Management in Practice by Matt LeMay (2022)
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick (2024)
The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder by Robert I. Sutton, Huggy Rao