2. The Siege of Mecca — Yaroslav Trofimov
3. The Only Plane in the Sky — Garrett Graff
4. American Spy — Lauren Wilkinson
5. Rise and Kill First — Ronen Bergman
6. Return to Sri Lanka — Razeen Sally
7. Scale -- Geoffrey West (2/9)
I had set myself a goal of 35 books for the year, but lack of travel meant I could squeeze in a fair bit more. I’ve tried to read more fiction, but not very successfully (most of the books here are non-fiction). Nonetheless, here is my reading list for 2020. (1/9)
2. The Siege of Mecca — Yaroslav Trofimov
3. The Only Plane in the Sky — Garrett Graff
4. American Spy — Lauren Wilkinson
5. Rise and Kill First — Ronen Bergman
6. Return to Sri Lanka — Razeen Sally
7. Scale -- Geoffrey West (2/9)
9. Backstage — Montek Singh Ahluwalia
10. Spillover -- David Quammen
11. The Theory the Would not Die -- Sharon McGraves
12. The End of October -- Lawrence Wright
13. Team of Teams — Stanley McChrystal (3/9)
16. Powerful — Patty McCord
17. The Paladin — David Ignatius
18. India Moving — Chinmaya Tumbe
19. How Innovation Works — Matt Ridley
20. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll (re-read) (4/9)
22. Phantoms in the Brain — VS Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee
23. Seeing like a State — James C Scott
24. El Jefe: The stalking of Chapo Guzman — Alan Feuer (5/9)
26. Viral Storm — Nathan Wolfe (re-read)
27. Breaking Through — Isher Ahluwalia
28. In our Mad and Furious City — Guy Gunaratne
29. The Biggest Bluff — Maria Konnikova
30. The Curse of Bigness — Tim Wu(6/9)
32. Twilight of Democracy — Anne Applebaum
33. Ride of a Lifetime — Bob Iger
34. Alexander the Great — Philip Freeman
35. Loonshots — Safi Bahcall
36. Hillbilly Elegy — JD Vance
37. V2 — Robert Harris (7/9)
39. Saturday — Ian McEwan
40. Warnings: Finding Cassandras to stop Catastrophes — Richard Clarke & RP Eddy
41. One Billion Americans — Matthew Yglesias
42. The Perfect Weapon — David Sanger (8/9)
More from Culture
@bellingcat's attempt in their new book, published by
@BloomsburyBooks, to coverup the @OPCW #Douma controversy, promote US and UK gov. war narratives, and whitewash fraudulent conduct within the OPCW, is an exercise in deception through omission. @BloomsburyPub @Tim_Hayward_
1) 2000 words are devoted to the OPCW controversy regarding the alleged chemical weapon attack in #Douma, Syria in 2018 but critical material is omitted from the book. Reading it, one would never know the following:
2) That the controversy started when the original interim report, drafted and agreed by Douma inspection team members, was secretly modified by an unknown OPCW person who had manipulated the findings to suggest an attack had occurred. https://t.co/QtAAyH9WyX… @RobertF40396660
3) This act of attempted deception was only derailed because an inspector discovered the secret changes. The manipulations were reported by @ClarkeMicah
and can be readily observed in documents now available https://t.co/2BUNlD8ZUv….
4) @bellingcat's book also makes no mention of the @couragefoundation panel, attended by the @opcw's first Director General, Jose Bustani, at which an OPCW official detailed key procedural irregularities and scientific flaws with the Final Douma Report:
@BloomsburyBooks, to coverup the @OPCW #Douma controversy, promote US and UK gov. war narratives, and whitewash fraudulent conduct within the OPCW, is an exercise in deception through omission. @BloomsburyPub @Tim_Hayward_
\u201cAllegations of our involvement with the intelligence services are of course false,\u201d says Bellingcat founder @EliotHiggins https://t.co/55V7sJV9or
— UnHerd (@unherd) February 15, 2021
1) 2000 words are devoted to the OPCW controversy regarding the alleged chemical weapon attack in #Douma, Syria in 2018 but critical material is omitted from the book. Reading it, one would never know the following:
2) That the controversy started when the original interim report, drafted and agreed by Douma inspection team members, was secretly modified by an unknown OPCW person who had manipulated the findings to suggest an attack had occurred. https://t.co/QtAAyH9WyX… @RobertF40396660
3) This act of attempted deception was only derailed because an inspector discovered the secret changes. The manipulations were reported by @ClarkeMicah
and can be readily observed in documents now available https://t.co/2BUNlD8ZUv….
4) @bellingcat's book also makes no mention of the @couragefoundation panel, attended by the @opcw's first Director General, Jose Bustani, at which an OPCW official detailed key procedural irregularities and scientific flaws with the Final Douma Report:
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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".