The miniLab is the most important thing humanity has ever built. — Elizabeth Holmes, as quoted in Bad Blood
John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood was the best book I read in 2018. It exceeds the hype. Carreyrou writes a ripping yarn, and the scope and the scale of the fraud that was Theranos is absolutely astonishing. Jaw-dropping revelations appear on nearly every page.
The book is replete with delusional people — including an array of credulous board members culled from the upper echelons of the U.S. national security establishment — and is chock-a-block full of shameless mendacity, contemptible management, wanton disregard for patient safety, and atrocious failures of governance.
A bona fide tale for our times. Unputdownable!
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It’s strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever-expanding perimeters of our lives.
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian vision of a totalitarian theocracy-of-sorts is chilling. I had a genuine feeling of terror for the protagonist, Offred. I challenge any reader to come away from the book without an appreciation for the importance of reproductive rights.
I mean, we live in a time when the President of the United States has boasted, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
The craziest thing about the book is how it all seems plausible. Indeed, in some corners of the world — including some pockets here in the States — Atwood’s appalling setting is deemed utopian.
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From the first days following September 11, America’s principal goal in Afghanistan was to destroy Al Qaeda. After more than a decade of effort, Al Qaeda remained active, lethal, and adaptive … The fallout from the Afghan war also persuaded Pakistan’s leaders, after 2011, to give up on any strategic partnership with Washington and to deepen ties to Beijing.
I want to live in a country where my kids don’t have to choose between a Bhutto and a Sharif. — Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, former Director General of ISI, as quoted in Directorate S
Steve Coll’s Directorate S continues the story of the United States’s “secret wars” in Afghanistan and Pakistan where Ghost Wars left off, bringing readers forward from September 11th to the waning days of the Obama administration.
Directorate S refers to the units within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that work covertly with the Taliban, Islamic extremist groups in Kashmir, etc., and which have proven to be as irksome a foe as those found northwest of the Durand Line.
Coll’s research is meticulous and the narrative has pace. Candidly the book’s level of detail is probably overkill for most people. But, I once worked on these issues and knew some of the characters, so I found it to be quite enjoyable.
Sometimes, when I ponder career decisions I’ve made, I wonder whether I should have carried on in the world of national security / diplomacy / whatever in the Middle East and South Asia.
“Would I have made a difference?” I ask myself.
Certainly, I could have made an impact at the tactical level. But at the strategic level? Would any of it have mattered?
Coll’s book offers a resounding answer: lol, absolutely not.
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We seek too great a sovereignty over our history; and it is wiser to imagine ourselves as rather preparing the ground where many of the most important things in life will grow of themselves. We underestimate the importance of peace and stability in this respect — the importance of peace as the necessary condition for the development of human reasonableness and for the proper balancing of the activities of men.
We might say that even if the United States found itself master of the world, it would become less likely that a man of reasonableness and moderation would be elected to the Presidency.
Herbert Butterfield, whom I discovered in a footnote in Toynbee’s A Study of History, has appeared several times on this blog. His musings constitute a veritable gift that keeps on giving.
Christianity, Diplomacy and War [1953] is yet one more deeply edifying lecture series, with this one’s aim centering on how the beliefs and forces of Christianity may be used to solve problems — be they at the level of human nature, the nation-state, or the international system.
But the book’s also quite a bit more: a discourse on the value of history and the utility of trust, a lesson on the universality of human sin and culpability, a plea for limiting (and limited) war, and an exhortation to avoid ideology and self-righteousness.
It is a welcome reminder that the individual human being is the appropriate unit of analysis.
Spread the love y’all. Happy holidays.
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