New Books

A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium by Robert Friedel is a new book on the history of technology in the West, written with an eye to social aspects.  I picked it up last week and am really looking forward to reading it.  It's drawing comparisons to Lewis Mumford's books, but Friedel is thankfully less verbose and this book is more modern in its content and historical approach.  More links: publisher's page, New York Times review.

I haven't decided yet whether I'll read William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor.  I've been overdosing on reading about nuclear weapons lately -- aside from the odd article on our current predicaments, I recently read Gerard Degroot's excellent history of nuclear weapons, The Bomb: A Life, and Nevil Shute's classic novel of post-nuclear apocalypse, On the Beach.  I wasn't that impressed with Langewiesche's Colbert Report interview (I love Colbert, but the interviews often don't work).  From all accounts Langewiesche is an excellent journalist and writer, though, and this is a vitally important topic.

Speaking of weapons, I've been reading Sharon Weinberger's Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld, which just came out in paperback.  She writes about the often far-fetched ideas for weapons that get researched at the Pentagon.  In particular she follows the story of the hafnium bomb, a failed attempt in recent years to develop a new kind of nuclear bomb that could be delivered in a much smaller package (e.g. a hand grenade).  The book is fascinating reading.  Sharon Weinberger has a blog and has also been blogging about defense technology at Wired.

Scott Berkun's The Myths of Innovation looks interesting.  The premise seems similar to Bob Seidenstecker's Future Hype, but directed more towards a business audience.  Scott Berkun has a website.

Steve Talbott has a new book that collects essays from his NetFuture newsletter: Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines.  Talbott draws largely from philosopher Albert Borgmann but has a more accessible writing style.