Philip H. J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafson (eds.)
4.0 out of 5 starsLong Overdue, A Very Fine Start, More Can Be Done, December 23, 2013
I am noticing this book primarily to recommend it at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. I strongly recommend the overview chapter that is provided free within Amazon's Look Inside the Book feature.
The focus of the book, on intelligence services outside Five Eyes (AU, CA, UK, US, NZ) and the major powers, is long overdue. This book is a very fine start, but it falls short on three fronts:
This four-part book is focused on programming techniques and technologies that in the author's opinion can help next generation web applications handle data more “intelligently”. The code samples are implemented in Ruby (and a little bit of Java).
ByMichael Mimo I have always had an interest in AI, machine learning, and data mining but I found the introductory books too mathematical and focused mostly on solving academic problems rather than real-world industrial problems. So, I was curious to see what this book was about.
I have read the book front-to-back (twice!) before I write this report. I started reading the electronic version a couple of months ago and read the paper print again over the weekend. This is the best practical book in machine learning that you can buy today — period. All the examples are written in Java and all algorithms are explained in plain English. The writing style is superb!
WARNING NOTICE: This is not a current book. It is a reprint of the 2010 publication that was out of date across many chapters when it was originally printed. The Routledge book, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies is the far better book if you want something that is both current and moderately innovative.
Final Review:
I've given up on this book. I got through the first fifteen entries, and had a paragraph on each, but finally concluded that on the one hand, the book consists largely of old contributions that have been recycled into a new (2010) collection, and on the other hand, the publisher and editor tried to cram so many contributions into one book that they are all shallow. The average grade across the first fifteen is a C, with two A's and one D. On balance I am increasingly dismayed by the incestuous circle of self-citing “scholars” and a handful of practitioner-authors who are all on the same party line and largely ignorant of everyone else. There are too many errors of omission of both fact and of alternative authoritative references from outside the incest circle.
If you have an interest in my many other summary reviews of books on the craft of intelligence (decision-support), seek out free online Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most). All of my reviews always lead back to their respective Amazon pages.
The worry that emerges from these three lively and thoughtful books is not that democracy faces extinction but that the kind of democracy that now envelops us – with its billionaires and its unemployed millions, its surveillance state and its unelected technocrats, its individual gratification and its ever-narrowing visions of the collective good – is one that previous generations would have regarded as a nightmare. Coggan wants to rouse us, and in different ways so do his fellow authors. But, as de Tocqueville warned, this is the kind of nightmare from which democracy may never awake.
Mark Mazower is professor of history at Columbia University and author of ‘Governing the World: The History of an Idea’ (Penguin)
5.0 out of 5 starsA necessary book — Gabriel's trumpet on true cost of war, December 3, 2013
A necessary book. The author has rendered a national — a global — service in documenting the psychological, social, and physical costs of war, costs that surpass the continually astonishing financial cost of war. SIX STARS (my top 10%)
I read this book this afternoon while waiting for a flight out of Afghanistan. The book hit me hard. Although I have been well aware of the staggering number of disabled veterans and suicidal veterans, most of what this book offers up was new to me and deeply disturbing.
The book also made me realize that as an intelligence officer save in a basement — the occasional big car bomb not-with-standing — my time in Afghanistan has been illusory, in that I have not at any time confronted the blood and guts pathos that this book lays out with a professionalism that is compelling.
The book also forces me to think of my three sons, the youngest of whom is contemplating joining the military after college. While I served and retired honorably from the Marine Corps, my wars were Viet-Nam as the son of an oil man and El Salvador as a clandestine case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. I've seen my share of dead people across all three, but I never personally experienced the deep gut-wrenching mind-altering pathos that this book lays down.
QUOTE (5): [This book] is about the damage done to soldiers, their families, their communities, and the rest of us, who for another half-century at least will pay for their care, their artificial limbs, their medications, their benefits, their funerals, and the havoc they dutifully wrought under orders around the world.”
4.0 out of 5 starsUtterly Brilliant, Eye-Glazing, 505 Pages of Straight Text, 10 Micro-Slides, December 2, 2013
You could read this book a hundred times and learn something new every time. I have taken off one star because the book is too dense by far, with a tiny handful of graphics (no more than 10) all eye glazers that should have been simplified and printed to a full page — 550 pages, pure text. What needs to happen, plain and simple, is a complete do-over — this book needs to go to 620 pages at least, with 60 added graphics, tables, or lists.
01: Among all the books I have read on intelligence, these two books are among the most detailed, structured, critical, and relevant I have read. Both books share the same flaws, flaws that superior editing and a graphics team could easily fix for a second edition, which I would strongly recommend. BEFORE the books go to paperback, they need to be redone. As they are now, the books are too overwhelming for 98% of those who might otherwise benefit.
02 Buried within each chapter are absolute gems of blood-letting romping stomping criticism of the US Intelligence Community at every level (tactical to strategic) across every mission area. This book is startling in its depth and breadth of understanding. The authors are articulate but dense, and I dearly hope they will redo both books to make them more accessible to the vastly larger audience that needs this level of detail, but served up as a quiver of “open” chapters instead of one really dense baseball bat that clubs you to death with compounded words.
Although I am troubled by the book's emphasis on unilateral and largely military-oriented collection (as opposed to making full use of full-spectrum human and open source intelligence (fifteen slices) across the eight tribes and mulitnationally, I whole-heartedly recommend this book for every library on intelligence (decision-support), and I sincerely hope the authors will re-do both books to open them up — more graphics, more white space.
Below, for this particular book, I list the collection contradictions from chapter 4:
