I have added to my reading list some additional powerful new books.
I am starting to read THIS IS HOW THEY TELL ME THE WORLD ENDS by Nicole Perlroth. It is part detective story and part chilling projection of the cyberwar environment and how it is worsening year by year. She talks about how she began to cover it as a journalist and she shows the sleuth skills she has had in getting to the bottom of something only now becoming more familiar to millions of Americans. I’m about ¼ of the way through and I am enjoying it, although I find myself stopping often for different reasons. I’ve seen the writer a few times on MSNBC in the past, and she was always very coherent. So it has been interesting to read her writing here, outside of the newspaper format.
I have also begun AFTER THE FALL by Ben Rhodes. I’ve respected his work in the Obama Administration, and I think he has written a sobering volume with a difficult perspective on where the previous administration of THE PREVIOUS GUY left us all. This book stands out for me among many out there. I think Rhodes raises a host of important questions which boil down to: How do we recover from the horrendous damage of recent years? If we can’t go backwards and pretend it never happened – and we certainly can’t – then how do we chart a meaningful way forward that builds on and draws strength from the sorts of value we do want to stand for in the world? There are no easy answers of course, but more and more of us need to be asking these questions and keeping them in mind.
