So far I was able to stick to my routine, but I will not fill this blog with book reviews; others have written them already.
Victor posted a review of "Edward O. Thorp: A Man For All Markets" and Dave wrote his own review.
Also, I do not need to review "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA", because the CIA has already posted one.
But I want to mention that their review has the title wrong - it misses the "the" of "the CIA". Of course, this is a minor issue and of little importance compared to all the blunders and mistakes the CIA made according to the book.
Btw my favorite story in the book is not about the CIA, but about its WW2 precursor OSS.
At some point it developed the plan to burn down Tokyo, which consisted of mostly wooden houses at the time, using large numbers of bats with modified small firecrackers mounted on their backs; the bats would hide under the wooden roofs and, hanging upside down, ignite them after a while. We don't know how exactly the plan failed, but it was some kind of blue print for several harebrained schemes and blunders to come ...
4 comments:
Perhaps I should aspire to your more laconic style.
I am just too lazy to write real book reviews - like you do.
Did you relate to Thorpe's description of his transition from academia to business as Dave seemed to?
The one book I could really relate to was the one by Emanuel Derman: My Life as a Quant.
Unfortunately, I knew already quite a bit about Thorpe before I read the book, so there was not too much new in it for me - except his very early years as student in school and university and this part was quite interesting.
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