More Recent Reading

Slack by Tom DeMarco. Dorset House
Another superb piece of work from the legendary Tom DeMarco. The book, as he so aptly puts it, is for people who don't have time to read it, so it's designed to take the length of a flight from New York to Chicago to read.
For all that it's short, it's packed with good advice. The central thesis is that many modern corporations are unable to respond to changes in the marketplace because they are now completely optimised for what they already do and sell, and have pared the staff down to a minimum which gives them what they believe is total efficiency.
The problem is that this leaves no one, especially the middle management, at whom the book is especially aimed, with any time for innovation when something comes along which undermines the current way of doing business.  Along the way the book looks at Busyness, Burnout, Aggressive schedules, leadership, and risk, to name but a few topics covered.
This book is a great read for anyone interested in modern business, but I'd especially recommend it for anyone who is just starting to take up management responsibilities.
Highly recommended.

Armageddon by Max Hastings. Pan Books
This is a war book with a difference, covering the last eight months of the Second World War in Europe. Unlike most of its peers it is a story not just of generals and battles, but of the suffering that goes with modern warfare, and an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the various armies.
If you want a blow-by-blow account of the various battles of this period, Arnhem, the Oder crossing, the Battle of the Bulge, and lesser known, but no less lethal affairs such as Hurtgen Forest, then this is not the book for you. If you want to get some idea of what it was like to live and fight in northern Europe in the last months of the war, then I can't recommend a better book.
The book makes extensive use of eyewitness accounts from the civilians, soldiers, airmen, and prisoners to build a portrait of suffering that I have rarely previously encountered. As a game designer who has previously had a war game published, I've always worried about the inability of computer games to give an indication of what modern warfare means in human terms. This book brings it home in no uncertain fashion.
The book also makes an interesting assessment of how the different armies fought, and why they fought in the fashion they did. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions, but I think they represent an important contribution to a debate that deserves more airing. Having said that, there is a definite tendency to preach. Hastings has a very clear set of political views, and in this aspect of the book he is clearly wants his view to prevail. Even so, as long as the reader is aware of this, Hastings' contribution to the debate is very valuable.
Recommended.

Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox by Victoria Finlay. Sceptre
I got this book in a special hardback edition as part of my membership of the Folio Society, but the text is the same as the commercially available edition.
This isn't a book I would have bought unless I happened to find it while browsing in a bookshop, and I started reading it in the rather desultory way in which one does when given a book for free.
It didn't take long to get hooked! It's a collection of stories about the author's search for how the natural colours used for dye are made  - going through each colour of the rainbow in turn.
The first synthetic dyes were invented 150 years ago and, as Ms Finlay discovered, that's long enough for the making of the original, organic dyes to have died out. However, in most cases, persistence paid off and she was able to visit the original sources and discover the stories behind the processes.
I learned a lot from this book, which is one you can either just dip into for individual tales, or read at length straight through. I would be happy to recommend it to anyone with an enquiring mind.

The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A history of modern Tibet since 1947 by Tsering Shakya. Pimlico
I was very impressed with this book. It is one of the few books about modern history that I've read which tries to lay out the motivations of both sides in the conflict. That's not to say that the book does not take a stand - it is firmly pro-Tibet.
However, only by understanding the motivations of the Chinese can you understand why it is that after 50 years of Communist Chinese occupation - three generations, effectively - they have failed to stabilise the situation and wean the Tibetans away from their culture and religion.
In laying out the Chinese motivations, and tactical blunders and successes of the Tibetan leadership, the author succeeds magnificently. At the end of the book, while the reader's sympathy will undoubtedly lie with the much abused Tibetans, there will also be an understanding of why the Beijing government has plowed such enormous resources, both human and hard cash, into the area over the past 50 years. Significantly, the reader will also have some idea of the way in which western governments deliberately hindered the attempts by the Tibetans to internationalise their plight.
The only very minor criticism I have is that a preliminary chapter giving a brief outline of the history of Tibet prior to 1947 would have been useful. Tibet, a bit like Poland in Europe, seems to be one of those countries that is fated to emerge into history as an independent entity at intervals, only to be seized by one of its more powerful neighbours and vanish again for a while.
Highly recommended.

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