The first in a series of two mysteries based on the conflicting unreliable narrator pair of a middle-aged detective and a precocious teenage girl. It was fun and the texture of its 1980’s California setting was enjoyable. I will read the next one.
WorldCat » Amazon »Kaplan is a journalist who focuses on national security and this history of cyberwar focuses much more on the security implications of computer surveillance, intrusion, and sabotage than it does on the mechanics of it. It’s a useful history from that perspective. I listened to it as an audiobook and did so over too long a time, so this may be on me, but I have the impression that the construction of this story from anecdotal episodes meant that there was not a lot of thematic development. I am glad to have read it, but also want more.
WorldCat » Amazon »I appreciate this genre of computing histories in which the author(s) have a keen sense of the technical detail they are covering and recreate historical technical decisions at a relatively detailed granularity. It is not so specific as The Cuckoo’s Egg, but it does remind me of that in this regard. The authors tell the story of the creation of the ARPANET in great detail and signal towards its evolution into the Internet. As I get more interested in reading platform studies, I wish there were a bit more critical analysis of the historical sources, but the work is also twenty years old and written for a trade press, so this is not a surprising omission.
WorldCat » Amazon »An atmospheric spy story set in 1989 Berlin with defections, double crosses, and a stark visual style. The action unravels in a series of effective flashbacks from a debriefing of the protagonist. I’ve had this one lying around for forever and regret that it’s taken my desire to see the film adaptation Atomic Blonde to finally get into it. Will move on to the second book in the series immediately.
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