The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare - Christian Brose

The Kill Chain is another one of those library holds I only half-remember making. The writer, Christian Brose, was a long-time advisor to Senator John McCain, and in this book extends McCain’s vision for an evolution in military thinking better adapted to current geopolitical threats: namely China. He paints a chilling picture of China’s rapidly advancing military strength, which is due to put it on par or even above American power in the near future if great efforts aren’t made to course correct. His points are clear and well reasoned, though a bit repetitive, and I found most chapters orbiting around the same few arguments, namely:

• America’s post-Cold War military has made assumptions about its capability—namely, that it can outmaneuver and outgun its opponents and will fight exclusively on their territory—that are increasingly untrue given the rise of Russia and especially China.

• Military acquisitions focuses too much on platforms (aircraft carriers, jets, etc) that are expensive and large, rather than a modular force made up of large amounts of more expendable components.

• Communication is far too hampered between forces, limiting their ability to close kill chains effectively (a kill chain being not necessarily about killing, but the operative process of identifying information, communicating it to the right source, and acting on it).

• Artificial Intelligence will play a critical role in the future of warfare by eliminating much of the mental “grunt work” of locating targets, calculating options, etc, presenting commanders with a clear high level picture of the battlefield

While Brose spends most of the book hammering these points, he does offer a more hopeful conclusion wherein he points to how America can cope with military parity with China, and how this could in some ways actually play to our advantage. It was an interesting book, written competently. I trust Brose’ expertise, though his example of the chilling effect of modern warfare—Russia’s capture of Crimea—makes me wonder where this supposed elite fighting force disappeared to during the invasion of Ukraine.

Remain In Love - Chris Frantz

I’ve been a huge fan of Talking Heads since university, so it was only a matter of time before I picked up Remain in Love. The book is not a chronicle of the band itself, but a memoir of its drummer and founding member Chris Frantz, which is actually more interesting. I’m already familiar with the contour’s of the band’s rise and untimely dissolution, and much of the popular press for the band has focused on its frontman David Byrne. I love and admire Byrne as an artist, but I was also aware going in that his relationship with the band ended on fairly sour terms, and that the responsibility for this was largely his.

Frantz is not shy about pointing this out.. He acknowledges (implicitly for the most part, but also outright in a couple of instances) how important Byrne was to the success of Talking Heads, while also emphasizing that it was never a one man show. He makes a strong case for his own contribution, and to an even greater extent that of his wife and creative partner Tina Weymouth. The assumptions of the music industry at the time were that Talking Heads was essentially a vehicle for Byrne’s genius, and the other heads were little more than musically adept side players. I must admit I’d made similar assumptions myself. Frantz sets the record straight, and rightly points to his and Weymouth’s work wtih tom Tom Club as evidence that the talent pool in Talking Heads was deep all around.

Despite recalling some less than pleasant moments of friction with Byrne, there is little bitterness in Frantz’s book, and his treatment of his former bandmate seems pretty evenhanded. There were a couple of anecdotes that I thought were petty to include (the thing about the turd on the bed was second hand and unverified, and though Frantz admits this, he shouldn’t have spread the rumor without knowing for sure it was true). For the most part though, he gives credit where credit is due.

My favourite parts of the book were naturally those describing Talking Heads’ ascent, and Frantz does not skimp here. More than half the book follows the band from its early days at CBGB to its pre-stardom tours. His discussion of how Remain In Light was made were fascinating, as were the anecdotes of the creative foment of New York in the mid 70s. It truly is mind-boggling to think that the foundation of twenty years of music were built in a few square blocks of crime-ridden Manhattan.

Frantz writes in an easy, plain-spoken, conversational way. There are no poetic flourishes, and some ocassional repetitiveness that makes it feel almost like it was dictated. This isn’t a problem, and is vastly preferable to literary overreach, which can be jarring if not done well. Frantz must have kept a tour diary, because he is able to give great detail about cities visited and sets played, though there are some moments where memories may be muddled or conflated (he has a young Damon Albarn, singer from Blur, tending bar in a London hotel during their 1977 tour, when he would have been only nine years old. I believe this happened, but probably on a later tour).

Above all, his profoung love for Tina Weymouth shines through and is a pleasure to see. As a rare celebirty couple that has stayed together since young adulthood, I’ve long admired Frantz and Weymouth. Reading about how much he loves her still warms my heart. May they Remain in Love for many more years to come.

If it Bleeds - Stephen King

For a writer famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for penning novels with four digit page numbers, Stephen King has always been remarkably good at novellas. If It Bleeds collects four of them, all previously unpublished. They’re a diverse lot, but consistent in quality, and in a broader theme of morality and hard decisions.

Mr Harrigan’s Phone is classic King, and of the four feels the most like one of his old short stories—tales where an ordinary person brushes up against dark forces he can’t quite understand, and backs away form them unbroken but changed. king metes out tough justice, which I’ve always appreciated, and you can’t help rooting for Harrigan even if, as the narrator does, you feel a little ill at ease with the consequences of his powers.

The Life of Chuck is, arguably, the most experimental story King has ever written, and a good rebuff to critics who brush off his writing as lackign literary merit. I’ve always pushed back at this assumption, as King, while no stranger to the potboiler plot, writes real people, not cardboard cutouts, and rich themes invaraibly thrum beneath the pulpy action on the surface of the page. Here those themes are given more spotlight, but still anchored enough to character to avoid feeling showy, as if it were some vanity project to prove his literary chops. The plot is hard to describe—its actually more like three different, each humming their own note to make a sad, autumnal chord—but gets to the notion that there is in each of us a world, perhaps a universe.

If It Bleeds steals the show, as was obviously intended—the collection’s not called Life of Chuck, after all—thanks to the welcome presense of Holly Gibney. With Castle Rock, Giliead, and the dark townships of Derry largely pushed aside, King has very ably built a new world through hir David Hodge novels, which have spilled beyond the initial trilogy into other works, notably The Outsider. This story plays as a kind of sequel to that one, with another shapechanger on the loose, which Holly must track down and destroy. The action is slow to build, giving the story lots of breathing room where King can show his strengths in building relationships between characters. It has always bee nthese, more than fantastic creatures or outrageous landscapes, that have formed the firmest foundation of King’s worlds.

Rat finishes the collection. It’s another troubled writer story, and while this is not my favourite King mode, I must admit this story held me with its excellent use of mood. Doom builds like a fever before breaking in a turn of events that it both jarring and graceful, offering a glimpse into King’s assessment of the creative process, and the old notion of writers as mediums for a distant and ghostly place, where spirits give gifts that always have strings attached. And at least this time we’re granted a semi-supernatural reason why every King character farts out bestsellers.

A solid collection, and evidence of King in top form.

Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy - David Frum

Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy is the clear successor to Trumpocracy, which admittedly I haven't read. However closely it parallels or responds to that book, it is sufficiently self contained to stand on it’s own as an indictment of Trump and a roadmap to a world when he is gone.

The book has two sections. The first itemizes the various cultural factors that led to Trump's election, and describes the consequences of this event for American institutions. The second half offers a more optimistic tone, providing solutions for healing the country culturally and politically. It focuses less on strategies for beating Trunp himself, and more on undoing the fractures left in his wake, crack that he did not cause, but has deepened and widened during his four years in office.

Frum's prose is polished and clear, buoyed by moments of dry humor, but also laser focused on its arguments. He doesn’t waste a lot of time with rhetoric, which serve's the book’s purpose fine. It was a quick and engaging read, the sort of timely book you appreciate but dont necessarily need to come back to time and time again. As a vision for a future United States, I can only hope it comes to fruition.