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blitheringidiolect's review against another edition
4.0
Bit dense. Bit dry. But with a well placed F-bomb and a Trump voice for a Trump quote that made me very happy. I'd give it a full five if I hadn't zoned out so much. The parts that held my interest the best were, unfortunately, the parts that I already knew the most about.
alyssavandergriff's review against another edition
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
yudadiga's review against another edition
4.0
A walk through on the politics that governed the way astrophysics and science could progress.
firstwords's review against another edition
1.0
As someone who has worked in some of the industries he describes, there is so much wrong or flat out untrue in this book. He draws connections that are not there, and makes tenuous connections at best for the most part, when they do exist.
His history skips over facts and actually repeats wikipedia-level research that is untrue. This was not a well-researchd book, and I dont know how peer-reviewed it was by people who could attest to things. There is a very clear political/policy drive to the book. It is a book written with an agenda, not simply to inform. Sometimes, when authors do that, confirmation bias gets to them.
However, I didn't get past about page 80-90, so it may have cleared up later.
His history skips over facts and actually repeats wikipedia-level research that is untrue. This was not a well-researchd book, and I dont know how peer-reviewed it was by people who could attest to things. There is a very clear political/policy drive to the book. It is a book written with an agenda, not simply to inform. Sometimes, when authors do that, confirmation bias gets to them.
However, I didn't get past about page 80-90, so it may have cleared up later.
ray_oflight's review against another edition
3.0
interesting topic, but feels unfocused and a little too defensive in parts.
katekempton's review against another edition
4.0
not for the causally interested folks. this is a deep, nerdy info dump into the full diplomatic and technical spectrum of modern militarization. expect all the jargon, all the dissertation-length explanations, and all the sprinkles of deGrasse Tyson’s humor and outrage.
oramayjutila's review against another edition
I wanted to like this. But from the very beginning, there was a lot of jumping around between different historical points. Also, NDT seems to use a lot of jargon that makes the sentence meaningless by the time you get to the end of it. Like sitting in a corporate meaning where they just use a lot of company buzz words that sound smart but don’t mean anything. It’s a shame. I loved listening to Courtney B. Vance’s voice, but even he couldn’t get me into this one.
karastotle's review against another edition
3.0
This was a slow read for me. The book's essential premise — that science/astrophysics and the military work closely together and even enable one another — is hardly groundbreaking, but it was certainly eye-opening to see specific examples of just how closely connected these two disciplines are. The book included a lot more far-off history than I thought, going all the way back to the very beginning of the human race and proceeding from there. The acronyms and jargon could definitely be a bit much, and sometimes it read more like a list than a book. This is probably not a book that a casual nonfiction reader would enjoy; I had a hard time getting through it and frequently had to take breaks. I think that a sharp edit to pare down the info and reorganize it more logically would have made this a lot more enjoyable and accessible.