Michael Rose, the hero of “The Fourth Order”, is the CFO of a company seeking to acquire a large IT firm.  The IT firm is a front organization for a secret government agency and the agency’s directors don’t want it to be acquired.  In the course of the novel Rose finds out who he’s really working for and discovers that most of the things and people in his life – including his wife – are not what or who they seem to be.  The plot of this fast-paced thriller probably wouldn’t stand up to logical analysis and the characters aren’t all that fascinating, but despite its flaws it’s a fun light read.

This is a pretty good history of the origins of blogging.  There are some good stories here, and Rosenberg does a particularly good job on the history of political bloggers.  He tends to ignore tech bloggers and has far too little to say about RSS and RSS readers.  His analyses of “what it’s becoming” and “why it matters” have far less substance than the historical parts of the book though he has some interesting observations on the interaction of blogs and traditional media.

The book’s hero, Marcus, is a 17-year-old student skilled in evading high school surveillance.  After being rounded up in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing in San Fransisco he devotes himself to undermining the invasive procedures put in place by the Department of Homeland Security (George Orwell’s ghost must still be laughing at that name).  He’s David fighting Goliath, and some of his tactics have unfortunate side effects.

The book deals with some important themes and contains a lot of useful information about security systems and the measures people can take to guard their privacy.  For those who say “I have nothing to hide”, I recommend Marcus’s argument: “It’s not about doing something shameful. It’s about doing something private. It’s about your life belonging to you.”

This young adult novel about the Surveillance State should be assigned reading in American high schools.   Some mildly explicit sexual content will probably keep it off public school reading lists.  This is an unfortunate mistake on Doctorow’s part since it provides a cover for book-banners who are actually more threatened by the book’s real message: that the US Constitution should trump the fear-based excesses of our “protectors”.

If my kids were still in high school I’d want them to read this book.  Ironically, I read it the week that the following story broke:

The FBI is investigating allegations made against the Lower Merion School District in a lawsuit by the parents of a student. The lawsuit claims school officials used a remote-controlled Webcam to spy on their son, a high school student.

…

According to the suit, the district provided laptops to high school students as part of a technology initiative, and did not notify families the laptops were equipped with Webcams that could be turned on remotely. The family alleged in the suit they did not learn of the capability until school officials accused Blake Robbins of “improper behavior in his home” and cited as evidence a photograph from the Webcam embedded in the laptop.

(Via eWeek.com)

When I compare that to my high school experience in the early 1970’s, where, at our all-white working class Catholic school, I could read Eldrige Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” for an English class, debate the merits of socialism in world cultures class,  where there were no surveillance cameras, and where, despite all that,  none of my classmates have yet become terrorists, I wonder what has  happened to my country.

(The book has some excellent “afterwords” by several different authors and a useful bibliography.  The entire book is available for free download.)

Six hundred pages of very similar interviews with prominent software developers would probably put most people to sleep.  As a programmer with three decades of experience, though, I found this pretty fascinating.  The book has it’s faults: the interviews don’t seem very interactive -  Seibel seems more interested in his prepared questions then in following up on interesting things his subjects mention.  It’s also biased towards the craft’s elder statesmen.  That’s not entirely bad, especially when the old guys’ opinions agree with mine.  For example, many of them are not fond of IDE’s, think C++ is an abomination, have little interest in Java, and some shun debuggers.  OK, I’m a dinosaur.

Many of the interview subjects equate programming more with literature than with math or even science, something I’ve long thought to be the case.  Writing code and writing prose seem to use the same parts of the brain.  It has never seemed odd to me that the father of Perl,  Larry Wall (who is notably absent from “Coders at Work”), was a linguistics major.

This would be an excellent book for somebody considering taking up the software trade.  It’s also a good book for people who want an “inside baseball” look at software development.

“Makers” is an intriguing book without much of a plot.  In a near-future, post-economic-collapse America, two hackers in an abandoned Florida strip mall create clever mechanical art largely through the use of 3D printers and run afoul of corporate interests, namely Disney. Jimmy Buffet meets “Neuromancer“.  Even though the plot is weak, the novel is full of interesting ideas and characters you end up caring about.   Even though it could use some tight editing, I enjoyed this one a lot and it pairs nicely with “Daemon” and “Freedom (TM)“.

(For a non-fiction look at cutting edge – ha – manufacturing technologies, see “Fab“.)

The follow-up to “Sword Song“  is vivid, exciting, and graphic but I’d really like to see the Uhtred saga move forward rather than go in circles.  It’s good stuff, but I wish Cornwell’s would let his characters change over time.

Like Polsky’s first memoir (“I Bought Andy Warhol“), this book consists mostly of anecdotes about the world of contemporary art.  During the time covered in this volume, Polsky made the transition from dealer to “art financial advisor”.  Consequently,  it’s more about dollars than art, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless, albeit a little impersonal compared to his first book.

It was interesting to read this book, which is about cyber warfare apparently waged by China, during the week that Google made it’s allegation against China about attempts to penetrate Google’s systems.  Note that I said “apparently”, which is a bit of a spoiler but the real culprit is telegraphed so early in the book that I’m not spoiling much of a surprise.  (So if fictional culprits can make an attack look like it came from China, couldn’t real attackers do the same thing?)

Clarke, a former senior White House advisor to three presidents, uses fiction to make a convincing  case that the US infrastructure is very vulnerable to technological attacks.   His protagonists are plausible, his villains two-dimensional, and his thriller-writing workmanlike.

This is the conclusion to the story begun in “Daemon” and shares most of that book’s virtues.  It’s a little less grounded in present-day reality than its predecessor and is more of a quest with comic book enemies than “Daemon” was.  The most interesting parts were the sections set in the self-sufficient communities built by the Darknet followers and attempts by the forces of corporate oppression to destroy them.  This book is hard to put down, but less though-provoking than “Daemon”.

This memoir is an amusing series of anecdotes about the art business of the 80’s loosely organized around the author’s quest for a Warhol painting that he could afford.  I’m not a Warhol fan and not fond of modern art, but I enjoyed Polsky’s stories, many of which left me wondering how some of of these dealers manage to stay in business.  It’s about buying, selling, dealing, partying, and posturing.

This retracing of Thoreau’s 1839 boat trip sounded promising, but I really didn’t enjoy it.  If my copy had been a library book I would have returned it unfinished, but since I had received it as a gift (at my own request) I felt obligated to finish it.  By the second chapter I was already sick of Leff’s monotonous repetition of the phrase “deep travel”, not to mention the wooden – and, I suspect, made up – dialog he stuck in the mouths of his traveling companions, who must have been terribly embarrassed by the way he portrayed them.

“Daemon” is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.  Its central character is a dead millionaire computer game designer who has left behind a hidden network of programs to wreck havoc on the world.  His system, the “daemon” of the title, is  manipulative, remorseless, and will be familiar to anyone who has even been defeated by non-player-characters in a computer game.

Some of Suarez’s characters fight the daemon and, as the book progresses, some choose to join it in what amounts to a world-wide cult .   The plot shifts from a story about those who fight the daemon to one about the nature of the war that the daemon has been designed to wage.  To say much more would spoil the fun.

Suarez, a computer consultant, knows his stuff.  The security holes and hacker antics he uses are real or close enough to real to be plausible.  Later in the story some of the technology he incorporates is a little over the top, but by that time the reader has been sucked into the story and everything seems authentic.   Suarez may be to computer security what Tom Clancy is to submarine warfare.

If the book has a flaw, it’s the ending.  After coming close to falling apart after a chase sequence that is too much like an action movie Suarez  springs a couple of surprises but doesn’t  give the reader much of plot resolution.  This isn’t such a big flaw now that the sequel is available,  but it’s rude of authors to leave their readers with so many loose ends.

Complaints about the ending aside, “Daemon” is a great read.  It reminded me of “Neuromancer” in that they both create engrossing  fictional worlds based on our current hopes and fears about technology.  I’m looking forward to the sequel.

For about 10 years John Drewe sold dozens of fake paintings in the English art market.  The art was the work of his partner-in-crime,  John Myatt, a failed painter.    The frauds all had a history, or “provenance”, consisting of bills of sale, exhibition catalogs, and correspondence recording their passage through time.  It’s provenance that seals the value of a work of art, and  Drewe was smart enough to realize that a provenance that looked authentic would cover up any anachronisms or faults in Myatt’s painting.  Drewe, posing as a philanthropist, gained access to museum archives in Britain and not only removed material that he used for forge documents, but inserted material so that a prospective buyer of one of Myatt’s fakes would, on researching the work’s history, find an impeccable pedigree.

“Provenance” is the story of Drewe’s criminal scheme which not only defrauded collectors and dealers but which polluted the history of art by his meddling in the archival records.   Myatt co-operated with the authors, and the sections on his part of the crime are vivid.  Drewe didn’t talk to the authors (and probably would have lied if he had), so his part in the story is fuzzier.  I was left with the feeling that there is a lot more to this story (for example, Drewe’s real past and the mentioned-in-passing works sold by Drewe but not painted by Myatt) than the authors were able to dig up.

In addition to being a good story, it raises questions about the market’s valuation of art, for if buyers are happy with a work, why should its history matter so much?

In this small volume, the author of “Memoirs of a Book Snake” recounts some of his experiences collecting books on stage magic.  It’s a pleasant read for someone who likes books about books (as I do) but the most interesting parts are his stories of visiting now-vanished magic stores.

This is a history of stage magic.  More preciously, it’s the story of certain large stage magic illusions that, mostly, use mirrors.  Now I know what the phrase “it’s all done with mirrors” really means.

Steinmeyer’s attempt to use Houdini’s disappearing elephant as the mystery that structures the book doesn’t work very well:  the book reads like a series of loosely-connected essays.  The author is at his best when describing specific magic acts, making it possible to imagine yourself in the audience of many famous magicians of the past.  Also interesting are his descriptions of how magic changed with the end of vaudeville as well as his repeated but always well-illustrated point that it’s the presentation, not the “secret”, that makes for a great illusion and how a well-conceived and executed trick is as much a psychological manipulation as a mechanical invention.

I like thrillers, and I like books set in Northern Ireland.  Given that this book is a thriller set in Northern Ireland, I expected to enjoy it.  It’s a well-written page-turner about a former IRA killer, recently released from prison, who is haunted – literally – by his dead victims.   Naturally the victims want revenge.  The setting is interesting: Ireland is at peace and newly prosperous and some of the former combatants are thriving while others struggle and old divisions still exist.  The big flaw – a fatal one – is that there is not a single good person in the book.  The protagonist isn’t a hero and his life, while sad, isn’t really tragic.  Everyone’s motives are suspect and no one earns the reader’s affection or even sympathy.  I enjoyed reading it but its grimness left a bad aftertaste.