This has been a good year on the library acquisitions front, though workloads and health have combined to make it difficult to keep up with the pace of acquisition. With any luck the Birthmas period will allow me to do some catching up. The books I’m showing here are the work related ones. I have also continued adding to my personal interest sets, notably the history of warfare, WW2 and WW1, naval history, and aviation history sets, but they are personal interest rather than work related, so will be talked about separately.
August to October
August to October saw an interesting set. I have particularly enjoyed Hoffman’s “Dead Hand,” though perhaps I could phrase that a little differently. I got Podvig’s book after I got into a bit of a back ‘n forth in the comments section of somebody elses blog on the topic of Russian / Soviet SLBMs, which is pretty much a conversation that is only of interest to those interested in such things. I wanted to confirm something that I was quite sure about before putting it into my comment and realized, rather to my surprise and consternation, that I didn’t actually have this book to delve into. Now that I have it I am glad that I do. It is a great reference for Russian / Soviet delivery systems, including some of the technical choices made by the designers.
Recent developments in the area of nuclear nonproliferation have gotten me thinking about my long-ago MA Thesis which offers several useful kernels for how I’m thinking about that regime. T.V. Paul’s book, along with Tannenwald’s “Nuclear Taboo” will be useful contributions that may help me with the process of reworking and re-wording some of those old ideas in a way that is publishable. Remains to be seen.