“If you read only what everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” - Haruki Murakami
Nonfiction: Science, History
Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, …it would be only a matter of days from such a global infection before the infrastructure built to handle this gravest of situations would be in a battle for human existence. Based on dozens of new interviews with experts with high-level political, governmental, medical, and military responsibility, this scenario explores this possibility.
“A chimera weapon … to combine the lethality of rabies with the infectiousness of chickenpox.”
Yes, there have been attempts to create a chimera weapon. In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet Biopreparat scientists attempted to make a chimera weapon – a “booby-trap” weapon. This is done by splicing genes from a virus that causes encephalitis into the genome of Yersinia pestis (plague). The idea is that an infected person would take antibiotics as soon as they know they are or might have been infected with plague. Instead of healing, the antibiotics trigger the chimera weapon’s booby-trap mechanism activating the encephalitis (brain swelling) genes which leads to seizures and then death. The antibiotic treatment turns a plague infection that can be survived, with immediate antibiotic treatment, into a death sentence accompanied by complete destruction of trust in medicine.
“The Soviet bioweapon engineers told the American intelligence officers, who debriefed them, the point was exactly this.
To weaponize trust. To make Americans lose faith in their own government.
To sow existential chaos and cause widespread insurrection.
To send America back to the dark ages of governance, and of medicine.”
Four Wicked Problems that will never go away:
1. Biological attacks are invisible.
2. An aerosolized pathogen is the ultimate nightmare scenario.
3. Law enforcement, first responders, doctors, and nurses will be exposed.
4. Mass panic will likely collapse the medical system.
The point of Biological War: A Scenario isn’t to cause panic. The point is pressure. To demand guardrails, oversight, and accountability before science outruns our ability to control it. I think the same of artificial intelligence – especially within its role in biological and nuclear weapons.
Speaking of AI – while this book was well-worth reading, the unnecessary use of AI generated images really bothered me. Jacobsen credits her son as the ‘creator’ of AI images in the book, all of which could have easily been created by actual artists, rather than just typing a prompt into a generative AI program (which is not art, nor credit worthy). My two cents!
Fiction: Historical Fiction
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, Ross Benjamin (Translator - German)
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026
Publisher’s Description: “G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him.
When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.”
“'But don’t you find it strange, Pabst, that we’re making a movie like this in the middle of the apocalypse? Such a . . . work of art?”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“More like a strange thing.”
“Times are strange. Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that mattered.'”
The Director explores life under Fascist rule in an original and thought-provoking manner. For a man to pursue his passion and gift – filmmaking - he must operate under the thumb of the Reich. Pabst rationalizes the compromises he's making, at least when compared to card-carrying Nazis like Leni Riefenstahl. And while he has some control over the films he's making, he's oblivious to the consequences of his own actions in real life and turns a blind eye to the darkness of Nazi rule.
The Director is a story of passion and obsession, as well as sacrifice, sanity and survival. At times the lines of reality blur and it reads like a dreamlike novel. More than once I was disoriented, but then it is a story that takes place in Nazi occupied Europe! I felt the unease that must have been present at the time, and what it must have been like trying to make sense and stay sane during such incomprehensible, horrific, and hellish times.
Nonfiction: History, Politics
The Elections That Changed the World: Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live by Dana Bash with David Fisher
This is a survey of 15 episodes in electoral history. The book moves chronologically, opening with Julius Caesar's election as praetor in 63 BCE and closing with Nelson Mandela's election as President of South Africa in 1994. It also includes non-political elections like Martin Luther King Jr.'s election to the Montgomery Improvement Association during the Montgomery bus boycott. Many of the elections discussed truly changed the world, some for the better and some for the worse.
My favorite chapter was about the elections of Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, two remarkable women elected to lead their countries in the late 1960s. In both instances their elections made a definite change in their governments. They were visionaries with foresight and courage. They did things at a time when the nations they led were struggling to survive.
The Elections That Changed the World is an enjoyable, approachable history. It isn’t a scholarly deep dive, but it does a good job of providing a closer look at how electoral systems and leadership transitions have developed over time.
Nonfiction: American History
The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy
First, I want to make sure to mention the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where Dave served his entire career. NGA is a United States defense combat support and intelligence agency that collects, analyzes, and distributes geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). There were two incidences which mentioned NGA in The Sisterhood that illustrate how this little-known agency works.
After Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls, an asset told CIA agent Molly Chambers that the head of Boko Haram attended a mosque that “looked like stairs.” A team member from NGA found a building with a stairstep-footprint using satellite imagery. This intelligence led to the rescue of many of the girls.
During the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Letitia Long, director of NGA, used satellite imagery to analyze the amount and type of laundry on a clothesline to determine how many occupants were in a compound. Using her intelligence, the decision was made to attack the compound, ending the hunt for Bin Laden. If there was ever a case for “diversity,” this was it. It’s not that women are better. It’s that they bring something different to the table. This mission was successful because it was “inclusive.”
“Contrary to popular belief, female spies throughout history have traded not on their sexuality, but on their perceived insignificance.”
The Sisterhood is a detailed history of how women have been instrumental in the formation and continued success of the CIA. It is also a helpful history on the CIA itself. I appreciated the neutral stance it took on the CIA as an institution including critiques of the Islamophobia that followed 9/11. It also questions what the CIA’s focus might and should be in the future.
“There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Statistically, zero percent want a caliphate as their form of government.”
Back in 1993 CIA agent Gina Bennett compared Bin Laden to a charismatic, narcissistic, real estate magnate named ... guess who? Interviewed for this book, Gina predicted if somebody is going to destroy our country in the years ahead, it’s not going to be hijackers in planes. The true threat is not coming from without but from within.
Fiction: Historical Fiction
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, 楊双子, Lin King (Translator - Chinese)
Taiwan Travelogue won the 2026 International Booker Prize and the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature. It disguises itself as a rediscovered historical artifact. Although written by Yang Shuang-zi in 2020, the book is framed as a ‘found’ Japanese travelogue from 1938, passed down through decades of fictional translations and academic notes necessitating the use of extensive footnotes. Each chapter is organized around or named after a distinct Taiwanese delicacy, snack, or meal (such as braised minced pork or raw fish), serving as a lens into class, culture, and colonial friction.
Publisher’s Description: “May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.”
Taiwan Travelogue examines the complicated relationship between the colonizer (Japanese mainlander) and the colonized (Taiwanese islander), highlighting microaggressions, blind privilege, and cultural blind spots. Yang forces us to act as detectives, questioning the bias of the Japanese Aoyama. It is essentially a story-within-a-story that uses historical fiction to reveal how power, memory, and language shaped Taiwan’s past. By exposing this lost colonial history, Yang reveals how power dynamics impact even our most intimate relationships.
Fiction: Magical Realism
Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran by Shahrnush Parsipur, Translator Faridoun Farrokh (Persian)
This novel was longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.
Shortly after the 1989 publication of Women Without Men in native Iran, the author, Parsipur, was arrested and jailed. Banned in Iran, this small masterpiece was eventually translated into several languages. Now in political exile, Parsipur lives in California.
Women Without Men follows the interwoven lives of five women including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a prostitute, and a schoolteacher. On different paths, they all arrive at their destiny - a beautiful home and garden on the outskirts of Tehran.
By incorporating the elements of Islamic mysticism with Iranian history, I experienced how difficult it is for women to escape the narrow confines of family and society. This is a very short novel (122 pages) but worth reading to gain some understanding of the limits and injustices Iranian women are forced to endure.
