Join 📚 Roger's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .
But there’s a hitch. Perhaps it’s one that you’ve anticipated, a critique that’s been nagging at you this entire time. Reverse engineering a winning formula, pinpointing the features that make it unique, and re-creating it wholesale rarely results in the power of the original. No, chances are, it will be missing something. But what?
Decoding Greatness
Ron Friedman
The durability of concrete structures varies widely: while it is impossible to offer an average longevity figure, many will deteriorate badly after just two or three decades while others will do well for 60–100 years. This means that during the 21st century we will face unprecedented burdens of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal (with, obviously, a particularly acute problem in China), as structures will have to be torn down—in order to be replaced or destroyed—or abandoned.
How the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil
The manual was intended to provide a framework for addressing counterinsurgency generically. The strength of the manual was its insistence that the people be treated with respect. However, it professed a theory of the social contract—give the people services and honest governance and the people would turn against the insurgents—that did not address the dynamics of Afghanistan. The guidance did not say what to do when the people remained neutral and the government remained dishonest. It was silent about Islamist religiosity as the ideology fueling the enemy, laid out no practical steps for restraining corruption, and ignored tribalism and the existence of a sanctuary next door. It accorded total sovereignty to the host government that had failed (hence the need for Americans to fight), thus rendering all American efforts captive to the whims of flawed foreign leaders.
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise