For your summer reading, consider the following books that cover AI and the military, China's rapid industrial ascent, Stanford's production of billionaires more efficiently than citizens, and a paramedic's view from the streets.
Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare Katrina Manson | W. W. Norton | March 2026
An inside account of how a small Pentagon team put AI at the center of American warfare — and how Silicon Valley became involved. Today, Maven Smart System operates in every branch of the US military. NATO began using a version in spring 2025. The book was released as U.S . military action started in Iran.
"Manson repeatedly points out that this was always somewhere between wishful thinking and deliberate obfuscation. Today, machine-driven carnage isn't coming; it's here." - Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang | W. W. Norton | August 2025
Dan Wang's firsthand account of China's industrial and technological ascent arrives with a provocation: America is run by lawyers, China is run by engineers. The book has become required reading for many business and government leaders.
"Compelling, provocative and highly personal - Wang illuminates China like no one else." - John Thornhill, Financial Times
How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University Theo Baker | Penguin Press | May 2026
Part coming-of-age memoir, part autopsy of how Silicon Valley's talent pipeline actually works: VCs prowling freshman orientation, shell companies, yacht parties, and the need to be "discovered" by sophomore year. The author graduates this month.
"A rigorous, self-assured, propulsive, at times terrifying portrait of a dweebocracy that 'sets the agenda for the planet' — in the tradition of Michael Lewis's Wall Street chronicle Liar's Poker." - The New York Times
A Real Emergency: Stories from the Ambulance Joanna Sokol | Strange Light | 2025
The author spent fifteen years providing street medical support across Nevada, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco's Tenderloin, and provides prose that range from hilarious to devastating.
"After a decade on the frontlines of a very broken system, Joanna Sokol has let loose one hell of a memoir: compelling, shocking, funny, galling, urgent, and beautiful. The best I've read in quite some time." - Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff.