Four Books for the Summer Ahead
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.