Saturday, September 15, 2007

What is Nicholas Thompson reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at Wired Magazine who has also worked for Legal Affairs, the New America Foundation, and The Washington Monthly.

One book he tagged:
Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly, the third part in his epic cycle about the Cold War. It covers a lot of the same ground that I'm covering in my book on Paul Nitze and George Kennan -- and it covers it quite well. The structure is a little jarring: he opens with a chapter on Chernobyl, takes one through the life of Gorbachev, and then begins a narrative about US policy from Truman through the end of the conflict. It's very good. If it's not as strong as The Making of the Atomic Bomb, that's setting a rather high standard. [read on]
Thompson's book on George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and the Cold War is scheduled to come out in 2009, published by Henry Holt. Among the articles he's written based on it: "Mirror Image: Could Iraq Be Vietnam in Reverse? What George F. Kennan's 1966 Senate Testimony Can Tell Us About Iraq in 2006."

Visit Nick Thompson's website.

Writers Read: Nicholas Thompson

--Marshal Zeringue