Morning links (Neil Sheehan!)

How did I miss this? Neil Sheehan, author of the titanic A Bright Shining Lie, has a new book on the way. This one is called a Fiery Piece in a Cold War. Like A Bright Shining Lie, it has a little known figure, in this case General Bernard Schriever, who built the intercontinental ballistic missile system. The New York Times has a feature with this interesting quote.

Though Mr. Sheehan did not conceive of them in this fashion, the two books, the first beginning with a funeral, the second ending with one, are mirror images. “A Fiery Peace” is a success story, in which the military, or a part of it anyway, instead of becoming mired in a folly of its own creation, prevailed over bureaucracy and incompetence and probably averted catastrophe.

Sci fi guy and environmental crisis Cassandra Kim Stanley Robinson has an article in the New Scientist about British science fiction. He decries the genre ghetto and exhorts readers to broaden their reading horizons. The issue has eight (very) short stories from the likes of Justina Robson, Ken MacLeod and Stephen Baxter.

Check out this list of what classic books would be called if released today. The quality varies greatly, but there are gems like this one:

Then: Quotations from Chairman Mao (or "the Little Red Book")
Now: You're Telling Me Comrade! Hilarious but helpful sayings from China's Best Selling Author