I don't usually go for short stories as a format, but Ted Chiang is just a master of his craft. And even though the stories in this collection were written over a period of many years, it is amazing how there still a coherent set of themes which tie them all together.
Meh, don't have a ton to add besides the title pretty well captures the contents. The bigraphical details of these guys’ life are interesting but I still find 20th century philopsophy, especially in the style of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, to be impenetrable nonesense.
I think I have actually read the kindle version of this book a couple years back but bought a hard copy when picking up a bunch of Scott Anderson works. At some point it clicked that I had read it before and gave up on the re-read but I would still recommend it (although I guess not for re-reading….). The subtitle is pretty accurate for this one, it is ostensibly a biography of T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) but it is more about the geopolitical jockeying by European colonial…
