Summer Reading Recap: From FORTH to the War in the Pacific

Eli Bendersky’s quarterly reading list spans technical texts, military history, and fiction in three languages. The standout engineering pick this time is Threaded Interpretive Languages by R.G. Loeliger, a late-1970s guide to implementing FORTH-style languages in Z80 assembly. Bendersky finds the book solid, with useful diagrams and dry humor, though he notes it has inevitably dated. On the software-career front, System Design Interview by Alex Xu draws a lukewarm review: Bendersky calls it repetitive with few unique insights, and criticizes the physical print quality—no index, vague diagrams, and minimal editing.

History and Politics

Two books tackle grand historical themes with different results. Ian Toll’s Twilight of the Gods concludes his Pacific War trilogy with detailed tactical accounts of the 1944–1945 naval battles. While praising the readability of such a large work, Bendersky wishes Toll had devoted more space to strategic questions—particularly how the U.S. scaled its industrial output while mobilizing millions of soldiers.

Winston Churchill’s The Age of Revolution, the third volume of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, covers 1688–1815. Bendersky observes that despite the title, the focus is squarely on England; the American Revolution and War of 1812 appear mainly through British interactions, with substantial attention to Napoleon. He finds the series gains interest as it approaches the modern era.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson is a theory-driven economic history centering on extractive versus inclusive political institutions. Bendersky judges the framework insightful but the execution scattered, as the authors jump between examples. He appreciates that they are willing to make forward-looking predictions, not just analyze the past. Paul Kriwaczek’s Babylon offers a contrasting, more straightforward historical account of Mesopotamia from Eridu to the fall of Babylon.

Technology and Biography

Two recent non-fiction works cover technology leadership and graphics history. The Nvidia Way by Tae Kim is a well-crafted biography of Jensen Huang and his company, tracing the path from foundation to 2024. Less successful for Bendersky is A Biography of the Pixel by Alvy Ray Smith, the Pixar co-founder. Despite its authoritative subject matter, he finds it heavy on exhaustive listings of names and project details, with only some engaging sections.

Fiction and Language

Sergei Dovlatov’s The Compromise, read in the original Russian, is a comedic semi-autobiographical account of Soviet-era journalism and the absurdities of reporting within party constraints. Bendersky calls the writing excellent but the language occasionally challenging. Sofía Segovia’s El murmullo de las abejas, read in Spanish, evokes comparisons to One Hundred Years of Solitude, with the mystical, multi-generational narrative of an aristocratic Mexican family

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Demon Copperhead follows an orphaned boy through the Appalachian foster system in the early 2000s. Bendersky agrees the Pulitzer Prize acknowledges the author’s serious treatment of the opioid crisis, though he sees less to admire in its literary style itself. The Color of Our Sky by Amita Trasi is an Indian novel about two girls from different castes, touching on ongoing social issues around discrimination, trafficking and child abuse in ways Bendersky says are troubling but thought-provoking.

The list also includes a re-read of Jules Verne’s classic The Mysterious Island.