An engaging, brisk read that demystifies an intimidating field.
A cybersecurity expert shows how the weakest link of a cybersecurity program—people—can also be its strongest.
One wouldn’t think of cybersecurity as a timeless concept. But in his latest book on the topic, Finney, who teaches cybersecurity at Southern Methodist University, begins by showing that the inventor of the printing press was effectively the victim of 15th-century hacking when an untrustworthy colleague destroyed his business papers. Finney also points out that Star Wars is, essentially, “the story of a group of hackers with a political agenda who successfully steal government secrets and use those secrets to topple said government.” With all of its firewalls and SQL injection attacks, cybersecurity can seem like an intimidating and arcane field best left to the experts. But the author argues that it’s about human beings at its core: the ones who implement attacks and the ones who are capable of stopping them. Rooted as much in psychology as in psy-ops, this book outlines nine concepts, including “Skepticism,” “Diligence,” and “Community,” to think about and illustrates their importance via anecdotes and scientific studies. By the end, information security leaders will have a better idea of how to make every employee in their company think of themselves as fellow security officers without scaring them or confusing them. Finney shows how this group can include those who might not consider themselves computer experts, from Girl Scouts (who know the importance of “community and connection”) to theology students (“doubt is a well-established part of the process when you study religion”). This book is light on coding lingo and discussions of the latest programs, and readers looking for technical, concrete ways to increase their personal cybersecurity won’t come away with much more than a few techniques and apps to check out. But for those who are in charge of cybersecurity for large organizations, this work will prove invaluable for getting employees thinking about how to protect their company. At the very least, readers won’t look at Johann Gutenberg and Darth Vader the same way ever again.
An engaging, brisk read that demystifies an intimidating field.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62634-735-9
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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