A highly informative treatment of the current role and future potential of drones.
Drones have become nearly ubiquitous over the last two decades. Here’s a detailed look at how they developed and what they may become.
Boyle, a professor of political science and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, begins with an incident that epitomizes the image many readers have of drones: the 2011 assassination of Yemeni American imam Anwar al-Awlaki by an American drone. After looking at the legal and strategic concerns that weighed on that action, the author then steps back to survey the types of drones and their capabilities. “Targeted killings” have become the most familiar military use of drones, but they have an even more significant role in gathering intelligence, both by the military and by domestic agencies including law enforcement. However, their low cost increasingly puts them within the reach of rebel, criminal, and terrorist groups. Drones also have great potential for peaceful uses, such as disaster relief and delivery of medicine to remote areas by humanitarian organizations and by private enterprise—though most of these projects are still in the “proof of concept stage.” Some of the roles are still emerging as legal and technical issues are sorted out in response to the new technology. The author concludes with an examination of the nations—primarily the U.S., Israel, and China—for whom drone manufacture and export is becoming an important business as well as a look at future trends such as miniaturization (“nano drones no bigger than birds or insects”) and the potential of artificial intelligence–controlled autonomous drones, the proliferation of which heightens concerns about “accidental war.” Boyle illustrates his points with many specific cases and generally avoids the jargon that bogs down military history, and his global perspective is likely to make the text more useful in the long run.
A highly informative treatment of the current role and future potential of drones. (b/w photos)Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-063586-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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