Review of Cal Newport’s “Deep Work”

Cal Newport’s “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” starts with a problem most everybody has encountered: we are not making the best use of the time we have available to us. It analyzes the causes and consequences of this and includes advice on habits and practices to correct this.

The book takes the form of vignettes of the working habits of (mostly) recent scientists, psychiatrists, businessmen, and authors who practice their profession deliberately. Newport calls “deep work,” by which he means the habits “necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity.” He uses these accounts to demonstrate how these habits allowed their practitioners become masters of their fields.

The book’s overall thesis is what Newport calls the Deep Work Hypothesis (DWH) which reads:

The ability perform deep work is increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

The first part of the text attempts to prove the DWH, whereas the second part shows how to adjust one’s work habits to follow the DWH.

Part I: Defending the DWH

Newport takes three approaches to defending the Deep Work Hypothesis: that it is valuable, rare, and meaningful.

The first chapter is devoted to showing that deep work is valuable. The author begins with a description of the economic situation as of around the time of the book’s publication. He calls this period of time “the Great Restructuring,” in which intelligent machines will replace workers and where remote work allows for easier outsourcing. The author was writing in 2016, long before working from home was common and before OpenAI's ChatGPT came on the scene. Three types of workers will come out on top of this Great Restructuring: the owners (those with access to large amounts of capital), high skilled workers, and the superstars (those who are the best at what they do).

All three types must have the ability to perform deep work, and his definition of high skilled workers involves those who can use emerging technology and automation to their advantage. The author notes that the tools used by the experts are not the consumer-facing devices and software packages. In other words, basic computer literacy as taught in public school is not sufficient.

The value of deep work is that it helps one learn and maintain two important skills: the ability to quickly master new skills, and the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

Chapter 2 notes that while deep work is valuable, it is exceedingly rare in part because it is not facilitated by many corporations, either large or small. This is proven by such things as open floor plans, adoption of instant messaging platforms, and the requirement to maintain a social media presence. In each case, the ability to perform extended periods of concentration is impeded.

Why do corporations insist on this? The author gives several explanations. First is what he calls the "metric black hole" - meaning the lack of measurements showing the impact that these ways of impeding deep work have on profitability. The second is what the author calls "busyness as a proxy of productivity." The meaning of this phrase is obvious, and the implication is that busy work takes time away from one being productive.

While both are true, Newport misses three aspects of corporate culture that particularly impacts knowledge workers, including software developers, but is applicable to any individual wishing to do deep work in a business setting.

The first is that software developers are primarily not managed by other software developers, but rather by project managers (PMs). PMs are essentially businessmen, they equate management with leadership, and usually have no coding experience and lack a deep work orientation. Busy work is all they understand about the craft of software development.

The second point Newport misses is that quite frequently, corporations do not want deep workers. From the shallow worker’s standpoint, deep workers are hard to understand, they have unnecessarily high standards, and they will object to being forced into the shallows.

The final point is that managers believe that quality can be replaced by enough shallow work – which is easily enabled by outsourcing. Warren Buffet made the flaw in this line of thinking very clear in his quote: “No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: you can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

The thesis of Chapter 3 is that "a deep life is not just economically lucrative, but also a life well lived," in other words, deep work is meaningful. The author begins describing the work habits of a blacksmith that specializes in ancient and medieval metalworking practices. The pride displayed by this blacksmith is obvious: "...it’s the challenge that drives me. I don't need a sword. But I have to make them." The connection between deep work and meaning comes through pride, and this is displayed in the outcome.

Newport takes three approaches to proving that deep work is meaningful. The first argument given involves neurology. The second argument is from psychology: the idea is that deep work is well suited to generate a "flow state.” The phrase “flow state” isn’t exactly defined, but we can take it to mean being “in the zone.” This argument isn’t particularly convincing since it is basically replacing “deep working” with being in a “flow state.”

The most compelling argument that deep work is meaningful comes through philosophy. Newport references Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly's “All Things Shining," which examines how western literature can generate a purposeful life even in a post-Enlightenment age. Those authors argue that “craftsmanship doesn't generate meaning, but rather cultivates within oneself of discerning the meanings that are already there."

Part II: Implementing the DWH

The second part provides practical strategies for fostering deep work habits, through four rules.

Rule #1: Work Deeply – which means simply to extricate oneself from the distractions that prevent one from working deeply, or at least minimize the distractions. The idea is to add routines and rituals that allows one to enter and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. The author provides four philosophies for scheduling deep work into one’s routine, which he calls monastic, bimodal, rhythmic, and journalistic, the latter meaning it is best to fit deep work into one’s schedule whenever possible. All four of these scheduling philosophies depend on the realization that shallow obligations and deep work are mutually exclusive options.

Whatever scheduling method is used, it allows one to build rituals (habits) that emulate the rigor of great thinkers.

The remainder of Rule #1 provides additional guidelines for deep working, such as to collaborate only when it makes sense to do so, to execute as would a business, to use idleness to one’s advantage, etc.

Rule #2: Embrace Boredom – this means we shouldn't take breaks from distraction; instead take breaks from focus. Either use the internet or not, but schedule (time box) that usage.

One guideline for embracing boredom is to “meditate productively.” By this the author means to “take a period of time in which you're occupied physically but not mentally – walking, jogging, driving, showering - and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.”

Rule #3: Quit Social Media – this is the most obvious way to reclaim one’s life. Social media should be used only if there’s a concrete benefit and that benefit outweighs the cost. About any social media service Newport asks the following question: “did people care that I wasn’t using this service?” Looking at it that way, the true value of social media sites becomes clear.

Rule #4: Drain the Shallows – eliminate shallow work whenever possible. This means that one should schedule every minute of the day. It also means becoming hard to reach, which is a natural consequence of quitting social media. One way of draining the swallows is to schedule every minute of one’s day. From this follows the most important lesson: “treat your time with respect.”

Additional Productivity Tips

Here are some missing ideas for maximizing one’s ability to do deep work.

The most important one is to keep various psychological conditions in check. Conditions such as depression and PTSD devour one’s time, and it is crucial for any person who has these conditions to manage them. How this is done varies from man to man, of course, but the three most successful means seems to be counseling/therapy, medications, and strenuous physical activity. As described in the “Embrace Boredom” rule, physical activity can be a time to focus on a problem related to one’s deep work, but in a curious “detached” manner.

Another problem is to keep one’s addictive habits in check. Cal Newport recounts the working and thinking habits of deep workers, and there are numerous examples of individuals who have struggled with addiction but have been extremely successful over their lives, none of whom make it into the text. Examples of this include jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Bud Powell who were heroin users; numerous 19th Century literary giants were opium addicts, including Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, John Keats, and Percy Shelly. The people listed here certainly performed deep work, despite their addictions.

Conclusion

Cal Newport’s “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” makes a good case for working deep. It uses descriptions of the work habits of famous scientists and businessmen, encouraging readers to emulate their habits. The advice for maximizing deep work and avoiding or minimizing shallow work (and the people who insist we do shallow work) given in the second half is extremely practical.

As mentioned above, the best advice is given in Rule #4 – the last chapter – where Newport writes “treat your time with respect.” Given the importance of minimizing shallow work, this sentence really should read: “treat your time with respect, and do not permit others to do otherwise.”

Review of Giuliano and Hanson’s The Geography of Urban Transportation

Introduction

The Geography of Urban Transportation¹ edited by Genevieve Giuliano and Susan Hanson is a collection of 14 papers by different authors, arranged as (mostly) independent chapters, addressing numerous topics in transport geography including freight movement, public transport, transport planning, etc. The writing of this review began with a chapter-by-chapter analysis. This became increasingly pointless since all the chapters were repeating the same themes. Another approach is required.

In what follows, we start with a list of the common themes present among all the chapters. While twelve themes are identified, a complete analysis of only four are given for sake of brevity. Following this, some topics that should be covered in this text, but aren’t, are listed. Finally, we conclude with an appraisal of the suitability of this text for undergraduate or graduate instruction.

List of Common Themes

The following themes appear in each of the chapters, and many chapters contain more than one of these themes. Here are (sometimes satirical) names of these themes.

1. Transportation systems are necessarily public goods
2. Causal webs make the urban planning racket go around (a/k/a all 15th-order effects deserve consideration)
3. We’re always one regulation away from transportation nirvana
4. Automobiles bad, autonomy bad
5. Personal responsibility does not exist
6. Solving even a single transport problem involves reforming society on a global scale
7. Transport problems can be explored without context
8. We’re always one new technology away from transportation nirvana
9. Act regionally or globally, or else
10. The more available transportation is, the better
11. America should be more like Europe
12. Equity is a relevant criterion

Theme 4: Automobiles Bad, Autonomy Bad

Wherever automobiles are mentioned, they are always shown in a bad light. For example, the author of Chapter 3 claims that years of automotive have intensified the “balkanization of metropolitan society as a whole.” The author quotes a paper explaining what this “balkanization” means:

With massive auto transportation, people have found a way to isolated themselves… a way to privacy among their peer group… they have stratified the urban landscape like a checkerboard, here a place for the young married, there one for health care…

The quote continues, explaining the consequences:

When people move from square to square, they move purposefully, determinately… They see nothing except what they are determined to see. Everything else is shut out from their experience.

So, moving “purposefully, determinately” is a bad thing, and as an alternative we should float around aimless and irresolute? What is being criticized here is the ability for people to associate with those who they want.

Driving in most states requires purchasing insurance, and insurance requirements lead to social inequity².

Automobiles are the source of pollution emergencies³ and greenhouse gas emissions⁴. One way to fix this is to “force”⁵ vehicle manufactures to develop vehicles with more efficient engines. “Technology-forcing regulation has been the policy of choice because it focuses on the vehicle manufacturer rather than the vehicle user, and therefor does not require a change in people’s behavior. Efforts to change behavior… have been quite unsuccessful, as noted earlier, because we as a society have been unwilling to change the relative price of private vehicle travel sufficiently to induce significant changes.” Translation: technology-forcing regulation has been the policy of choice because there are far, far fewer vehicle manufacturers, making them easier to control.

More fuel-efficient vehicles mitigate pollution, but lower the revenue generated by gas taxes⁶. In other words, there is no pleasing these people.

Those who hold beliefs of this form are missing the whole point of automobiles: they are the only mode of transportation that gives individuals the autonomy and power to travel great distances where they choose. Automobiles put drivers into the driver’s seat, literally. This implies those against automobiles are against autonomy – and the alternatives they propose (public transport, rideshare, etc.) all involve centralized control.

Theme 7: Transport Problems can be Explored Without Context

A good example of solving transport problems without context is the discussion of “food deserts” in Chapter 13. Food deserts are defined as “low-income communities where the availability of heathy and affordable food is limited.” It is not stated why being in a “low-income” community is reason to consider this problematic. The author goes on to explain that people who aren’t low income must travel similar distances to obtain food, but those people have modes of transportation that don’t make this a burden. What isn’t explained is why these food deserts exist – is it economics, is it crime? No explanation is given.

Another example of this is in the opening of Chapter 1, where the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott is given. The story is retold not to illustrate Ms. Park’s bravery but rather to show the “power of collective action” - the context is omitted.

Theme 8: We’re Always One New Technology Away from Transportation Nirvana

A wide variety of technologies are discussed, including alternatives to hydrocarbon fuels, such as hydrogen fuel cells, gasohol, “ethanol made from cellulosic biomass rather than corn,” and lithium-ion batteries. Other technologies mentioned in Chapter 14 include breathalyzers, sensors that notice when a driver is falling asleep, night vision enhancements, flashing cross-walks, smart signals, etc. A whole host of ridesharing solutions are listed.

One of the consequences of this is that the text, in places, appears dated. For example, Manhattan’s Via rideshare program⁷ has abandoned direct-to-customer operations and is now attempting to build city-scale “microtransit” systems. Google Cars⁸ has been discontinued. In fact, most of the P2P carsharing services listed in Box 14.2 (Getaround, Go-op, RelayRides, Spride Share, and WhipCar) have either changed their business models or are no longer in operation.

A variant of this theme is the assumption that new technologies always result in better solutions. For example, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) has made carsharing businesses possible, and results are systems where the individual cars have a higher percentage of daily use than non-shared automobiles^{9 10}. The problem with this is that there were (and still are) these things called taxi cabs which costs the riders less than carshares. Experienced taxi drivers rapidly learn to minimize the time their taxis are empty – for example running a circuit that moves people between airports and bus stops in nearby small towns. Besides costing less, taxis operate with little or no central control.

These two problems (dated technology and assumption that tech will always make for a better future) have a common origin: it is is the authors’ confusion of goals with implementation. In the carsharing/ridesharing situation, the goal of carsharing/ridesharing is to make automobile usage more efficient according to some measure. If this is indeed a worthwhile goal, then the methods used to achieve that goal are irrelevant.

Another problem with the wide-ranging discussion of technologies (and wide-ranging discussion of social issues) is that the text has a scattered tone. A good illustration of this is Figure 4.1 which shows the percentage of U.S. households with landline phones, cell phones, home computers, and internet access. Exactly none of these technologies are forms of transportation.

Theme 9: Act Regionally or Globally, or Else

The most egregious example of this is found in Chapter 14, where the authors recount the San Francisco Revolt and give their opinion of the final outcome. A plan for a grid of freeways in San Francisco was proposed in the 1940s. When news of this plan was made public (why weren’t they made public from the start?), communities protested, and in 1959 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors cancelled seven of the 10 planned routes. One mile of the Embarcadero was built in 1959 before the protest went into full swing. This one mile stood until the early 1990s when it was demolished. The authors summarize this sequence of events as follows:

The Embarcadero Freeway revolt demonstrates the potential power of ordinary citizens. If, rather than opposing the freeway, the residents of San Francisco had accepted it as inevitable (given its strong support by the federal and state governments), the Embarcadero would probably have been completed and be standing to this day. Instead, the demolition of the freeway became a model for reclaiming urban spaces in other cities.

This description shows the level of entitlement that transportation planners have, and the level of legal wrangling and thuggery to which they are willing to resort. The people of San Francisco were excluded from deciding the appearance of their own city, and the city was restored only after decades of drawn-out legal disputes. The city planners assumed, or rather usurped, authority for reshaping the city, but they never paid the price for when those plans were rejected.

Omitted Topics

There are several topics that should have been included in this collection, especially given the type and level of political advocacy the authors recommend.

If a transportation-related project is to be justified, the justification must be established through empirical evidence and reasoning. Thus, methods of performing scientific observations and testing should be given more than the brief coverage given in Chapter 5. Any proposed infrastructure change must be justified through traffic counts, simulations, A/B testing when possible, and anything else needed to understand road usage patterns. Chapter 5 does discuss simulation methods only at a superficial level.

As observations are made and simulations performed, this data must be analyzed using statistics. The need for analysis to move from “prediction to prescription” is explained in Chapter 7. This chapter that contains descriptions of the types of investigations that traffic planners do, without providing any significant details or examples.

The problems attendant with publicly funded projects – fraud, cost over-runs, delays, regulatory failures, etc. – should be discussed along several axes: how to prevent, how to investigate and detect when they occur, and how claw-back lost funds. It must be made clear that people involved with these types of projects frequently claim the authority to run the projects but never accept responsibility when the projects fail.

Transportation is about moving people and things around. But is this an unlimited good? The lack of transportation can also be a good thing. There are at least three things an absence of transportation can prevent: crime, contagion spread, and invasive species.

High crime in public transit hubs and on buses and light rail is certainly common in cities like Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, etc. The real possibility that adding transit hubs, etc., introduces crime must be considered before those projects are budgeted.

Also, does crime follow transit routes? This is an issue that must be investigated.

COVID-19 proved that disease pathogens can indeed be spread by various modes of transportation, but far less destructive diseases, such as colds and flu, are transmittable between people on buses, light rail, and airplanes where riders are packed like sardines. People using modes of transportation that don’t force them into such proximity – automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles, walking, etc. – are far less likely to either transmit contagious diseases or be infected.

Invasive species aren’t a problem of urban transportation per se but are caused by globalization and global-scale transportation. For example, rabbits were carried to Australia in the 19th century where they deplete pasture vegetation and kill young trees in orchards and forests. The destruction of vegetation has resulted in serious erosion.

Florida is now home to Burmese pythons and Indochinese rhesus macaques. Pennsylvania now has spotted lanternflies that travelled on ships from China, Vietnam, or India. They have been a major crop pestilence since their arrival in 2012.

Conclusion

The papers in this text sometimes address legitimate transportation problems, but overwhelmingly the papers are used as platforms to advocate left-wing political issues.

It is true that large cities in America are predominately left-wing, but it should be realized that this has not always been the case and, given the conditions of cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, etc., it could change again. Together with the reliance on tech gadgets, leaves the text open rapidly becoming dated.

Based on this text as well as others, it appears that the field of transport geography is overran with advocacy politics, calling the academic validity of the entire field into question. If we attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff, is there any grain left over?

Because of this lack of objectivity and political neutrality, this text cannot be recommended for use by any university. Education is supposed to produce individuals that can critically examine the world around them, and this text instead requires the reader to accept dogma.

Footnotes

1. Giuliano & Hanson, S, The Geography of Urban Transportation (4th Ed.)
2. Ibid, chapter 13.
3. Ibid, chapter 11.
4. Ibid, chapter 12.
5. Ibid, quotes supplied by the authors of Chapter 14
6. Ibid, chapter 10.
7. Ibid, chapter 4.
8. Ibid, chapter 4.
9. Ibid, chapter 4.
10. Ibid, chapter 14.

 

Bibliography

Giuliano, G. & Hanson, S. The Geography of Urban Transportation (4th Ed.) The Guilford Press, 2017.

A Review of Rodrigue’s Geography of Transport Systems

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether The Geography of Transport Systems by Jean-Paul Rodrigue (Rodrigue, 2020) is suitable either as a textbook or as a training resource. This is review of limited to the 5^th edition of the text, but it is expected that the evaluation will be applicable to the 6^th (current) edition.

The text is examined on a per-chapter basis with particular attention on whether there is conceptual development between these chapters. The depth of coverage of major topics is evaluated, even if those topics cross multiple chapters.

Next, four serious criticisms are made of the text: its narrative quality, the lack of quantitative methods, its adherence to the “happy path,” and its treatment of transport networks as public goods. Each of these criticisms will be justified by a chapter-by-chapter summary of the text.

Finally, the text is evaluated for its usefulness as a textbook, a training resource, and also as a reference work. Because of the four criticisms listed above, it is found not to be suitable for any of those purposes.

Introduction

Jean-Paul Rodrigue’s The Geography of Transport Systems is a sprawling overview of the field of Transport Geography. It contains abstract definitions of transportation and distance, and it includes an explanation of the various modes of transportation (either for passengers or freight). The function of transport terminals is explained, and the operating costs associated with terminals as well as various transportation modes are described. In addition, several “soft” issues are discussed such as global warming, environmental impact, etc.

The text suffers from several major flaws, but to isolate those shortcomings it is necessary to examine each chapter individually as well as how the chapters are sequenced. This review begins with a per-chapter overview, and these overviews will be used to describe the shortcomings. The chapter overviews will also provide some examples of the shortcomings as they occur.

Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

The text opens with the introduction of several core terms, including “transportation” which is defined as “the spatial linking of a derived demand as it takes place because of other economic activities for which it is linking its special components as flows of people, goods and information.” (pg. 2). Another core term is “distance” which is relative and is perceived as a function of “the amount of effort needed to overcome it.” Following this, the concept of “logistic distance” is introduced, which describes the tasks needed to move something from place to place. As for the fundamental concept of Euclidean distance, the author describes it as “commonly used to provide an approximation of distance, but rarely has a practical value.” (pg. 5)

The first chapter continues with a very cursory description of the evolution of mechanized transport. Major milestones, such as the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, are omitted. Chapter 1 next describes how transportation networks underly commercial activities and supply chains. The chapter ends, as do all chapters, with a case study. Unfortunately, the case study is merely a link to the text's accompanying website. All case studies are like that.

Chapter 2 describes transport networks in terms of graph theory. Also discussed is the "digitalization of mobility" which (somehow) includes "cloud services" and "blockchain" - the perfect excuse to pepper key terms for search engine optimization. Another currently hot buzz term, the “Internet of Things”, makes an appearance in the text's concluding chapter. The most important part of Chapter 2 is the description of transportation networks in terms of graph theory. This is completely superficial, and a more comprehensive presentation of graph theory must wait until Chapter 10. It is noted (pg. 64-66) that the networks of different transport modes have co-evolved and are expanding – which repeats the moral of the history section of Chapter 1.

The following chapter, Chapter 3, goes into some depth into the concept of "friction of distance", though this concept was introduced earlier (Chapter 1). Also covered is how transport systems and economic opportunities rise or fall together.

Chapter 4 discusses the environmental impact of transportation systems. This discussion includes global warming, “sustainable environment,” and “environmental responsibility”, which the author assumes is a given. Also taken for granted is “social equity.” Vehicles (EVs and hybrid vehicles are mentioned) are the problem, and a list of methods for controlling transport demand is included on pg. 147.

Chapter 5 explains different transport modes. This chapter is one of the highlights of the text, with its discussion of modal competition (how different means of transportation vie for dominance), modal shifts (how one transport mode can supplant another), and the "last mile problem". These three concepts explain much of the history described in Chapter 1; unfortunately, they are introduced too late in the text.

Chapter 5, even when taken by itself, is not without its faults, however.

There are numerous points in the chapter where “piles” of concepts (ideas not immediately connected but also not organized into hierarchies) are presented. This is demonstrated in Figure 5.1, which is designed to show the main modes for passenger transport, but the inclusion of light rail transit (LRT), high speed rail (HSR), and monorail is a technology-based distinction instead of a mode-based distinction.

A second problem with the chapter is the use of gratuitous illustrations, like for example Figure 5.6. In the background is a map of the Earth in Fuller/Dymaxion projection, but what exactly is this illustration supposed to be showing?

The problems demonstrated by these two examples are by no means limited to Chapter 5, but they ruin what could have been an outstanding chapter.

Transportation terminals are the main topic of Chapter 6, with descriptions of passenger and freight terminals, followed by a discussion of some of the operating costs of terminals. Next, the concept of a transport terminal's "hinterland" is defined: "hinterland" here means the area of influence of a terminal, which (in the context of freight) consists of the geographic area from which outgoing freight is collected, and the geographic area over which incoming freight is distributed. Finally, particular types of terminals (ports, rail terminals, and airports) are described. The very important question of where to locate a terminal is raised, but the necessary techniques to answer that question are not fully addressed here or later.

Chapter 7 is devoted to two topics: how transport networks support supply chains, and the issue of globalization. Like transport networks as a whole, globalization is treated in this text as a "given," in a value-free manner focusing on the regulations of global trade instead of the facts that the businesses involved in globalization are almost never local, and that globalization is often deleterious to local economies – without local economies, transport networks wouldn’t exist.

Urban transportation systems are the topic of Chapter 8. There is limited discussion of how unban transport systems connect to larger-scale transportation networks (that was addressed in Chapter 2), but the bulk of this chapter is devoted to regulation.

Chapter 9 is devoted to transportation planning and policy, but also includes a section devoted to natural and man-made disasters and how they relate to transportation systems. All these topics will be discussed below, but it is worth noting that the three primary security measures implemented by the International Ship and Port Security Code - the use of an Automated Identity System on all ships falling into a certain weight range, each port must undergo a security assessment, and all cargoes destined for the U.S. must be inspected prior to departure – really do nothing for security.

Chapter 10 finally provides a little depth to the graph theory (introduced in Chapter 2) that could be used for analyzing transport networks. The presentation is mostly descriptive, and many important tools are missing, the most useful omitted tools being methods for finding the shortest paths between two nodes in a graph, and for finding the shortest routes that visit all nodes in a graph. Another failing of this chapter is the use of very nonstandard terminology such as “ego network,” “nodal region,” “community,” etc. (pg. 362-363)

The text’s concluding chapter again discusses the “digitalization of transportation” (a repeat of Chapter 2), governance and management (treated in numerous locations), and social and environmental responsibility (a repeat of Chapter 4). None of these topics are expanded upon.

Evaluation

The text, while providing exhaustive coverage of certain topics in transport geography, falls short in four major areas: narrative quality, quantitative analysis, adherence to the “happy path,” and finally the coverage of regulations.

Critique 1: Narrative Quality

The text is a series of short vignettes, here called “concepts,” some written by Rodrigue alone, others written by him in collaboration with other authors. These vignettes are then collected into chapters. The result is as expected – disjointed narration, repetition of concepts, and a lack of significant development. For example, "digitalization of mobility" is treated both in Chapter 2 and in the Conclusion Chapter, but neither chapter significantly expands on the other.

Critique 2: Lack of Quantitative Methods

There is almost no coverage of quantitative aspects of transport networks. The general framework needed for such quantitative analysis (graph theory) is postponed until the penultimate chapter.

A related failure is that the discussion and associated figures give the appearance of quantitative knowledge when there is only qualitative knowledge, for example the explanation of elasticity of demand given in Chapter 3.

It is unreasonable to expect the general reader to have a complete mastery of graph theory or scheduling theory or any of the other relevant techniques needed to convert the purely qualitative information provided in this text into something quantitative. However, the supposed difficulty of those techniques is an absolute myth: techniques that are extremely useful to transport geography are within easy grasp at the freshman undergraduate level, as demonstrated by (Tannenbaum, 2012).

Any person possessing only the qualitative knowledge presented here would wither in any meeting, boardroom, or other context where there is someone present with even a modicum of quantitative understanding. By excluding this knowledge, the author is doing a disservice to the reader.

Critique 3: Adherence to the "Happy Path"

The coverage of transport network operation in this text suffers from an almost complete fixation on the “happy path” – the assumption that everything goes according to plan and will continue going as planned in perpetuity.

Several transportation closures due to natural disasters are briefly discussed (2011 Thailand Floods, Hurricane Sandy, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and the 2010 Island volcano eruption, all on pg. 348). The effects of the 9/11 attacks were briefly described, along with the rise of piracy (pg. 350). Two airplane crashes are discussed (both also on pg. 350) and this discussion concludes with a description of the regulatory changes prompted by those disasters.

The coverage of all these disasters is not sufficiently detailed to learn how transport networks responded to these disasters. Further, events that cannot properly be called disasters but still diminish a network’s functionality are almost given zero coverage. The “teachability” lost is considerable.

An example of a “less than disaster” situations is the 2021 Suez Canal Obstruction by the Ever Given (Braw, 2021). This occurred (as well as the 2023 grounding of the MV Xin Hai Tong 23 (Maher, 2023)) after the publication of the text, but that canal has been closed multiple times since its opening in 1869. Each of those closures are lessons in ways the “happy path” can be abandoned (nationalization of the canal, war, blocking ship, etc.), and how redundancies and alternative transport networks transform to resolve problems. Further, the duration of closures – the shortest lasting only a few hours, the longest lasting 8 years in response to the Six Day War – is quite variable and demonstrate how transportation networks adapt and overcome depending on expected times of delay.

The basis for understanding many deviations from the happy path - articulation points and bridges in graph theory – receive only one paragraph on Chapter 10 (pg. 364). The author mentions that bridges and articulation points are points of failure, but that is all. Missing is the idea that different points of failure cause different severities of failure – for example, the collapse of a bridge at the Port of Baltimore is more severe than the breaking-loose of 26 barges on the Ohio River. The “value” of a point of failure is of crucial importance to security experts (who ask how much should be invested in protecting that point of failure) as well as to military planners (how worthwhile is it to cause that point to fail), but this value is not even considered.

Critique 4: Coverage of Regulations

Coverage of the regulation of transport networks in this text is presented in an ahistorical and value-neutral manner. This follows from the author’s apparent assumption that transport networks are public goods, as opposed to privately funded or taxpayer-funded networks with lifespans determined by market forces. No mention is made of the impropriety of imposing such regulations as well as the existence of regulatory failures.

A recent example of regulatory failure in transport geography involves the creation of a network of electric vehicle charging stations (Osaka, 2024). Under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, $7.5 billion was allocated to the construction of 500,000 EV chargers, but only seven or eight charging stations have been constructed as of June 2024. This debacle is, of course, occurring after the publication of the text, but it is easy to find earlier and ongoing regulatory failures, such as how the 1920 Jones Act makes the costs of goods in Alaska and Hawaii much more expensive than they could be.

The author believes that government operation

provides a level of confidence that an activity, such as a terminal or logistics zone, is effectively managed. This can involve daily operations as well as the planning, design and funding of new infrastructure. Effective governance is linked with consistent and reliable services, as well as a good level of responsiveness and feedback when an unexpected issue arises. (pg. 337).

The apparent level of ignorance of government incompetency, government corruption, and regulatory failure is shocking. This quote essentially states that all is good as long as the trains run on time.

If there is any question about the author’s assumption that transport networks are public goods, that doubt should be dispelled by the coverage of congestion as well as the following sentence from pg. 335: "Car ownership is beyond the ability of the transport planner to control directly and the question remains if this should be the case."

Slowly the author began to hate car owners.

The result of all of this is to completely undermine trust in the author’s objectivity as well as the objectivity of the text.

Conclusion

There is little that can be recommended about Rodrigue’s text. It may be useful as a reference for the nomenclature of the transport geography field, but this must be tempered by the quality of the definitions as demonstrated in the above overviews of Chapters 1 and 10.

The text is disjointed and sprawling, with concepts repeatedly introduced with no development or refinement. Concepts are presented out of order, the two most egregious examples being how modal competition and shifts are discussed long after the coverage of the history of mechanized transport, and how graph theory is primarily saved for the next-to-last chapter. The overall effect is to sacrifice quality for quantity.

The strict adherence to the “happy path” and the fact that quantitative analysis is never really explored severely limit the applicability of the knowledge presented in this text.

Finally, there is the assumption that transport networks should be treated as public goods. With this assumption, the title of the text really should not be The Geography of Transport Systems, but rather The Regulation of Transport Systems.

There is a supplemental website for this text (Rodrigue, 2020) which is referenced in each chapter’s Case Study (except for Chapter 1’s Case Study, which references the website for another of the author’s texts (Notteboom, Pallis & Rodrigue, 2022). The website includes PDF slides for each chapter, and a password is required to download these slides.

The slides are geared for the 6th edition of the text, and only the PDF for Chapter 10 was evaluated. The 5th edition’s Chapter 10 has been moved into an appendix, and there is no PDF for that appendix. A quick review the downloaded PDF shows that the slides do not compensate for the above-listed defects in the text.

The website has no links for downloading example quizzes and exams, and if there ever were slides for the 5th edition, they have been removed.

Because of the four critiques explained above, plus the lack of educator resources, Rodrigue’s The Geography of Transport Systems cannot be recommended as a textbook for either undergraduate or graduate classes in transport geography.

The PDF slides may be useful for training purposes, but significant explanation must be added by the trainer to make them comprehensible.

 

References

Braw, E. (10 November 2021). “What the Ever Given Taught the World.” Foreign Policy. Retrieved 8 June 2024 from https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/10/what-the-ever-given-taught-the-world/

Maher, H. et. al. (25 May 2023). “Suez traffic returns to normal after ship briefly stranded.” Reuters. Retrieved 8 June 2024 from https://www.reuters.com/world/ship-grounded-egypts-suez-canal-refloat-attempts-ongoing-leth-shipping-agencies-2023-05-25/

Notteboom, T., Pallis, A. & Rodrigue, J-P. (2022). Port Economics, Management and Policy. Routledge. https://porteconomicsmanagement.org/

Osaka, S. (29 March 2024). “Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years.” Washington Post. Retrieved 8 June 2024 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/ev-charging-stations-slow-rollout/

Rodrigue, J-P. (2020). The Geography of Transport Systems (5^th ed.). Routledge. https://transportgeography.org/

Tannenbaum, P. (2012). Excursions in Modern Mathematics (8^th ed.). Pearson Press.

A Review of David Kilcullen’s The Dragons and the Snakes

Kilcullen’s “Dragons and Snakes,” hereafter abbreviated as “D&S,” is quite ambitious: it describes the evolution of warfare during and following the GWOT, arguing that state and non-state actors have undergone coevolution, with the end result that our adversaries’ warfighting techniques have changed in ways our military is currently unable to match.

D&S begins with a quick overview of the vast hinterland that was the time between the end of the Cold War and the earlier parts of the Global War on Terrorism. The important aspect of this overview is the relative sophistication of five of the dominant politicians of that era: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin.

When Putin came into office, he inherited the shambles that was Russia after the fall of the Soviets. To rebuild his country, he proposed to Clinton that Russia be allowed to join NATO. Other than the presidents and the prime minister, politicians at the time regarded that proposal somewhere on the spectrum between absurdity and incredulity. None of those politicians recognized what Putin was really doing: in popular vernacular, he was “trolling.”

Putin was taken seriously, with Tony Blair proposing to create a NATO-Russia Council to have Putin’s representatives meet with NATO leaders before making key decisions. Bush proposed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia. After all, Bush said that he “looked the man [Putin] in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Eleven weeks later, Russia sent tanks into Georgia.

The Obama Administration then suggested a “reset” and created a commission to strengthen and expand security cooperation between us and Russia. Russian special forces were trained by US special forces, Russian officers received NATO training, and so on.

Yes, Putin was indeed trolling, and at a masterful level.

Kilcullen then moves into the period starting with the GWOT and leading up to today. Using a metaphor by former CIA Director James Woolsey, the author divides our enemies into “dragons” and “snakes.” The dragons are state actors (in the Westphalian sense) mainly China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The snakes are either collapsing states or non-state actors, principally Islamic terrorist organizations.

All throughout the GWOT, both the dragons and the snakes were keenly interested in our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were doing two things: observing and evolving.

Observing other countrys' wars is nothing new: the French, British, and Prussians sent observers to watch the Civil War, with interest in tactics, strategies, and technologies. Currently, everyone is watching the Russia-Ukraine war, with keen attention paid to the use of commercial-quality drones and other tactics.

From these observations, two critical events serve to shape the evolution of military thought amongst both the dragons and the snakes: the US invasion of Iraq in 1992, and America’s difficulties in the asymmetric wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 1992 invasion proved that the US was masterful at a particular style of war: conventional force-on-force battles with integrated land and air operations. China and Russia observed this and deduced that America cannot be dominated using this form of warfare. They also deduced something else: that Americans, in part due to the smashing success of the invasion, had constrained itself into believing that the type of war demonstrated during that invasion was the only type of warfare.

The second observation was the difficulty the US had in fighting insurgent forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as the GWOT switched from being a symmetric to an asymmetric conflict. This was also nothing new, as Russia saw in its own involvement in Afghanistan and during the Chechen Wars. What made the American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq different was that it was America that was involved: the insurgents were able to hold their own against the same military that won so easily the pre-insurgent phase of the Iraq war. If Russia had suspicions that their losses in Afghanistan and the First Chechen War were due to military inadequacy, then America’s experience, with its preeminent military, dispelled those suspicions.

Faced with this, Russia and China had to evolve, to discover new types of warfare.

The route taken by Russia was to pursue “liminal warfare,” which adds cyber, economic, and psychological tools to the kinetic weapons endemic to conventional warfare. The idea is to operate using those new tools below a threshold (what Kilcullen calls the “response threshold”) that America and other Western nations would resort to conventional warfare. The bulk of the desired outcomes are achieved below this threshold (the luminal stages), and these desired goals are primarily to “shape” not only particular actions of the Unites States but also to provide cover or at least plausible deniability should the response threshold be crossed.

Kilcullen provides numerous examples of liminal warfare in action, the most important one being Russia’s capture of the Crimea in February 2014 – the world didn’t know what Russia was doing until it was too late.

Russia’s new approach to warfare is “vertical” in that the stages of war are cumulative, determined by the extent the US recognizes that clandestine activities occurring and our ability to determine who is performing these acts; Russia attempts to minimize the operational signatures of their operations, move the thresholds, and so on.

In contrast, Kilcullen portrays China’s approach as “horizontal.” China’s approach is to use “unrestricted warfare” as described by Qiao and Liang in their book with the same name. (Kilcullen notes that the title “Unrestricted Warfare” would be better translated as “Warfare Beyond Rules”). Unrestricted warfare uses several non-lethal tactics including international lawfare, economic aid warfare (think Belt and Road Initiative), drug war (fentanyl in particular) and so on. These tactics aren’t used in isolation, instead they use a “diversity of tactics” as Antifa would say. The number of available tactics is what gives unrestricted warfare its horizontal quality.

It is interesting to compare luminal and unrestricted warfare, but it is more illuminating to compare those forms of warfare with the way warfare is conceived in the West. The primary difference is that the West considers warfare to be strictly one involving military action, whereas liminal and unrestricted warfare involve both military and non-military forms of action.

We essentially have a mismatch in the concepts of warfare. There are three consequences to this mismatch:

1. Many of our actions (in particular, economic policies related to international trade) we think of as peace time competition but are considered to be warfare, especially in unrestricted warfare.
2. China and Russia can be engaging in warfare, but we don’t know it and we cannot respond militarily.
3. Because we don’t know we’re being attacked, we cannot predict escalation.

What can be done about all this? How do we fight the ascension of these dragons? With regards to foreign policy, Kilcullen offers several options:

1. Double down - continue interventionalist foreign policy, strengthen our military accordingly, and incorporate new technology along the lines of the Pentagon’s “Third Offset Strategy.”
2. Go with a “managed decline” approach (presumably only regarding foreign policy).
3. Take a Byzantine approach, meaning, delay until something better comes along.

Kilcullen’s recommendations on foreign policy are as follows:

“…return to offshore balancing, disengaging from permanent wars of occupation, ceasing any attempt to dominate rivals or spread democracy by force, and focusing instead on preserving and defending our long-term viability.”

This is very reasonable, except the part about “offshore rebalancing.” Continuing with his recommendations:

“Rather than dominating potential adversaries, our objectives can and should be much more modest: to prevent them from dominating us, to do so at an acceptable and sustainable long-term cost, and to avoid any action that harms the prosperity of and civilizational values that make our societies worth living in.”

Thus, by quitting our “forever wars,” we get a type of peace dividend: we get a chance to focus on societal resilience and attempt to reconcile our current domestic political differences.

D&S is extremely readable, even by someone lacking deep knowledge of foreign policy. The most valuable part for me was the discussion of liminal warfare. My only criticism is that it didn’t go into sufficient depth on liminal maneuvers. This is a minor complaint, and quite understandable given the text’s wide scope.

 

Bibliography

Chase, S. “Marketing Violence: A Closer Look at the “Diversity of Tactics” Slogan.” Minds of the Movement Blog, 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/blog_post/marketing-violence-closer-look-diversity-tactics-slogan/

Kilcullen, D. “The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare.” Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 2 (no. 1), 2019.

Kilcullen, D. The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Nadeau, R. "Justus Scheibert and International Observation of the Civil War". The Gettysburg Compiler, 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2014/12/12/justus-scheibert-and-international-observation-of-the-civil-war/

Qiao & Liang. Unrestricted Warfare. Shadow Lawn Press, 1999. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf

Reality Bites Back: A Review of Scott Adams' "Win Bigly"

Scott Adams' latest book, "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter", describes the approach he used to predict Donald Trump's winning of the 2016 election. His thesis is that Trump is a "master persuader," similar to Steve Jobs, who has a "skills stack" (Adams' words) that naturally allows him to persuade people to rally to his side, and this resulted in his victory. This is one theme in "Win Bigly". A second theme that Adams did not intend to include, I believe, is what I'll call "the revenge of reality" theme.

Throughout the election, many people were comparing the policies of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump.

Other people, myself included, were concerned about the candidates' overall ethics and politics as well as those of their supporters. Observing a candidate's supporters is crucial. The candidates themselves are slick and polished; their supporters aren't, so their words and actions are far easier to unravel. The Berkeley riots in response to Milo Yiannopoulos' visit told me all I needed to know about Hillary. I'm a died-in-the-wool America Firster Deplorable, and while I supported Trump, I did not believe he would carry his political philosophy to its natural conclusion, nor would he understand the causes that would block him from reaching that goal.

Regardless, those two approaches (policy and philosophy) attempt to answer the question: who will make the best president, should he or she win? Adams realized that neither of those address another question: who will win? In order to answer that, he examined the techniques each candidate used to persuade the electorate to vote for them.

Adams begins his book by describing his experience as a persuader. He is a trained hypnotist, and a lifelong student of the art of persuasion. He calls himself a "commercial-grade persuader".

To get the art of persuasion off the ground, he believes that it is necessary to take what can be called an "anti-realist" approach to how individuals know the world around them. His theory is that people cannot know the world - that we are living in a world where facts don't matter. By this, he isn't talking about temporary ignorance, or ambiguities, or "fog of war" type nescience, but rather an actual inability to know. In support of this he sites anti-realist philosophers like Kant, various marketing experts, and quantum physicists. "All we have is probability and strangeness," he claims.

Adams goes on to say that this doesn't apply to mundane tasks like balancing your checkbook, only the important things. "...[F]acts and reason don't have much influence on our decisions, except for trivial things, such as putting gas in your car when you are running low. On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact." Which side do the steps needed to split the atom, or put men on the moon, or perform open heart surgery, belong - trivial or important? He doesn't answer that.

Instead, Adams claims that people view the world through interpretations or "filters". How does one choose among different filters? He uses two standards:

1. It makes him happy
2. It makes accurate predictions

Left unaddressed: how does he know if a prediction has indeed come true, if facts don't matter? How does he know that he is indeed happy?

One of the funniest chapters is the one where he describes the various filters he went through while growing up - starting with the Santa Claus filter, going through the church filter (which makes predictions only after one has died), through the marijuana filter, finally ending with what he calls the "persuasion filter".

The persuasion filter is not to be underestimated for, as Adams points out, it is sufficiently powerful to undermine even the scientific method. Just look at "climategate".

Adams recognized Trump to be a master persuader very early. He didn't start the campaign as a Trump supporter; rather, he was impressed by Trump's persuasive abilities and entertainment value. This was enough to trigger Hillary supporters and Internet trolls, which resulted in Adams being the target of intimidation.

As the campaigns continued, Hillary used backdoor means to eliminate Bernie Sanders. These would not work on Trump, simply because those techniques would not play well in public. She had to up her game in a manner that would grant her victory without appearing even more slimy in the public light. This is when the "pussygate" recording was made public, which caused Adams to temporarily switch his endorsement to Gary Johnson, as he "is the candidate who touches only himself."

Those of us who are skeptical/cynical of politicians knew that the importance of the recording wasn't in the content, but rather in how it was being used: as a tool to paint Trump as a womanizer. By implication, those on Hillary's side were pure as snow, like Bill Clinton or Harvey Weinstein. Thus pussygate didn't get much traction.

So, Hillary and her supporters began the allegations describing Trump as "dark", racist, Islamophobic, racist, homophobic, racist, sexist, Nazi... racist. Rhetoric of this scorched-earth kind cannot stick only to Trump, but carries over to his supporters. Indeed, it is designed to spill over in that manner: "people believed Trump was as bad as Hitler, and by extension that marked his alleged propaganda chief (me) for death as well."

Adams was genuinely concerned for his safety and for that of his friends and family. He changed his endorsement to Hillary "for his own safety". You can tell that Adams lives in northern California: threatening violence against another would be unacceptable anywhere else, we have too much integrity to tolerate such threats. In other parts of the country, the snowflakes resort to economic retaliation.

A died-in-the-wool anti-realist would say: friends and family are concepts that exist only in my mind. How do I know that they are in danger? And if indeed it is a fact that they're in danger, it doesn't matter, since... facts don't matter. Fortunately, Adams dropped his anti-realism and came out swinging: "this was not politics. This was bully behavior, plain and simple. And it flipped a bit in my brain that couldn't flip back."

We know the rest of the story: Trump won the electoral vote, the snowflakes had a tantrum of seismic proportions, and the media continues as leftist propaganda machines.

Adams ends the book with a discussion about how persuasion relates to casualty: did his predictions actually cause Trump to win? Predictions are but guesses - when they come true, they are prophecies; when they don't, we salvage the situation by calling them allegories. An anti-realist cannot make that distinction.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, because the author expresses interesting insights into the art of persuasion, and applies those insights to electoral politics. Filter out the anti-realism, and a very strong book remains.

Let me end this review by making a prediction of my own: Trump will be stymied throughout his term of office by what is coming to be known as the "deep state". He will be slow to understand the fact that the deep state is what we ourselves are supporting, and that the easiest way to stop the deep state is to excise it like the cancer that it is.

Bracken's Books on Amazon, Free on Jan 15th and 16th

Matt Bracken will be making all three e-books in his "Enemies" series available on Amazon for free on January 15th. Hooray, and thank you Matt!

The impact of dystopian fiction is sometimes weakened because of "scifi" aspects (think of the movie versions of "V for Vendetta" or "Logan's Run"). There is little of that in the "Enemies" trilogy, and the result is that the novels strike close to home - sometimes too close! Here's a review (titled "One character's plight...") I posted on Amazon on February 4th of last year.

Matthew Bracken's "Enemy" trilogy is well written, but I am attaching this review to the third installment, "Foreign Enemies and Traitors" because of one particular scene... 

There is a character named Doug who describes how his university tuition was tripled as a means of coercing him to join the military. The same thing happen to me in 1984 in Ohio. Unlike that character, I resisted, and left the university. However, the fact that an event like this was mentioned at all literally brought tears to my eyes - and that doesn't happen often! 

Politicians of both parties, though they have their (staged) disagreements, like to pretend that we're all one big happy country. We're not, but the way they maintain this illusion is by marginalizing and ignoring those who question authority, demand accountability, and care about individual rights. Over the course of the trilogy, Bracken presents how this marginalization and "sweeping under the rug" occurs, and what the consequences not only could be, but actually are. 

I'm not sure the power of that particular scene would have on somebody who hasn't been in that character's position, but it was certainly quite moving for me.

Two of Matt's other books, "Castigo Cay" and "The Bracken Anthology" will be available on the 16th. I've not read "Castigo Cay", but the anthology is a mixture of short stories and essays, mostly essays, that are worth reading. One of the essays, "When the Music Stops", describes a scenario that starts when the back-end to the EBT card (food stamp) system goes off-line for an extended period of time. This essay was written in September 2012, over a year before the EBT system really did crash; many of the consequences predicted in that essay didn't occur - but the system was offline for only a few hours. Prescient, no?

Here's a link to Matt's author page on Amazon.

Kindles ready? And...download!

Robert M. Gates' 'Duty': a Pre-Review

Like many wonks, I'm eagerly awaiting the January 14th release of Robert M. Gates' upcoming memoir, 'Duty'. Gates was deputy director of the CIA under Reagan and Bush 41, director of the CIA under Bush 41, then Secretary of Defense under Bush 43 and Obama. In between the last two positions, he was president of Texas A&M for just over four years.

Gates' publicity machine is working overtime, dropping snippets that promise insight into those four administrations. Personally, I'm interested in his time at Texas A&M - the revolving door through which politicians/regulators/administrators and academia pass deserves as much attention as the revolving door between the regulators and lobbyists.

After leaving the Obama administration, he accepted - and still holds - the chancellorship of the College of William and Mary.

The memoir, being written by a beltway insider, has also generated pre-release panning by Gates' detractors. A fine example of this is "Robert Gates's Narcissistic 'Duty'" by former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman. Previously, Goodman attributed the CIA's policy of "sexing-up" intelligence reports to Gates. In this latest essay, Goodman describes Gates as a "sycophant in all of his leadership positions" and "[f]or the most part, Gates has been a windsock when it came to policy decisions and typically supported his masters."

It gets worse...

"Regarding Gates’s selection in 2006 to head the Defense Department, I encountered many key Senate staffers who opposed his appointment but believed that it was important to abort the stewardship of Rumsfeld. At that time, I labeled Gates the 'morning after' pill."

We don't need to wait for the memoir for certain insights, though...

"In many ways, the most stunning aspect of Gates’s national security stewardship was his reappointment at the Defense Department by President Barack Obama in 2009. Indeed, the appointment of Hillary Clinton and the reappointment of Bob Gates were rather cynical gestures, naming Clinton to keep the Clinton Foundation (Bill and Hillary) inside the White House tent pissing out instead of outside the tent pissing in. 

"Gates was left in place so that the President could signal to the uniformed military that there would be no significant changes at the Pentagon. Gates's Cold War ideology (which caused him to miss the end of the Cold War) and his politicization of intelligence were completely forgotten."

Duh.

Will 'Duty' be a rationalization of and apology for his actions and those of his bosses? Perhaps. Will it be a fount of insight? Maybe. Will it be easy to separate the former from the latter? No.