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by eatonphil·2y ago·view on hn ↗
I've been reading the mentioned Bush memoir "Pieces of the Action" and it's pretty good. Stories about engineering and organizational politics. As good as any business classic (e.g. "My Years With General Motors" or "High Output Management").
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Pieces of the Action is excellent. A non-autobiography autobiography.

Many points in the book feature him being discreet about some name or some incident, even 20+ years on. For example, 'General Blank'early in the book, or this excerpt towards the end that is speculated on:

'...other incidents such as a moment where he [Truman] and Forrestal and I were talking about something, and Forrestal spoke about the political implications of the decision. President Truman said to him 'Look, Jim, when you take a thing as serious as this to the American public, you should forget political considerations." '

It's fun recognizing that sometimes VB must be read in a Straussian way. Even to his security-cleared peers, under wartime / atomic secrecy he has to write with implication rather than directly due to risk of security lapses. The nuclearsecrecy blog by Alex Wellerstein is a great source for this kind of thing.