Simon Lyall

Audiobooks – Dec 2025 After Eden: A short history of the world by John Charles Chasteen 3/5 Ground Combat by Ben Connable 3/5 Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang 4/5 The Devil Reached towards the Sky by Garrett M. Graff 4/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2026/01/audiob…

Audiobooks – Dec 2025 After Eden: A short history of the world by John Charles Chasteen 3/5 Ground Combat by Ben Connable 3/5 Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang 4/5 The Devil Reached towards the Sky by Garrett M. Graff 4/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2026/01/audiob…

Review: The Devil Reached towards the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb by Garrett M. Graff 4/5 Structured as quotes from characters spken by actors. Better coverage of Oak Ridge & Hanford than most books. Pretty good andrewliptak.com/atomic-bomb-ga…

Review: After Eden: A short history of the world by John Charles Chasteen 3/5 A history of the world but from the point of view of how society organises and people treat each other. Interesting archive.ph/j0rGJ

Review Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang 4/5 Contrasts the Lawyer Culture of the US vs China's Engineer Culture. Discusses aspects of China's culture, Government and Industry. Recommend noahpinion.blog/p/book-review-…

Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War by Ben Connable 3/5 A bit dry and academic with a lot of "talking to my dataset" but some interesting bits on trends in modern warfare including early parts of Ukraine war foreignaffairs.com/reviews/ground…

Audiobooks November 2025 The Global Age Europe 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw 4/5 The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn by Alice George 4/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2025/12/audiob…

Review The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn by Alice George 4/5 A fairly brief and positive biography of one of America's first Astronauts. "heroic without being perfect" . Worth a read archive.ph/Ww5Ux

Review The Global Age Europe 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw 4/5 Covers all of Cold War Europe quite well for politics and culture. A good general introduction. Part of the Penguin History of Europe theguardian.com/books/2018/nov…

Audiobooks Oct 25 To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw 4/5 Safely to Earth: The Men and Women Who Brought the Astronauts Home 4/5 Love Life by Rob Lowe 3/5 Midnight at Chernobyl 4/5 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Arden 4/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2025/11/audiob…

Review: A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Arden 4/5 A memoir covering the NZ Prime Minister's life up to shortly after she resigned. Best bits are her early life while her time as MP and especially Prime Minister is reduced to a few events theguardian.com/books/2025/jun…

Review: Midnight at Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham 4/5 Mainly a chronology but mixed in with interviews and other information that has come to light 30 years later. Fascinating and scary read patricktreardon.com/book-review-mi…

Review: Love Life by Rob Lowe 3/5 A second memoir by Lowe. Usual anecdotes about showbiz and celebrity life mixed in with stories of family. Not as good as the first book but still okay archive.ph/HnPyg

Safely to Earth: The Men and Women Who Brought the Astronauts Home by Jack Clemons 4/5 An engineer on the Apollo and Shuttle programs writes about his career and experiences. Some interesting stories and insight into areas not covered by most books balloonstodrones.com/2019/02/13/boo…

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw 4/5 A single volume covering the period. Covers the military campaigns only in passing to use space for other areas. Very good and manages to cover all countries theguardian.com/books/2015/oct…

@sands659 @cha0s10g1c Main problems: Lack of other destinations served. Other options serve a bunch a suburbs. Heavy rail is much fewer stations Lack of space on the CRL and rest of the heavy rail network for extra trains from this line. Not a lot of point if it is only three trains per hour

@cha0s10g1c I think the extension of the Onehunga line was thought to include too many viaducts and thus be too expensive

Auckland light metro to the airport would have been great and honestly not doing the PPP plan could have been the worst mistake Auckland has made since deciding to build south Auckland.

Audiobooks - September 2025 The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation by Michael Cassutt 4/5 The Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom by David J. Helfand 3/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2025/10/audiob…