In Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott defines the Net Generation as people born between 1977 and 1997. That would be me, then, (barely), and, after years of research, Tapscott has discovered that I’m awesome. Research shows computer games have made me smart, and, although research also shows I’m no better at multitasking than older people, it sure would make sense if I were, now wouldn’t it? And just look at the online services I use. I’m on the Facebook and the YouTube and the Wikipedia, interacting with my peers in a paradigm shift of empowerment. I’m grrrrreat.

Why, thank you, mr. Tapscott. There’s always a market for telling your readers how smart they are. Malcom Gladwell’s latest book explained that to become an expert you need to practice for 10 000 hours. Want to bet it’s being recommended by people who have been doing their job or hobby for more than 10 000 hours?

In defining the “Net Gen”, Tapscott gives us valuable (and, from my perspective, fairly correct) insights into the values and habits of people who have grown up with the internet. He has done research, and that’s more than most who have commented on the subject.

On top of those insights, he builds a cloud of feelgood fluff that begs for a game of buzzword bingo. You had better not flinch at words like engage, mesh, web 2.0, revolutionize, paradigm, wisdom of crowds, and empower, because he uses them on every single page. The 120 pages I read, anyway.

AK-47, The Story of the People’s Gun is a biography of the Kalashnikov assault rifle. It’s not a history. That would require a lot more than 200 pages. There are perhaps 100 million Kalashnikovs today, and they’ve killed millions of people all over the world. A history of the AK-47 is a history of the second half of the 20th century. Michael Hodges has instead tried to capture the soul of the AK-47, through stories that illustrate it as a weapon and as an icon:

AK-47, the Soviet gun. Made after the Second World War in preparation for the Third, designed to be simple and durable enough to hand out to millions of poorly trained conscripts.

AK-47, the anti-imperialist gun. Symbol of third world revolution. Picked up by American soldiers in Vietnam because their M-16s were sensitive to the climate.

AK-47, the terrorist gun. For some, a tool for killing, as in Munich in 1972. For modern Islamists, a symbol, a brand they’ve appropriated. The anti-Coca Cola.

Hodges argues that the Kalashnikov is in itself a cause of many conflicts. Once you’ve dropped a few million into an area, they remain for decades, long after the original conflict is over, encouraging people to solve their conflicts with violence. You can’t enforce law and order in a Kalashnikov culture.

There’s probably something to this. But removing cheap weapons is perhaps not a practical road to world peace.

And Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor? He’s still alive, and has his own vodka brand. Not quite the Nobel road.

Jerusalem Commands is the third novel in Michael Moorcock’s Pyat Quartet. It opens with Pyat, or “Max Peters”, as a star of silent movies in Hollywood, and takes him through gruesome adventures in North Africa. As always there are two stories, the one Pyat tells us, and the truth. The difference is not always one of facts, but of interpretation. What makes Pyat contemptible is not only his actions, but which events he chooses to emphasize, and which to do away with in a few shockingly unemotional sentences.

Pyat always insists on his own brilliance, dignity and innocence in whatever he does, but his words betray him. He is a pitiable human, a grotesquely tragicomic character: Both a Jew and an anti-semite, both a victim and a friend of great tyrants. A believer in chivalry who betrays his friends, a visionary engineer whose inventions never work. He fears Islam as a great enemy of Christianity, but worships Allah when expedient. And he hints at even darker memories than the ones he is willing to share.

Pyat is a glorious hypocrite, but, for all his contradictions, he is a coherent character. He lives. He strides through the 1920s like he owns the place. He is the perfect man to represent the era.

As the novel ends, it is October 1929. We know that Pyat is headed for close friendship with Goering. We also know he’ll end up in a concentration camp, a yellow star on his clothes. The fourth novel will close the story.