John Braddock, A Spy's Guide to Thinking

In his Kindle Single, former CIA case officer John Braddock offers a very brief discussion of the DADA system of thinking: from Data to Analysis to Decision to Action. That sounds boring, maybe, but Braddock is engaging.

He discusses the thinking strategy from the perspective of a spy on the ground in a foreign country. In particular, he tells a story about being accosted in a subway, a would-be mugging.

The event unfolded in probably less than a minute in real time, but Braddock unpacks the incident, describing his thought process—his data collection and analysis, the options available to him—at each step. I found this fascinating.

My only complaint about the Single is that Braddock has opted to write in very short sentences—which he explicitly says he's determined people like—and indeed in sentence fragments. People do like short sentences, it's true, but not all the time!

Overdone, it comes off as very choppy and distracting, and I actually find the style almost burdensome. Tone that down, and this would be a pretty perfect short read. There's not a lot of meat here, but there aren't many pages, and the price was right.

The author has a meatier follow-up available, A Spy's Guide to Strategy, which I can see myself buying at some point, though I haven't taken the plunge yet.