23 Books Like The DARPA Model for Transformative Technologies

If you want an introduction to DARPA and how it has managed to play such an outsize role in the creation of the technologies of the future, start with this book on its best-known and most influential project, ARPANET. ARPANET went online way back in 1969, when, for the very first time, two computers of disparate types connected over a dedicated phone line to exchange data.

This book tells the story of how the project came together and how it birthed the internet, offering a book-length case study of how DARPA creates wizardry on a relative shoestring. There are lots of great details here, such as the poor soul who kept getting harassed by one of the first dial-up modems calling the wrong number. 

Somewhere between wide-eyed optimism about the potential of human ingenuity and skepticism about technology’s ability to save us from ourselves lies Annie Jacobsen’s book. It covers DARPA’s founding and the first fifty years before reporting on projects active at the time of the book’s writing (it came out in 2015).

The result is a balanced mix of history, analysis, and you-are-there reporting in a highly readable narrative. The book contains the best explanation I’ve seen of DARPA’s controversial, post-911 Total Information Awareness program and raises important questions about when, how, and why governments should conduct research and development in secret.

For a deeper dive into how DARPA came to be in 1958 and its history into the early 1970s, read the first book-length treatment of the subject. This book was commissioned by the agency itself and draws from extensive interviews with directors and program managers. Every other book about DARPA lists this one in its bibliography.

Learn why DARPA almost didn’t survive its first couple of years, likened to a “dead cat hanging in the fruit closet,” and how a “white elephant” became its salvation. Someone needs to publish this treatise properly in book form. For now, it exists as a free download from a military website as a PDF of a faded photocopy stamped “approved for public release,” adding to its intrigue.

Author Sharon Weinberger spent four years researching and writing what she terms “a critical history of the agency and its legacy.” If you’re after a more skeptical treatment of DARPA and its claims to greatness that also covers the essentials of its origins along with some of its less-than-finer moments—especially during the Vietnam War—pick up this book.

Among other achievements, Weinberger got extensive interview time with Stephen Lukasik, the director who commissioned The Advanced Research Projects Agency: 1958–1974. “Is it a genius factory? A Pentagon boondoggle? A refuge for crackpots?” Weinberger asks in the book. “I do not have an unequivocal answer.”

Looking at the cover of this book, you might be scratching your head, wondering, "just what the hell is that?" It's a delicious, genre-bending twist on Fantasy and Military SF that is a must-read, I assure you.

Army Rangers, as part of a top-secret DARPA program, travel a few years into the future...to find out they're accidentally 10,000 years in the future, and the world they knew is now a Forgotten Ruin (see what I did there?) filled with monsters, magic, and mayhem.

Navigating these disastrous circumstances takes some serious ranger grit and a lot of firepower.The story is told from the perspective of a young ranger who is a linguist, and his communication skills are essential to the ranger's survival. But more than that...the Ruin changes people.

The remote Antarctica, the discovery of a new species of octopi, a huge storm, a deadly virus… it all comes together in this fun romp that will leave you shivering. Seriously. I took my time with this book because it is so well-written and will leave you guessing time and time again. A wonderfully written story. It is that good and that fun of a read.

This book, in this day and age, might actually hit a little too close to home, but it is worthy of a read anyway. Delozier writes a thrilling tale about a mad scientist that has created a deadly virus that could wipe out half the population. It's up to psychologist and empath Dr. Persephone Smith to track him down and stop him. Type and Cross, Delozier's debut novel, is a medical thriller that intermixes just enough medical terminology to make the premise sound plausible without losing the reader. Delozier's writing isn't overburdened by over-embellished description or unwieldy dialog which makes the book a pleasure to read.

Unlike your traditional trilogy, the second book in the series acts as an origin story of sorts, while the third wraps up the storyline from this book.

Given my belief that Thanos had a point (what science-math-oriented person can’t tremble at the algorithm of over-population?), it’s no surprise I enjoyed an anthology of different takes on mad scientists and what drives them. I got my fix of humorously boastful ego-maniacs, such as Professor Incognito’s itemized “apology” to his girlfriend (with attempted sincerity because of their couple’s therapist). And the variety of these tales exposed me to a bevy of villainy, from a psychologist who uses the “soft” sciences to unleash the insanity within stable scientists because “everyone deserves the opportunity to go mad” to a side-hustling villainy coach whose budget forces her to choose between new tech plating or weapons-grade plutonium. What’s a would-be world conqueror to do? Relatable.

The inspiration for the movie Metropolis, a city is torn between an elite upper class, and a working-class, who toil in agony underground. It begins with Freder, the son of the powerful Metropolis leader who encounters a working-class prophet named Maria. Freder feels drawn to the woman and searches for her. Meanwhile, Freder’s father visits a bitter adversary named Rotwang. A mad scientist type, Rotwang tells him that he’s built a robot replica of a woman they once both loved, whose name was Hel. Like an enigma wrapped in a mystery, the robot creates a dense and secretive narrative. Divulging old motivations and riddles behind the characters, adds to the story, but the robot becomes both ethereal and powerful, a form of immortality and the path to destruction.

The author of this short and easy-to-read chapter book goes beyond the story. I recommend this book because I like the last page of the book title “Notes for Adults.”

In busy life, it is easy to let our children read by themselves. It is easy to forget that books contain valuable lessons. It is easy to miss the opportunity to challenge reading skills and make the children read between the line to develop their critical thinking skills.

In this book, the author proposes before, during and after reading activities to support literacy skill. Wow! If you do all of them, this book is worth the money you have paid for it.

All parents and teachers should aim to develop children’s critical thinking.