Read More: The Department of Mad Scientists

The Department of Mad Scientists by Michael Belfiore is a book looking at some of the projects DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has worked on over the years and is working on currently. Although DARPA is a federal agency, it is very unusual in that it is crazy innovative and not bogged down in bureaucracy -- so they get shit done. It's possible for a scientist to come up with an idea in the morning and get it funded by the afternoon.

Although DARPA is super awesome, they don't get much recognition for their achievements. Internet? Nope, not Al Gore, but DARPA! Personal computers and mice (the kind that hook up to your computer)? DARPA (but perfected by Steve Jobs, of course)!

I should have read this book when I first heard about it. Reading about their current projects, even a couple of years later, was already old news. One of the things they were working on was computer voice recognition. Now we have Siri! Another project was cars that could drive themselves (at the time of the writing they still had a LONG way to go), and now we've got the Google Car! They were also making great strides in the solar power field, so I'm excited to see where that goes!

The book was very interesting, but the writing was a bit dry. I think he could have made it a more lively, funny read. I'm sure there was a lot of DARPA nerd humor that got left out.

Do I recommend this book? I do. It's fun to learn about DARPA's history, but also a bit sad to learn that the government can do things efficiently, they just refuse to!

- Megan Leigh