Starship Troopers

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. I appreciated the philosophy on duty and maybe the more mundane parts of being a solider, something I'll never be. However, there were parts I flat out disagreed with, namely the rant that corporal punishment is good and social workers and child psychologists were wrong. He points toward hitting dogs and rubbing their noses in their accidents as proof that he's right.

There's so much wrong in one small paragraph. Hitting teaches that hitting solves problems, it usually doesn't. Positive reinforcement is generally the best way to train a dog and crazy enough it works great for kids too (maybe not all, but it's worked great for my kid who was deemed spirited by quite a few people). Additionally, social workers and child psychologists can do remarkable things for us as a society and the idea that if we just hit people more is so reductive that I'm kinda flummoxed by it.

All of that said, there were parts of the book I really enjoyed, I'm just not sure I'd go around recommending it to everyone. I think it hits hard with it's idea and philosophy and duty and I can't think of another book that does it nearly as well, but there's a lot of baggage that goes with it.