Book Review: The Pentagon: A History

TLDR: “Interesting, but nothing valuable” I think I got this book because it was mentioned in How Big Things Get Done. I like books about infrastructure and construction of large projects, so I picked it up. I don’t know that I got anything valuable about it. I learned some history about The Pentagon, clearly: it was astonishingly expensive for its time, and the subject of a lot of disagreement. The guy who really wanted it – General Somervell – was a little duplicitous about the size and budget. He low-balled at $35 million which sparked outrage. Then it ended up costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million, in 1940 dollars. It was built to consolidate the War Department, which was otherwise spread all over Washington. Roosevelt had a plan to use it for record storage after the war, but he died and no one else wanted to do that. It was built in a huge rush, because right after they started building it, Pearl Harbor was attacked and World War II heated up quite a bit. They…