I tend to read books in themed batches. Unfortunately the topic for the last six months was politics. I’m usually pretty arms length from politics, but the twisting narratives had me hooked and wanting to understand a field I’d normally write off as uninteresting. So I apologize in advance to those who’d rather forget 2024 for how politically heavy the content here is. However, if you’re trying to make sense of the past year, the top two books are must reads.

Three Stars

The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story – by Sam Wasson

Last year, the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now released what may be his last film, Megalopolis, his dream project he had been trying to get made for decades.

Path to Paradise covers two parallel stories in Coppola’s life: the day-to-day production of Apocalypse Now (which was an infamously brutal experience for everyone involved trying to shoot a war movie in Southeast Asian jungles in the 1970s) and Coppola’s later attempts to start his own film production company American Zoetrope.

The format of alternating chapters between the two stories doesn’t quite work as well it did for Wasson in The Big Goodbye (a book by the same author I gave a ⅘ in 2021). The gist in both cases is that Coppola is always living his own vision of auteurism, an iconoclast whose ambitions and visions either produce legendary works of art or destroy the lives of the people around him. I’m not sure this book gave me much more understanding of the man, but it earns its rating for the wealth of stories and source material about a living legend.

The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Speaker of the House – by Nancy Pelosi

Well, I think this one was planned to be published at a different time with a different 2024 election outcome. In this new memoir, the former Speaker of the House states that she intended to retire in the mid-2010s and only stuck around longer to reduce Donald Trump’s impact. Despite her best efforts, the jury is still out on determining how effective she has been in that goal.

What is good about this book (which feels ghostwritten due to bland writing) is that it does convey Pelosi’s admirable strengths. She’s a smart woman who knows how to effectively navigate games of power. 

Most memorable for me is an early chapter where she explains how she got the “ban on gays in the military” repealed in the mid-2000s. She admits this was accomplished by inserting it as a requirement into an additional military spending bill, likely meaning that more federal money would be spent in Red states where defense contractors are located. For this reason, she faced resistance from other Democrats who did not want to sign a bill supporting more war spending. 

She simply had to remind her party members that what their constituents would care about is the win on gay rights and not what it cost to accomplish. It is this type of arguably cynical, but ultimately correct, understanding of deal making which was part of what made her so effective and is a savviness which Democrats will miss when she is gone.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness – by Jonathan Haidt

Haidt has been making the media rounds promoting and discussing this analysis on why the kids don’t seem alright, pinning most of the blame on helicopter parenting and cell phones used for social media and mindless entertainment. Paradoxically, this book is probably both his weakest and most mainstream. Upon release, there have been numerous reports questioning the analytical rigor and broad applicability of the claims made in the book. At the same time, his suggestions for improving kids mental health with reasonable restrictions on the frequency of their social media consumption seem completely reasonable and intuitively correct. The moderate recommendations are in balance with the possible weaknesses in the supporting evidence.

Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass – by Ramin Setoodeh

Could Donald Trump have become President if he hadn’t hosted a reality TV show on a major broadcast network?

Probably not. And so author Setoodeh, who is the co-Editor in Chief of Variety magazine, embarked on the worthwhile journey to chronicle The Apprentice. This is a (conveniently quick) biography of arguably the most important TV show of all time.

Setoodeh’s interviews with former cast and crew remind the reader of why Donald Trump was more universally popular before running for the Republican party. With most people one on one, he’s charming and complementary. He takes the TV show seriously but himself less so.

Most importantly, his numerous interviews with Donald Trump emphasize the traits that helped Donald win. He’s a rare billionaire who has a lot of time on his hands and a willingness to talk to anyone. For decades, he made his money solely by being accessible and marketing himself to the public. It was the perfect training ground for politics.

A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir – by Colin Jost (Audiobook)

Ordered this one as his Weekend Update with Michael Che is the only Saturday Night Live segment I watch. A great audiobook for listening to funny stories on your commute.

The Canceling of the American Mind – by Rikki Schlott and George Lukianoff

Do not let the title of this book deter you, even though “Cancel Culture” is a phrase that’s been repeated ad nauseum. It took until 2023 for a good definitive book on the subject to be published. Schlott, who dropped out of college partly to pursue this book writing independently and partly because she disagreed with the culture she was on NYU’s campus, partnered with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Lukianoff to critically document what “cancel culture” really was. They’ve written a great history on how anti-free speech became intellectualized inside academia, and make a strong case for why we need to fight against mob mentalities on both sides of the political spectrum.

Trump in Exile – by Meredith McGraw

What was Trump up to in the aftermath of the January 6th riots? That’s where this book picks up the Trump story, starting with Biden’s inauguration day and running through the 2024 Republican primaries. The window of 2021 through 2022 could have been the moment when the Republican party moved on from Trump while he was living a reclusive life at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, slightly distracted by business opportunities such as Truth Social and LIV Golf.

And yet, he marched along with his planning for another run, empowered by his team’s polling numbers that showed he was still the most popular politician in the GOP, even if his handpicked midterm candidates couldn’t win.

The insights into Trump’s team, particularly campaign manager and soon-to-be White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, showed that Trump took his revenge tour far more seriously than he had his 2016 campaign by surrounding himself with real experienced political operatives. And it will frustrate Democrats to realize how much momentum the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago and lawsuits in 2023 gave his campaign.

Ultimately, it’s Trump’s ability to unilaterally make decisions for himself, especially about when to announce he was running again and how to crush Ron DeSantis before primaries had started, that make him such a distinct and effective politician separated from all other run-by-committee campaigners.

Cultish: The Language of Fanatacism – by Amanda Montell

Maybe my most “fun” read of 2024, Amanda Montell makes a great case for the importance of language to the ability for cults to exist. She writes quick chapters on a range of cult concepts, such as the classic religious groups, through fitness, pyramid schemes, and conspiracy theories. A mix of academic research and anecdotal interviews with former cult members blend together well.

Four Stars

The Handmaid’s Tale – by Margaret Atwood

This was required reading for some English classes back when I was in high school in the mid-2000s. Sadly, it was not on my curriculum. Having come around to it now (due to its potential prescience) I was pleasantly (maybe not the vibe Atwood was going for?) surprised by how breezy a read the book is despite the heaviness of its content. This is a compliment to her writing style, which manages to build an alternative future world that’s detailed without getting bogged down in details. Without opining on its contents, I can see why it’s a book that would be taught in English classes; it invites discussion.

Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP – by Patrick Ruffini

For anyone surprised by Trump’s electoral victory, they shouldn’t have been. A lot of the evidence was already present in the 2020 election. Ruffini, a Republican pollster and Bush administration member, dove into the 2020 data and wrote this book largely to help explain to himself how Donald Trump had taken over his party. What he found after the 2020 election became extremely relevant in 2024: minorities and lower income voters were drifting Republican in most elections since 2016. Anyone on the left who wants to stereotype the GOP as less intelligent really has to contend with Ruffini, who packed this 2023 book with stats and charts that really exemplifies how Republicans have an understanding of electoral trends that counters the Democrats “ground game” approach.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure – by Jonathan Haidt and George Lukianoff

Is every new generation of kids “softer” than their parents were? While adults have been saying this since time immemorial, professors Haidt and Lukianoff started seeing a particular spike in softness amongst their university students in the mid-2010s, and by 2018 compiled their analysis of the causes and solutions into this book.

Without overly spoiling the book’s contents, they exposed what they call “Three Great Untruths” that millennial and Gen Z kids were taught, making them unprepared for adulthood and setting back society:

• “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker” – Kids are taught to shrivel or run to adults when faced with challenges, directly contradicting older wisdom we used to teach like “confronting your fears” and “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me”.
• “Always trust your feelings” – When there’s a big body of research and old philosophy about how we should use our rational capacities to manage our emotions, not feed into them.
• “Life is a battle between good and evil” – Teaching kids that anyone who disagrees with you is evil eliminates the ideas of debate, nuance, and perspective, all of which are much more necessary for a functioning society than a tribal “us versus them” mentality.

In general, it seems like society has forgotten that kids are stupid and need raising by adults, not coddled to.

Five Stars

The Revolt of the Public: And the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium – by Martin Gurri

If anyone best understood the rise of Donald Trump before it happened, it was Martin Gurri publishing this book in 2014, one year before Trump announced his candidacy. This book is not explicitly about Trump, though his specter looms large when reading it today.

What it is about is the downfall of authority figures, and the implications that would have for politics. Gurri didn’t come up with this insight out of thin air. He was a CIA analyst who saw how social media was used by the public during the 2011 Arab Spring to revolt (hence the title) against half a dozen Middle Eastern governments. His big predictive leap was expecting that trend to hit Western nations given the internet technology would only continue to spread.

This also greatly explains the recent losses of the Democratic party since 2014. They positioned themselves as the defender of the old authority order, not realizing that no existing government could control its policy narratives in the new social media age and any weaknesses would be exposed and attacked mercilessly by the public.

Like many profound ideas, all one had to do was look in the right spot and extrapolate to the future. For its prescience in 2014 and ability to make sense of the past decade, this is a five star book.

The Best Book Read in the Second Half of 2024

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion – by Jonathan Haidt

This book tackles a question, critical and universal to humanity, suggested by its subtitle: How is it that there are so many various opinions among people, and yet everyone seems so certain their one opinion is correct?

Haidt’s answers this question gradually and methodically, bridging the fields of biology, psychology, and political science into the cohesive new theory of Moral Foundations. 

It belongs in my short list of “books I wish I had written”, where I’ve discovered that ideas loosely floating around my mind have already been rigorously considered, tested, and communicated better than I would have. The world would be a more peaceful, understanding place if every high school senior had to read this book.

As a reference, my grading scale is:

Two Stars: Not recommended, except for those very interested in the subject.

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• History of Movies and The Sopranos
• Science Fiction
• Food
• Authors with Multiple Books Featured:
  • Michael Pollan
  • Shea Serrano

As a reference, my grading scale is:

Two Stars: Not recommended, except for those very interested in the subject.

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• Con Artists
• Product Management
• Poker and Las Vegas
• Chess
• Debt
• TV Sitcom Family Ties
• Amazon
• Venture Capital
• CRISPR and Gene Editing

As a reference, my grading scale is:

Two Stars: Not recommended, except for those very interested in the subject.

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• Comedians: I love sitcoms and standup comedy, and I’ve included stories from stars of both related worlds.
• Netflix: A new set of separate books by the Netflix co-founders teach the lessons learned from launching an entertainment revolution.
• Mad Men: Two books analyzing my favorite televised drama.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey: Also two books telling the stories around the making of the classic Stanley Kubrick film.
• Business of Biotech: Continuing my education in the natural sciences, I focused on learning the histories of Vertex Pharma, Genentech, Amgen, and the broader drug business.

As a reference, my grading scale is (without any one or two star books this time):

Two Stars: Not recommended, except for those very interested in the subject.

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• Technologist Gene Kim: The cofounder and CTO of TripAdvisor now dedicates much of his time to writing books about how to best run technology organizations. Applicable to large companies and startups alike.
• Uber and How We Work: As part of my research for working at Bluecrew, I delved into the temporary staffing industry, modern “gig economy” companies such as Uber, and some general history of labor.
• N+1 Magazine: I’ve reviewed books written by the staff of literary magazine n+1 in the past, and this year I’ve added three more to that list.
• Bill Simmons Colleagues: Simmons is best known as a founder of two successful online media brands (Grantland and The Ringer). After I learned he’s good friends with Chuck Klosterman, I’ve dived into books by more of his colleagues.
• Adult Entertainment: The confluence of Dave Chappelle Netflix special, a new book by one of my favorite authors, working for Tinder’s parent company, and Hugh Hefner’s semi-recent death all converged into me reading a lot of material around sex. Readers are forewarned.

As a reference, my grading scale is (without any one or two star books this time):

Two Stars: Not recommended, except for those very interested in the subject.

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• “Gig Economy” and Temporary Work: Since I’ve started working at Y Combinator alum Bluecrew moving industrial temp staffing to a tech platform, I’ve dived into the industry’s literature.
• Accounting: Brushing up my knowledge on the field in which I’ve occasionally worked.
• The Legal System: Between the current state of our politics and an increase in my own experiences with lawyers over the past year, both personally and professionally, I’ve got multiple books which cover how our legal system works.
• Japanese Culture: Three books spent time covering Japan, two for a couple chapters and one entirely.
• Books from Mad Men: The show is my favorite drama and features multiple books from the shows time period. I’ve now read a couple of them.

Continue reading “Books Read in the Second Half of 2019” →

As a reference, my grading scale is (without any one or two star books this time):

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Themes from these six months:

• Chuck Klosterman: I’ve completed the Chuck Klosterman collection, including his two novels.
• Alan Lightman: A physicist-novelist recommended by my good friend Ritoban Thakur has a unique voice which bridges spirituality with science.
• Technology Company Growth and Management
• Stripe Press: A new publishing company with the goal of advancing economic and technological ideas also puts great care into their uniquely designed and high quality physical book covers.

Continue reading “Books Read in the First Half of 2019” →

As a reference, my grading scale is (without any one or two star books this time):

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

I’ve also started marking themes of my reading for the time period. In these six months, some commonalities:

• The Oil Industry: Three books on the history of the Oil industry, spanning from the early 1900s at Spindleto to the future of fracking.
• Chuck Klosterman: In this period of time I read two books by Chuck Klosterman, who is now my second-most read author since 2012 (only behind Michael Lewis who also shows up in this post). And not just any two books, but compilations of his articles for other outlets. The two compilations were published a decade apart, giving insight into how Klosterman’s own focus has changed in the 2000s.
• Physicist Carlo Rovelli: I randomly discovered this physicist in 2016 when I found his “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” in a New Orleans bookstore and spent this time period reading two more of his fantastic works.
• Neuroscience and Psychopathy: Following up from my genetics research the prior six months, I’ve worked my way up from the foundations of biology to neuroscience and understanding the disorders that create so much pain in society.
• Jon Ronson: I followed up his first book on psychopathy with two more, including an exclusive audiobook he did for Audible.
• Audiobooks: In a futile attempt to save bookshelf space, I coughed up for a paid Audible account. I was already an avid podcast listener and this isn’t much different.

Three Stars (Recommended)

The Last Days of August by Jon Ronson (Audiobook):

From the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed comes this deep dive into the porn industry and the death of actress Mercedes “August Ames” Grabowski. What was a seven-episode podcast has been compiled into an audiobook. Ronson and his colleagues go to great lengths to get to the bottom of the question “Why was August hung from a tree in a public park?”

It’s an unexpected detective story which tackles every angle: Was it due to Twitter bullying from jealous actresses? Was she killed by her potentially abusive husband? Was it due to a broken childhood and being abandoned by her parents?

Regardless of what you think the answer is, it’s a grim story where everyone is an unreliable source. Despite the darkness, it’s well-told and is (of what I’ve heard and read thus far) Ronson’s best journalistic work.

I’ll Be There for You – The One About Friends by Kelsey Miller (Audiobook):

Friends has played an important part in my life. It was always on during dinner when I was a kid, my college friends had the DVDs playing in the background after classes in their apartment, and it’s 2010 Netflix debut put all that nostalgia back at our fingertips.

Kelsey Miller’s history and analysis of the show does a solid job chronologically retelling the show’s creation, starting with the friendship of creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman and running through biographies of the six ensemble members. From there, she traces the show’s growth season-by-season, pausing to cover the host of controversies along the way: backlash following Season Two’s over-exposure and media blitz, the progressively higher-stakes contract negotiations pitting the six friends against the network, September 11’s impact of extending the show’s run by serving as the country’s leading comedy after its period of grief, and its eventual conclusion, passing the baton to reality TV and HBO dramas as the top television shows.

Although there are some parts of Friends history that isn’t covered much (such as Matthew Perry’s widely-known substance problems), Miller provides a fair retrospective on the parts of Friends that modern woke bloggers tend to knock the show for: the homophobia, lack of ethnic diversity, and the sexual harassment lawsuit from a female writer regarding her time in the mostly-male writers room. All these subjects are used by Miller not to tear down the show, but to show Friends as a reflection of its time, yet its themes and warmth are timeless.

The Sociopath Next Door – The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us by Martha Stout, Ph.D.:

Unique from other books on psychopathy, Dr. Stout, formerly of the Harvard Medical School prior to going into private practice, brings a psychologists perspective to the subject. The book contains a compilation of anonymized stories from her clients who are mostly victims of psychopaths. The most memorable example for me was a woman whose father was a well-respected high school principal until he shot a drug dealer on their front lawn and it was revealed that her father, now in prison, had been hardcore drug-dealing in his evenings.

The analysis doesn’t seem as scientific as Professor Hare or Professor Kent Kiehl’s work, and the last chapter leaves the book on an oddly spiritual note. However, if your life has been impacted by psychopaths, it will feel good to know others have lived through the same experiences.

Without Conscience – The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare, Phd.:

Professor Hare was the worldwide leader in psychopath research. Hare got his start studying prison inmates in Canada as the sole psychologist at the British Columbia Penitentiary. His work there landed him a role as a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columna.

Without Conscience is his guidebook to the subject, covering the range of violent serial killers to white-collar-criminal psychopaths he’s interviewed with his methods that became the industry standard (prior to wider proliferation of MRI machines).

Written in 1993, it’s more psychology than neuroscience since the latter field was still nascent compared to Hare’s experience speaking to psychopaths in prisons. The subtitle is accurate in labeling much of the content “disturbing”, but a must-read for anyone interested in the subject matter.

Blitzscaling – The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Businesses by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh:

As defined by the authors, Blitzscaling is “a strategy and set of techniques for driving and managing extremely rapid growth that prioritize speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty.”

For the laymen, this book is about the shared strategies Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn, and other big tech company brands used to take over the world in the past decade. One of the major themes being that these companies prioritize speed and experimentation over worrying about costs, with the idea that customer growth and the future monopoly position overcompensate for the losses along the way.

The danger of a book like this is that, misinterpreted by the wrong founders and an issue I’ve seen first-hand at startups, it could encourage a lack of financial discipline, and its strategies only work for business or products that can inherently affect a lot of people; otherwise you’ll be burning money. But for anyone who wants to understand more about how big tech companies got to where they are, or aspire to build on themselves, Blitzscaling is a framework worth thinking about.

The Psychopath Test – A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson:

The first book I’ve read by Ronson, it’s more storytelling than journalism (compared to The Last Days of August), but it’s an addicting set of stories. Ronson explores a variety of psychopath stories, such as a man who talked himself into a mental institution as a way to avoid prison, cult leaders, and obviously murderers.

My favorite chapter covers “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, a man ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 10 worst bosses of all time, fired by companies for committing fraud, and was once accused in court by his ex-wife for holding her at knife point and asking what human flesh tastes like.

In between these stories, Ronson traces the history of psychopaths in the psychiatric literature, starting with early-1800s French psychiatrist Philippe Pinel identifying patients as “manie sans delire” (insane without delusion) and through the debates in the academic community about how to identify and classify these slippery assholes.

If you’re interested in psychopathy, there are more medically informative reads. If you want a captivating story about subversive evil in humanity, this is a fun one.

Snakes in Suits – When Psychopaths Go to Work by Robert D. Hare, Phd.:

Dr. Hare, after he had finished writing his first book Without Conscience, was quoted as saying, “I should never have done all my research in prisons. I should have spent my time inside the stock exchange as well…. Serial killers ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”

He spent the later part of his career working on studying functioning psychopaths, many of whom either commit while-collar crime or similar destroy business value but undermining their employers and pocketing company money for themselves instead of investing into growing the business.

The format for Snakes in Suits alternates between fiction and non-fiction: one chapter will cover specific behaviors or symptoms of psychopaths, followed by a story about how that might manifest itself in the workplace.

Hare concludes with a chapter on how colleagues can identify and manage working around people who seem to be destructive toward their business and others. Having worked with some in the past, I think more people would benefit from reading this guide, as they’ll instantly recognize someone from their life in these pages.

Four Stars (Highly recommended for those interested in topic, or generally recommended for anyone)

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson:

I decided to read this after completing his earlier work The Psychopath Test in one weekend. Shamed is slightly longer, but didn’t take much more time for me to finish. Ronson’s unique take on public shaming is inspired by and inextricably tied to the rise of social media technology, particularly Twitter, which empower mob mentality at historically unprecedented scale. Much of the book is centered around Ronson tracking down victims of this new form of kangaroo courting in an effort to understand the history of public shaming, how it happens in modern context, and its fallout.

His sense of morality seems to drive him to empathize with the victims, who he (and I agree) have been the collateral damage of the new weaponized techno-social justice warriors. This book is a great siren call that, if we as a society don’t learn to apply the golden rule to the Internet, then the great tools used for giving voices to the marginalized will be turned into the fear-driven banality of universal silence.

Chuck Klosterman IV – A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman:

Published in 2006, this collection covers two types of articles Klosterman had previously written for outlets, especially Esquire. The first third of the book is Chuck’s interviews with a variety of celebrities, to whom he brings unique understanding: Britney Spears (at the time of writing in 2003, easily the most famous person he interviewed who dodges the subtext of his questions like a politician), actor Val Kilmer (giving readers a better understanding of why he got semi-exiled from Hollywood for being unintentionally loony), and basketball star Steve Nash (who comes across as incredibly likeable).

The second section is a collection of non-interview articles, some still journalistic and some pure opinion pieces. Most notable among these is “The Importance of Being Hated” about how all of us have an archenemy, a nemesis, and the important differences between the two. Also, Chuck Klosterman ate only Chicken McNuggets for a week well before Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me.

The books ends with a short story which was Klosterman’s first published work of fiction. The story is about a guy named Jack who would have a boring job as a newswriter if he didn’t start his mornings with phencyclidine, better known on the street as PCP or Angel Dust. It’s completely disconnected from the rest of the book, but has some great comedic observations that at least geeky men, if not everyone, will relate to.

Chuck Klosterman X – A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century (and its Audio Companion) by Chuck Klosterman:

Published in 2017, Klosterman’s most recent essay collection captures the changing American culture. The book is mostly features of specific people he’s written previously for outlets such as GQ and ESPN: Taylor Swift (whom he considered the most famous person he’s ever interviewed), Tom Brady (the seemingly least cooperative interview), Kobe Bryant (the most direct). There’s some general culture writing mixed in, including an insightful discussion on the “nostalgia problem” and the definitive analysis of the band KISS for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

X ends with celebrity obituaries written by Klosterman. My personal favorite is of Warrant’s Jani Lane. Klosterman ended his first book, Fargo Rock City, with a story about Jani Lane, the lead singer of Warrant, best known for their titillating music video Cherry Pie. Here was a man who was mocked for allegedly contributing to the downfall of his artistic genre due to reasons outside his control, and would spend the next couple decades trying to pursue his artistic aspirations before killing himself in a Comfort Inn motel. Klosterman is able to take this one man’s true tragic tale and extrapolate lessons for us all; we are much less in control of our stories and legacies than we’d like.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson:

The newest book from the creators of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails is a collection of short lessons learned from their experience running a successful, founder-owned, investor-less software business for over a decade. There’s a lot more I agree with here than disagree with, such as the arbitrary-ness of most goal-setting exercises and the compounding problems of productivity-death-by-meetings (very reminiscent of Paul Graham’s “Makers Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” essay). While I could write a whole separate essay on unifying the Basecamp school of thought with other startup and business canon, I’ll emphasize one here: If you know what’s important to do and efficiently focus on that, then work does not have to be hell.

The Big Rich – The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough:

In my youth, I didn’t realize that I was familiar with one of the people from The Big Rich; I just knew Lamar Hunt as the founder and owner of the Columbus Crew, probably the sports franchise whose games I’ve been to the most in my life.

Lamar got his money as a descendant of H.L. Hunt, one of four family patriarchs described in the mid-20th century press as “The Big Rich” of Texas, chronicled here by Bryan Burrough (who also co-authored one of my top five favorite business books and probably his most famous, Barbarians at the Gate).

Burrough tells the century-long story of the Texas oil business, starting with legendary Spindletop oil boom in 1901 and ending with the election of President George Bush, himself an heir from an oil empire, in 2001. In between, the story focuses on four families which became, at differing points in the century, the richest Americans in the world in an era that even pre-dated men like Warren Buffett. Men such as H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, and Roy Cullen are names lost to modern culture but were the moguls that bridge the timeline between the Rockefeller/Carnegie era and the electronics industry of the 70s.

Despite most not knowing their names, Americans have a stereotypical identity of Texas and Texans: cowboy boots with spurs, big hats, and flaunted wealth. Shows in the 80s such as Dynasty were inspired by The Big Rich families. The modern American political conservative movement, too, is told here, with the roots of Bush-era politics inspired and funded by these oil tycoons distrusting a US government who their parent’s generation hadn’t even been members of during Texas’s independent days.

Most Americans of my generation probably fail to realize how much of their lives descend from these men: Half of the NFL teams and Major League Soccer were initiated by the Hunt family and one descendant named Sid Bass became the savior and largest shareholder of the Disney Corporation until 2001. Love them or hate them, thanks to Burrough, the iconic Texas oil men of the mid-1900s will never be forgotten.

The Frackers – The Outrageous Inside Story of The New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman:

Zuckerman has written the canonical account of one of the great business and technology stories of our lifetimes.

The Frackers tells a classic American entrepreneurship tale: a group of unknown outsiders, many the children of poor immigrants and only armed with gusto, create a new technology that truly disrupts an industry. This generates newfound wealth for themselves and shakes the foundations of the rest of society and geopolitics, as countries and old industrialists question assumptions about the world’s available energy (a very fundamental thing to be questioning).

The two main technologies are “fracking” (shooting water and chemicals into rocks so they crack open like eggs and spill out oil and gas) and horizontal drilling (pretty self-explanatory but historically difficult to do thousands of feet below ground). Those bold enough to spend the major time and money upfront to test these techniques in America were richly rewarded. But once proven right on the availability of untapped energy in our backyards, these wildcatters conflict with Wall Street, ExxonMobil, and environmentalists, sometimes all at once. The environmental impacts of fracking are treated reasonably and evenly debated. Zuckerman has done a tremendous job documenting a historic period in American business and ultimately worldwide geopolitics around how humanity gets its energy.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis:

What happens when a new administration takes over the government, and then doesn’t put anyone in charge of running anything? This is the question Michael Lewis tries to answer in The Fifth Risk, which dives deeply into a very specific period of time. In the first couple months after Donald Trump was sworn in as President, he reportedly had nearly no one show up to actually run the departments of the Executive branch.

Lewis searches through the government underbelly where the sausage is made and asks the current and former government officials: What do all the agencies do? How are they managed? Most importantly, what happens if society forgets how they’re managed?

The title itself is an allusion to “project management”, or a complete lack thereof, being one of the major risks to political stability. The importance of consistent, capable management is the major takeaway from this story and applies to well outside the White House.

Reality is Not What it Seems – The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli:

Rovelli provides a foundational, understandable history of physics, from ancient Greece to the modern dilemma reconciling quantum mechanics and gravity. The last third of the book focuses on the sub-title, which is Rovelli’s specialty and a competitor to the more mainstream String Theory. Despite the latter chapters being a bit more technical and obtuse for the laymen, the first two thirds are such a well-written walkthrough of physics that I recommend it as an introduction to the field.

Five Stars (Highly Recommend to Everyone)

Saudi America – The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World by Bethany McLean:

Bethany McLean, most famous for breaking the Enron story almost two decades ago, is my favorite journalist-author. She continues to deliver with her latest short-form Columbia Global Reports book. True to form, she investigates a simple but globally important question: Is “fracking” really going to bolster American energy independence and upend the international oil and gas markets?

The answer is a complex one. She slowly unpacks the issue, starting small with a concise biography of fracking pioneer Chesapeake Energy and its founder Aubrey McClendon. Companies such as Chesapeake have raised a lot of investor interest, but have they actually made any profits? An influx of new oil and gas from fracking may just mean a lot of new supply driving down energy prices; good for consumers but unprofitable and unsustainable for investors.

This segues into geopolitics: If America continues to flood the market with cheap energy and drop prices, what impact will this have on our biggest allies and enemies? Saudi Arabia’s dictatorship is sustained by its oil money. Russia will have even more reason to be militarily aggressive if it loses its control of Europe’s energy supplies. And if the USA can generate its own energy without Middle Eastern oil, does that provide hope for ending our endless warring in the region?

Lastly, the future of the energy industry could/should be renewables like solar and wind. With all the focus the past couple decades on fracking, have the short-term benefits come at the long-term cost of falling behind in the marathon to truly ubiquitous, free energy?

The Psychopath Whisperer – The Science of Those Without Conscience by Kent Kiehl, Phd.:

The culmination of my deep-dive into psychopathy, this is the best book on the subject. Doctor Kiehl, whose thesis advisor was the aforementioned Doctor Robert Hare, is arguably the world’s leading expert on psychopathy. This book presents both the history of his professional research as well his personal experiences, which include non-strictly-academic endeavors such as innovating in mobile MRI hardware, the politics of navigating an academic career, and being inspired to devote his life to this subject after growing up down the street from renowned serial killer Ted Bundy.

What sets Professor Kiehl’s research on psychopaths apart from predecessors is his dedicated inquiry into neuroscience and biological-based causes for mental disorders. As someone without a neuroscience background, this book demonstrates how the functioning of the brain dictates human behavior far more than the vast majority of people comprehend. The Psychopath Whisperer is captivating, informative, and a must read for anyone who wants to understand the darkest, animalistic side of humanity.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson:

Ranked by Time Magazine as one of the all time top 100 English novels, this science fiction classic was inspiration for my greatest influence (programmer John Carmack) and many of his contemporaries in the videogame industry.

Snow Crash is an eccentric sci-fi action story starring the mafia’s futuristic pizza delivery boy whose computer hacking hobby entangles him in an underground criminal plot for world domination via mind control. The unfolding of the evil villain plans is an intelligent integration of religious and technological ideas, some such as the “avatar” have become so entrenched in culture that most people forget it originated here. Snow Crash is campy, fast-paced, and all-around the most fun I’ve ever had reading fiction.

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli:

This is the best book on physics I’ve read. I could also say it’s one of the best philosophy books, the two fields being so close together when it comes to thinking about time. Here, Rovelli explains, in simultaneously simple and complete as possible terms, what humanity currently understands about time. While many of us have had some exposure to ideas like time-travel through pop culture, once the limits of knowledge on time and entropy are explained, it’s hard to think about anything else. Rovelli’s writing is so eloquent, I completed it in a couple sittings. The time flew by.

The Best Book I Read in the Second Half of 2018

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Dr. Eric Kandel:

This is the epitome of the type of book I love. It’s concise, written by a regarded expert in the field, tackles profound issues, and has pictures. Just published in 2018 by Dr. Eric Kandel, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on how memories are stored in our brain’s neurons, The Disordered Mind is a fantastic introductory guide to all the major mental disorders, with chapters on: Depression, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, Dementia, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Addiction. And it concludes with two chapters on the neuroscience of two important, universal human conditions: gender identity and consciousness.

While covering the foundation of how humans work, Kandle integrates the latest research from related fields into as cohesive a narrative as possible: psychology, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, and genomics. I can’t emphasize enough how important the topics covered here are, and how effectively and succinctly Kandel covers wide ground. This is the book I would highly recommend for non-scientists breaking into the study of the brain.

As a reference, my grading scale is (without any one or two star books this time):

Three Stars: Recommended, may cover too niche a topic to get a stronger recommendation for a broad audience, is only high-level coverage of its theme, or just moderately interesting fiction.

Four Stars: Recommended, well-written, and covers material I think most people would find useful or interesting.

Five Stars: Strongly recommended to everyone.

Additionally, I pick one book every six months as the “best book I’ve read” during that time period.

Three Stars (Recommended)

Things You Should Already Know About Dating, You F**king Idiot by Ben Schwartz and Laura Moses

I picked up this comic book off the shelf at some bookstore for two reasons. First, if I’m still going to buy any physical books, they might as well be comic books. Second, it recommendation from Justin Timberlake on the cover which reads: “This book is so funny. Read it and you’ll 100% find love–if you’re into that kinda thing…happiness or whatever.” These authors must have great agents to get a JT quote. If the title didn’t tip you off, this isn’t high-class literature, but it’s not bad for a $5 comic book satirizing millennials.

If Ignorance is Bliss, Why Aren’t There More Happy People? Smart Quotes for Dumb Times by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson:

Like Oxymoronica reviewed in 2017, If Ignorance is Bliss is a book of quotes. They’re mostly comedic and organized alphabetically by theme, starting with “Acting” and ending with “Zen”. A few select favorites below:

“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.” – Mignon McLaughlin, a writer for Vogue and Glamour whose two Neurotic’s Notebooks became bestsellers in the 1960s

“They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance.” – Ronald Reagan

“An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.” – Don Marquis

The Curriculum – Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of Business Arts by Gil “Stanley Bing” Schwartz

“Stanley Bing” just recently announced his resignation as the Head of Communications for CBS. The Curriculum is his most recent work of satire, formatted as a faux “curriculum” mocking business schools by offering the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction kind of advice people really talk about at work. Your personal rating for this book will probably correlate with how you feel about drinking during weekday lunches and Dr. Strangelove.

Go Figure – Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know by Tom Standage

Another pocket-sized airport book, Economist editor Tom Standage has compiled about 100 one-or-two page articles on random trivia, such as how modern tropical volcanoes are still creating new islands today and humanity’s opportunity cost from all the time spent watching Gangnam Style. Recommended if you want to learn ideas for Trivial Pursuit in the form of infographics.

Girl Logic – The Genius and the Absurdity by Iliza Schlesinger

Comedian Iliza Schlesinger has had a tremendous run the past couple years, starting with being the first woman to win the TV show Last Comic Standing, followed up with four stand-up comedy specials on Netflix and now her first book. This review is probably as much about her standup as it is about this book, but they’re pretty closely related. The content of Girl Logic is pretty similar to the topics covered in her shows Elder Millenial and Confirmed Kills, with more serious personal anecdotes and a bit less, but some, comedy.

If you’re unfamiliar with Iliza, I’d recommend any and all of her Netflix comedy specials and the below half an hour talk on her book:

Immortal Life – A Soon to be True Story by Gil “Stanley Bing” Schwartz

I’ve previously written about how great an influence Stanley Bing has been on my worldview. He recently wrote his third novel, Immortal Life, which tells the tale of a trillionaire tech executive using his wealth to discover a path to mental immortality. The novel has all has all the hallmarks of a Bing book, primarily his sophomoric (meant as a compliment) way of humanizing the rich and famous.

I did not enjoy it as much as his first two novels, which I think is because Immortal Life has more of a science-fiction bent than “You Look Nice Today” and “Lloyd: What Happened”, making it a little less relatable. I read “Lloyd: What Happened” in high school and it remains one of my favorite works of fiction, deserving of its own five-star review.

Who Reads Poetry – 50 Views from Poetry Magazine edited by Fred Sasaki and Don Share

To answer the title’s implied question, I don’t really read poetry (other than The Road Not Taken which I probably misinterpret). Who Reads Poetry is published by the University of Chicago Press and is therefore heavily influenced by the Chicago/midwestern community. It includes essays from authors of various walks of life and professions (writers, military, economists, et al.), including some celebrities (Christopher Hitchens, Roger Ebert, Roxane Gay).

Probably the most memorable segment for me was when Jeffrey Brown of PBS Newshour asked two cadets in military school about why poetry is taught to soldiers.

Cadet One: “Poetry is directly related to our function as a military officer because, at the bottom level, we’re all here training to take lives. And that’s a concept that you really can’t approach without art, without some sort of deeper understanding of the human condition, which is exactly what poetry is.”

Cadet Two: “That’s a clumsy way to say that. We’re not here to take lives and destroy things. Perhaps those are the tools of the army and the military, but really we’re here to learn how to be leaders. And…poetry has a direct influence on how I think about leadership and how people view leadership.”

Fire and Fury – Inside the Trump Whitehouse by Michael Wolff

Fire and Fury got a ton of press when it was released (google it to confirm for yourself). It’s not exactly All the President’s Men (a personal all-time favorite of mine) and Wolff isn’t exactly Bob Woodward. However, it is a fun read in the sense that I don’t usually read a lot of tabloid-esque salacious kind of material.

Not to say this isn’t good reporting. It clearly has one primary source, who seems to clearly be Steve Bannon given how much attention he gets in the book (and the story ends when Bannon’s tenure did).

There are a few insights into the Trump administration I didn’t know much about going in. First, the bulk of the book is about the dynamics of three warring camps vying for Trump’s attention: The traditional Republican establishment, the far-right populist extremists led by Steve Bannon, and Trump’s family members. Second, the very significant role the Mercer family plays as Republican power-players. For these perspectives alone, this book was worth reading, and probably more so if you like following the news as entertainment.

Brotopia – Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

Silicon Valley has not been immune to the #metoo wave upending industries over the past couple years. If anything, Emily Chang unveils ways in which the tech community is as bad as the entertainment industry, partially attributable to technologists’ increased wealth accumulation.

My favorite part of this story is the book’s early chapters that are very well researched histories of how computer programmers and academics self-selected people (white dorky men) to be the stereotype of what a computer programmer should be because of very flimsy science and general laziness. Chang’s first couple chapters explain how the implicit misogyny of mid-century academia created an inescapable cycle for women who couldn’t be taken seriously in computer science. This opening material of Brotopia was its most informative.

The the middle chunk of Brotopia covers either a lot of stories well-known in the tech media (like Uber’s sexual discrimination and harassment issues). Aside from the varying information levels between chapters, Chang has compiled a thorough, informative summary of the too-frequent sexism in the tech industry.

Four Stars (Highly recommended for those interested in topic, or generally recommended for anyone)

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I picked this up at an airport and the title lives up to its name. You can pretty much knock this short read in one cross-country flight. Beginning with the “Big Bang”, it expands out to the known limits of the universe, and concludes with an overview of humanity’s tools for understanding everything in between. It’s the perfect plane read: short, to-the-point with just the right amount non-academic commentary, and will leave you feeling just a little smarter than before you left.

At the Existentialist Cafe – Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Blakewell

“Existential” is one of those words that people abuse without knowing what it means, and only refer to when talking about when reflecting upon the insignificance of their own lives. So when Bakewell’s book got good press for being a welcoming introduction to philosophy without Wittgensteinian jargon, I had to pick it up if I wanted to pursue being an amateur philosopher myself.

At the Existentialist Cafe weaves together a story broader than I expected by putting the advancement of philosophical ideas in the 20th century against the backdrop of greater cultural history, primarily the impact World War Two had on European culture and thinking. In this way, this book is as much a biography of humanity in the 1900s as it is a textbook on existentialism. The biography part is emphasized by focusing chapters on specific individuals who led the existentialist movement, primarily lovers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. A touch of the author’s personal journey (because phenomenology is a personal philosophy) toward a life dedicated to studying philosophy supports a casual, welcoming tone. I recommend as a solid first book on philosophy.

Jim Brown – Last Man Standing by Dave Zirin

“We always lament in the superficial media culture that there are no heroes, but that presupposes that a hero is perfect. And what the Greeks have told us for millennia is that a hero isn’t perfect. Heroism is the negotiation between a person’s strengths and weaknesses… and sometimes it’s not a negotiation. It’s a war.” – Ken Burns quote to open the book

Jim Brown is the greatest football player of all time (I stand by this even with Tom Brady’s sixth Super Bowl ring and Jerry Rice’s records). And it is a name that, while fading from memory for new generations, still resounds in sports lore.

As NFL Films states in the above highlight video, in nine-record setting seasons, Jim Brown led the league in rushing yards eight times. Brown was a three-time league MVP. He is the only runner ever to average over 100 yards per game and over 5 yards per carry for a career.

“Jim thought on Sundays, and these are his words, that he was a god. That nobody could hurt him, that nobody could touch him, that nobody was better. And he proved it every Sunday…. That so called ‘macho’, which I hate that word, but he embodies it.” – Burt Reynolds

“I played nine seasons and never missed a game and I never laid out on the football field. I might not have the greatest ability of everybody, but the one thing that stands is that when it was time to play, I was there.“ – Jim Brown

I got to meet author David Zirin at the Volumes Bookcafe in Chicago’s Wicker Park district, where he spoke about his time interviewing Brown at his home. Zirin noted that even in his 80s, Brown is an imposing figure, still moving his gigantic frame with the help of a cane which resembles a tree trunk more than a stick.

What I really love about this biography is that it’s the perfect length, not an Odysseyian-sized epic like many biographies. It’s just long enough to devote efficient chapters to the many phases of Brown’s life: His fatherless youth, his career as the greatest football player ever and the last man to lead Cleveland to a major sports championship before Lebron James, his subsequent Hollywood film career, and his subsequent life promoting black rights alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X and suppressing gang violence by encouraging black youth to compete economically, not violently.

As the opening Ken Burns quote foreshadows, there is another side to all the great things Brown accomplished. Zirin devotes a chapter to Brown’s history of under-reported domestic violence against the women in his life. Sociologists today could easily say that someone like Brown is the epitome of the modern term “toxic masculinity”.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum on judging Brown, in a today’s time where Malcolm X and Ali are gone, there remains gravitas to Jim Brown still standing.

Powerful – Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

How did the DVD-by-mail startup bankrupt Blockbuster and become (as of publishing this post) a $100 billion entertainment behemoth? It’s largely attributed to the innovative culture the company developed, led by Patty McCord.

This book pairs really well with Ray Dalio’s Principles because they both pull no punches. They attribute the success of their organizations to honesty, the removing of pretense, and saying what others won’t. Powerful’s chapter titles reflect this (“Human Beings Hate Being Lied To” and “The Art of Good Good-Byes: Make Needed Changes Fast and Be a Great Place to be From”). I personally believe that if more companies should follow something closer to the Netflix model explained in Powerful, the business world would be a better place.

To get a feel for Netflix’s perspective, you can revisit the original “Culture Deck” presentation Patty created at Netflix which helped inspire this book.

The Phoenix Project – A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

So many companies have moved from the “IT” department from being a cost-center to business-critical. And yet the horror stories of software products taking too long to ship and always breaking is still the norm.

In 2013, developer operations (“DevOps”) pioneers Kim, Behr, and Spafford codified what they had learned about integrating business deadlines, agile software development, and software-infrastructure-as-code into a novel. The Phoenix Project’s story and structure are based on Eli Goldratt’s The Goal (which I previously reviewed), which translated his own Theory of Constraints mixed with Toyota’s legendary manufacturing philosophies into a story that generalized to many businesses.

As I followed our protagonist Bill and his IT team at “Parts Unlimited” drowning in deadlines and marketing team demands, it reminded me of all numerous project and process failures I’ve seen in my own career. Optimistically, the happy ending and how Bill arrives there provides a generally useful template more companies should try to learn from when trying to figure out how to move faster with increased effectiveness.

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

Doerr, a legendary venture capitalist involved in Google and Twitter, has written the guide to Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), the performance management process used by many of the top technology companies (and increasingly outside computers). Measure What Matters interweaves chapters written by entrepreneurs who have used the system to success with Doerr’s practical and specific advice for how to align all employees in an organization to achieve collective goals via individual contribution.

This absolutely earns a spot in the canon of handbooks aspiring business-people must read. Without avoiding replicating the entire book here, I’d just recommend that every company without a performance management system send a copy to every employee.

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Skin in the game is about honor as an existential commitment, and risk taking (a certain class of risks) as a separation between a man and machine.”

That’s the description of the book’s core concept (from page 35 of the hardcover). Primarily, Skin in the Game thoroughly explains the philosophical and tangible importance of personal risk-taking to humanity. From bankers and wantrepreneurs losing others people money and going back to their taxpayer funded beach houses or the nefariousness of wage-slavery, Taleb uncovers “asymmetries” throughout society. In other words, areas of life where people are taking more than they’re giving, and how to not be one of them.

Taleb extends this study of social asymmetry to other areas, including a fascinating chapter on minority rule (relevant for liberals who were astounded by Donald Trump’s presidential win, which Taleb essentially predicted and explains). Antifragile is still my favorite of Taleb’s books since I find its ideas even more insightful, but this is still a must-read. Taleb’s insights are still well-understood in culture, and they should be.

Five Stars (Highly Recommend to Everyone)

Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyou

This book comes at an important time in American culture when journalism and media is under attack. Journalist John Carreyou has given the field its best defense by uncovering the most blatant and diabolical American corporate fraud since either Bernie Madoff or Enron. The various financial institutions may have done more damage in the 2000s, but you’d be hard pressed to find a much clearer link between knowingly putting people’s health at risk for the sake of greed and fame as what happened here.

Carreyou tells the inside story of Theranos, a much-lauded biotech startup started by the psychopathic founder Elizabeth Holmes. The psychiatric accusation may seem strong until you read what she did in verbally abusing employees, hiring private investigators to watch employees at their homes, and ultimately risking people’s lives by faking and lying about blood test results from her company’s products.

It’s the kind of story I imagine splits a journalist’s psyche: it’s the kind of criminal story that makes a journalist’s career, but wouldn’t be possible without others having suffered from the crimes. Carreyou has done a tremendous humanitarian service by telling this story.

The Best Books Read in the First Half of 2018

For the first time on this blog, I am giving this nod to two books that were both so supremely written and whose stories are so intertwined that it made sense to give them both the honor.

The Gene – An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee, a Pulitzer Prize winner, cancer physician, and professor at Columbia University, has written the canonical history of the gene. The concept of the “gene”, along with related ideas of “heredity” and “evolution”, is one of those ideas that most people are vaguely familiar with but don’t know much beyond what they can recall from high school.

Mukherjee has written the most readable and still comprehensive history of evolutionary science, focusing on the gene as its core.

Forget the science, which is taught with clarity I’ve only encountered in Feynman’s stories. The Gene is as intellectually inspiring as it is emotionally energizing. The author went into medical research and genomics to uncover the root of his family’s dark secret: everyone in his family and their local Indian village knew his family was cursed with schizophrenia, which consumed the life of his two uncles and a cousin.

The book opens with this powerful prologue:

“My father is the youngest of five brothers, and Moni is his first-born nephew–the eldest brother’s son. Since 2004, when he was forty, Moni has been confined to an institution for the mentally ill…with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He is kept densely medicated–awash in a sea of a sorted antipsychotics and sedatives–and has an attendant watch, bathe, and feed him through the day….

Moni is not the only member of my father’s family with mental illness. Of my father’s four brothers, two–not Moni’s father, but two of Moni’s uncles–suffered from various unravelings of the mind. Madness, it turns out, has been among the Mukherjees for at least two generations, and at least part of my father’s reluctance to accept Moni’s diagnosis lies in my father’s grim recognition that some kernel of the illness may be buried, like toxic waste, in himself….

In 2009, Swedish researchers published an enormous international study, involving thousands of families and tens of thousands of men and women. By analyzing families that possessed intergenerational histories of mental illness, the study found striking evidence that bipolar disease and schizophrenia shared a strong genetic link. Some of the families described in the study possessed a crisscrossing history of mental illness achingly similar to my own: one sibling affected with schizophrenia, another with bipolar disease, an a nephew or niece who was also schizophrenic….

The study provided a strange interior solace–answering some of the questions that had so haunted my father and grandmother. But it also provoked a volley of new questions: If Moni’s illness was genetic, then why had his father and sister been spared? What “triggers” had unveiled these predispositions? How much of [Moni’s] illness arose from “nature” (i.e., genes that predisposed to mental illness) versus “nurture” (environmental triggers such as upheaval, discord, and trauma)? Might my father carry the susceptibility? Was I a carrier as well? What if I could know the precise nature of this genetic flaw? Would I test myself, or my two daughters? Would I inform them of the results? What if only one of them turned out to carry that mark?

This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science: the ‘gene,’ the fundamental unit of heredity, and the basic unit of all biological information.”

Modern Prometheus – Editing the Human Genome with CRISPR-Cas9 by Jim Kozubek

For those who have heard the term “gene editing” but don’t really know much biochemistry, CRISPR-Cas9 is the technology behind one of the most important scientific revolutions of our time. Author Kozubek not only explains this innovative tool with readable scientific precision, he elevates its significance. His unique background of journalist-turned-scientist gives him the perfect skillset to tell this story.

CRISPR is an important inflection point in human evolution, enabling us to change who we are at our most fundamental genetic level. Modern Prometheus impresses this importance upon the reader by spending as much time on the political and capitalistic implications of the technology as the underlying science.

Kozubek acknowledges, with great respect, the tough choices that have been and will continue to be made by the brilliant scientists who have increasingly dangerous power over everyone not seen since the creation of the atom bomb:

“Heroism, at least as I use it in my own text, does not emphasize scientific valor as a series of achievements by right-minded people. Rather, to be a hero means to be immersed in a life-world, or lebenswelt, as the philosophers call it, to navigate complicated social, cultural and biological strata where there are no fundamentally right actions. Whereas we once had the archetype of the ‘Greek hero,’ who confronted binary decisions of whether to adhere or break with authority, the ‘Western Hero’ evolved into a pragmatic model. He knows his own moral character is not higher than his peers, but that does not stop him from enforcing justice or an ethic through a policy of pragmatism.

“In effect, to be a hero means to pursue one course of action at the expense of another course. Every ‘scientific hero’ knows he was just following one of many hypotheses and lines of thought. And, just like the valiant hero who steps into traffic to save a child, he denies it was a special act, because he is not entirely confident that he would have done it again. A genuine hero knows full well he could have easily acted otherwise.”