A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir

Colin Jost

Reviewed December 28 by Jon. This book is just what the title says - comedian and Saturday Night Live writer Colin Jost's memoir. It covers some childhood stuff, his Harvard (and Harvard Lampoon) years, and his years first as a SNL writer and then as the news anchor on Weekend Update. The book sounds like Jost. It has his same sense of humor and irreverent style. I read it hoping to get more insight into Jost, but the book was a bit of a disappointment It was pretty lightweight and glib. Kind of like his character, but I was expecting some more depth. I suspect it is there but, in this book, Jost did not show it.

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The Dark Hours: A Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel

Michael Connelly

Reviewed December 23 by Jon. This is yet another Michael Connelley novel release - like clockwork -right before he holiday season. This one further develops his Renee Ballard character, a reprobate LAPD detective working the night shift. She and Bosch are friends and collaborators but Bosch plays only a bit role in this book. Ballard is the star. She solves the murder of a former gang member running a body shop and a set of serial rapes. Like Bosch she colors outside the lines and gets in trouble with the LAPD leadership. Like Bosch, she solves the crimes and prevails in the end. Like most Connelley novels, this is a lightweight but easy and entertaining read. I look forward to his continued development of Ballard as a character.

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American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears

Farah Stockman

Reviewed December 18 by Jon. This book is a really good set of stories about workers at a Rexnord bearing plant outside of Indianapolis, when the plant shuts down to move to Mexico. Stockman tells stories of a number of workers and their plight. What struck me was how precarious and existance many of the people live. The Rexnord plant offered a degree of economic security and upward mobility for them. When it shut down, many had few options. This book is a really good examination of what happens because of the hollowing out of manufacturing. It does not offer many solutions, but that is OK. It is not a policy book, but a book that vividly paints the lives and challenges of the workers. That said, I do wonder what the policy implications are. Some suggest a return to unionization - which does not seem like a viable solution. It is clear that manufacuring is not ever going to be the engine of the US labor economy like it was in the 50s and 60s. What that means for people of limited means- like the ones whose lives are depicted in the book - is unclear. I recommend reading this book - not for answers - but to gain empathy for those displaced by the demise of American manufacturing.

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New York 2140

Kim Stanley Robinson

Reviewed November 30 by Jon. This is the first book I have read by Sci Fi author Kim Stanley Robinson. It takes place in New York in the year 2140 when sea level rise has indundated all of lower Manhatten and people occupy the upper floors of buildings and move around flooded streets like the canals of Venice. Further, it talks about social and economic changes. I wanted to like this book and tried several times to read it but quickly got bogged down. I eventually powered through it. The premise is good but the book is far too long. Robinson weaves a several sub-stories together and runs each one on for a long time. It is easy to get lost in the sub-stories and forget about the over arching story. He does intersperse stories about people with prognostication about the future, which I found interesting. Robinson is touted and the next great science fiction prognosticator. I found this book disappointing, however.

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Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

Adam Tooze

Reviewed November 29 by Jon. Adam Tooze us an economic historian. I read his previous book, Crashed - about the 2008 financial crisis -and quite liked it. Shutdown is about the economic story behind the COVID pandemic. It goes beyond economics, however, to cover the entire pandemic - albit thought and economic lens. The book drags a bit sometimes - such as when he gets lots of arcane detail about central bank bond buying programs around the world - but overall it is a good perspective on what is happening in the economy.

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Freedom From The Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself From the Invisible Hand

Mike Konczal

Reviewed November 14 by Jon. I have mixed feelings about this book. I really liked the premise that neoliberalism has turned everything into a "market" and that we need to get away from a society dominated by market economics. The book delivers on that promise, but not until chapter 7 - where free economy is discussed. Prior to that, Konczal chronicles the history of free land, free time, free life, free security, free care, and free health. Much of his analysis is historical with a big emphasis on racial inequity. OK, so far but it took a long time for him to get to the core argument. He spent a lot of time leading up to it. I would have preferred that he hit the core argument head-on and left the rest to elaborate. Nevertheless chapters 7 and 8 were very good and made a cogent argument for moving beyond markets.

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Sanfransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

Michael Schellenberger

Reviewed November 4 by Jon. I'm kind of ambivalent about this book. It was recommended by The Economist to help understand what we need to do to end homelessness. And it, indeed does that. Schellenberger has several points that I like - we need to deal with addiction, mental healh issues, and just plain unacceptable behavior among the homeless. We should make a distinction between those who are homeless because of poverty and those who are homeless by choice. We need to invest in mental health capabilities and short-term shelters. Schellenberger identifies two progressive attitudes that get in the way of these things. First, a "victim" mentality that asserts homelessness is the cause of society and can be solved by revamping social systems (i.e building more housing); second that temporary housing should not be built at the expense of permananent housing. He says -- correctly - that permanent housing will take a long time to build and we need temporary housing and the mental health and, yes, police enforcement for quality of life issues - while we are waiting for permanent housing to be built. I liked Schellenbgerger's overall approach and analysiss. What I did not like is that he sometimes digressed into gratuitous political bashing of progressives and progressive causes in general. I fear this might make his book become a cudgel for the right and be dismissed by the left. A tighter book, more focused on his core arguments, might have served his cause better.

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Peril

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

Reviewed October 25 by Jon. This is Bob Woodward's book about the end of the Trump presidency and the beginning of the Biden presidency. It covers the election, the January 6 insurrection, Trump's denial of the election results, and Biden's first 100 or so days. Like most of Woodward's writing, this is very lucid and riveting. I remember most of the events he covers but he reveals some inside information and texture of the events that are just not accessible in news reporting. Peril was meticulosly researched and I felt like I was in the room as decisions were made.

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The Blue Age: How the US Navy Created Global Prosperity and Why We're In Danger of Losing It.

Gregg Easterbrook

Reviewed October 11 by Jon. The title is a litte misleading because the book is about far more than the role of the US Navy in securing open seas. The first part of the book is, indeed, about the role of the Navy. Easterbrook maintains that the navy has unparallelled power to keep the peace on the seas. Later sections of the book discuss the role of free trade and China, in particular. Easterbrook is un unabashed free trader and his arguments do hold water. He has a very factful approach to the topic, which is refreshing. He goes on to talk about the arctic and governance of the seas. One intriguing assertion is that wealth naturally flows to coastal regions and that is partially because of their relationship to the sea and to other places. This was a very provocative and timely book. Worth reading.

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Damnation Spring: A Novel

Ash Davidson

Reviewed October 11 by Jon. Damnation Spring is set in the Northern California town of Klamath in the 1970s. It is about a couple, Rich and Colleen (and their son Chub). Rich is a logger and Coleen is a midwife who notices a lot of stillbirths. He old high school boyfriend is a researcher who is investigaing whether the defoliant the loggers and the state is using is causing the stillbirths. The book is a lot about the hard life of loggers and their small but interconnected community as well as the tensions between environmentalists and loggers. The book started off slow at first but eventually pulled me in as I started to understand the characters and their lives. It takes place a couple of hundred miles north of where we live - but almost seems like a different world.

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Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career

Tim Clark, in collaboration with Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Reviewed October 4 by Jon. This visual and accessible book applies the techniques of business model generation developed for business strategy to individual career change decisions. The business model canvas is adapted for thinking about individual careers. Like Design the Life You Love, the book consists of a number of exercises to analyize, deconstruct, and reconstruct a desired career. One innovation is in using the business model canvas to test the new career. The author makes a distinction between modelling (and testing the model) and planning - which I found useful. I did not do all of the exercises but I liked the thinking process and found the structure a little more rational than Designing the Life You Love.

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Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump

Spencer Ackerman

Reviewed October 3 by Jon. This book begins with the Oklahoma City bombing - done by domestic terrorists -- illustrating that American has had to confront terrorism for a while. The US did not vigorously puruse the domestic terrorists, however. But once Islamic terrorist hit the US in 9/11 that galvanized an American response to foreign terroists - and catalyzed an enormous security state - largely focused on foreign (usually Islamic) terrorists. Ackerman threads together 20 years of history of the security state through Bush, Obama, and Trump presidenices. I remember many of the events and people he chronicled but he puts them in context and relates them to each other. This was a good book that showed both how the US government over-reacted to 9/11, under-responded to domestic terrorism, and allowed a massive security-indusrial complex to grow. The book concludes by positing that this response to foreign terrorism has roots in US imperialism and raceism. Some sobering thoughts.

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Design The Life You Love: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future

Ayse Birsel

Reviewed September 29 by Jon. Like Bill Burnett's Designing Your Life, Birsel offers a step-by-step design process to first deconstruct you life, then imagine the life you want, followed by action steps. I've read several of these books and this one is fine. I did some of the exercises but they felt repetitive and tedious after a while. A good book but you can get the gist without slavishly doing all of the exercises.

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The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Garrett M. Graff

Reviewed September 14 by Jon. This book is just what the title says it is - an oral history of 9/11. Hardin assembles quotes from people who were there - first responders, victims, air traffic controllers, politcal leaders, etc. and organizes them by timeline and activity. The result is a pretty visceral sense of what happend 20 years ago. I've read a lot about 9/11 so there was not a lot of new information here, but the book is a good depiction of the texture of the events as told by those who experienced them.

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Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles

Rosecrans Baldwin

Reviewed September 9 by Jon. This book is a series of vignettes about the greater Los Angeles area. Baldwin describes Greater LA as a City-State and uses lots of short vignettes to capture the texture and character of Los Angeles. It is pretty entertaining and does give some insight into LA.

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The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

Annie Murphy Paul

Reviewed August 31 by Jon. Annie Paul's fundamental premise is that we don't just think inside our brain but use lots of external sources - sensations, movement, gestures, spaces (natural and built), ideas, experts, peers, and teams. She rejects the notion that we think using an isolated brain and, instead, posits that we think in a network context, using our surroundings and external sources to think. I was hoping she would spend time on exteralization such as drawing, diagramming and notes - or models in an architectural sense. She did, but gave them short shrift, I would have liked to see more elaboration. One fascinating thing was the nature of built space - in that we need a sense of ownership and shared context to truly collaborate. She said something I have long thought - that the "open plan" assertion that it is good for collaboration and creativity. People need private space to think and shared persistant space to collaborate. The antithesis of "hot desking" that organizations are moving toward in their return to work plans. I quite liked this book and its premise. I look forward to exploring more sources on this topic.

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A Man Named Doll: A Novel

Jonathan Ames

Reviewed August 29 by Jon. This is an LA Noir detective novel in the style of Michael Connelly. The protgonist is an ex LA cop, now a private investigator, named Happy Doll (really) who gets involved with a kidney stealing plot. Lots of twists and turns and some implausible parts. OK summer candy reading.

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Not to Scale: How the Small Becomes Large, the Large Becomes Unthinkable, and the Unthinkable Becomes Possible.

Jamer Hunt

Reviewed August 20 by Jon. In the first part of the book, Jamer (who I know) defines scale and elaborates on various aspects of it. He uses Charles and Ray Eames Powers of Ten to make scale visible. He then gets into complex adaptive systems. Much of our design and decison making is done by reducing and isolating problems. BUt the world is big and complex and the challenges facing us are complex adaptive system - both complicated and complex. Jamer starts to think about how to address such problems. he rejects top-down design - the prevailing design paradigm - and also rejects bottom-up emergence. He posits something in between - called scaffolding - that mediates the bottom up and top-down. His idea shows promise. Something for further exploration.

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Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

Peter Frase

Reviewed August 18 by Jon. This is a futures book that posits four "post-capitalism" scenarios:

1. Communism. Equality and Abundance
2. Rentism. Hierarchy and Abundance
3. Socialism. Equality and Scarcity
4. Exterminism. Hierarchy and Scarcity

These scenarios are organized into a 2x2 framework. The book describes each scenario conceptually with a bunch of academic references. While it might be useful to think about it this way, I found the book a bit unsatisfying because the scenarios were presented too conceptually. The book would have benefitted from more stories. Fortunately, the authors point to story references. The two most interesting were rentism - as in rent-seeking from owning and controlling intellectual property and exterminism - which was about adapting to ecological change - sort of an ecotopia perspective. The book was mildly interesting but - on the whole - disappointing.

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I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

Carol Leonnig and Philp Rucker

Reviewed August 15 by Jon. Leonnig and Rucker wrote A Very Stable Genius about the first three years of the Trump presidency. This book is about the last year - including January 6 and the immediate aftermath. Most of what is reported was reported in the daily news - what Leonnig and Rucker do is put it all in context and include the back story. The final year of the Trump presidency is depicted as dysfunctional, petty, and obsessed with politics rather than governing. No surprise. I did want more back story on January 6 but, given the publication date, it was a bit thin. I guess I will have to wait for Leonnig and Rucker's next book to get more detail on what, exactly, happened that led up to January 6.

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Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn

Alex Irvine

Reviewed August 15 by Jon. This is a sequel to NY collapse, about the Dollar Bill plague which decimates New York City and the U.S. April Kelleher, the protagonist in NY Collapse leaves New York to travel to Ann Arbor, MI to find out about a cure for the virus which her husband was working on. She is pursued by two JTF agents, one good, one bad. There is also a side story about the children of one agent left to fend for themselves in Washington, DC. A good sequel, light summer reading, but a nice follow-on from NY Collapse.

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The President's Daughter: A Thriller

Bill Clinton and James Patterson

Reviewed August 15 by Jon. This is the second book co-authored by Clinton and Patterson after The President is Missing. The protagonist is Matthew Keating, a former US President and Navy Seal. His retirement at a sleepy lake in New Hampshire is disrupted when middle eastern terrorists kidnap his daughter. With the help of an agent from his secret service detail and some of his navy seal buddies, he mounts a rescue in Tunisia. There is also some political drama since he was forced from office by his former Vice President. Pretty lightweight and entertaining. Good summer reading.

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Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America

David Giffels

Reviewed July 28 by Jon. Giffels is a writer from the Univerity of Akron who travels around Ohio to get a feeling of Ohio zeitgeist and try to explain what is happening with the country. It was interesting and entertaining covering a lot of places I knew growing up in Ohio. He seems to have captured the texture of Ohio life and culture - from farmers to factory workers, from northeast (Cleveland/Akron) to southwest (Dayton/Cincinnati) and into the appalachian areas of Ohio along the southern Ohio river. His explanation of why Ohio became so Trumpy is pretty standard - those who feel left behind by globalization/modernization/change. He chronicles what is but does not really paint a path forward. It was astonishing to note when we lived there (returned as adults from 1991-1995), Dayton lost almost 20,000 GM manufacturing jobs. It is difficult to see what will, if anything, turn around places like Ohio.

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The Doodle Revolution: Unlocking the Power to Think Differently

Sunni Brown

Reviewed July 19 by Jon. The book has been sitting on my desk for several years and I finally read and completed it. In general I liked it but the title is unfortunate. The book is about visual language and communications but the term "doodle" kind of trivialises it. I really liked that Sunni Brown explained WHY visual language is so powerful. She had some theoretical rationale underpinning what was otherwise a very pragmatic book. She has a number of exercises to teach the reader to "doodle". The exercises are one reason I slowed in my reading. They were much like LUMA methods. Useful stuff but mostly needs to be put into practice. Hence the exercises. The book is a worthwhile addition to my collection of books on visual communications.

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The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes

Zachary D. Carter

Reviewed July 18 by Jon. This was a big, sprawling book - part biography of Keynes, part a discourse on the impact his ideas have had on economics, politics, and the world. I learned a lot about Keynes and his influence. Recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand how Keynes ideas shaped the 20^th century and how they might shape the world going forward.

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Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

George Packer

Reviewed July 1 by Jon. Packer, a writer for the Atlantic, tries to diagnose what ails our society and our politics. He describes four tribes which Americans have sorted themselves into:

1. Free America. Individualistic and libertarian, strong believers in the supremacy of markets - the last vestige of Reagan mainstream conservatives.
2. Smart America. Highly educated technocratic elites - mostly coastal in Silicon Valley and the Northeast.
3. Real America. Working class middle America as exemplified by Sarah Palin and the Tea party.
4. Just America. Mostly young people focused on social justice and "wokeness".

Packer describes the reinforcement within these tribes and the unwillingness to see other points of view - or take responsibility for each tribes contrbution to the problem (e.g. Smart America's unwillingness to democratize education, thus reducing built-in advantage for thier childern. Packer's prescription is to break down the tribes. Most of his ideas are somewhat left-leaning - although he is more balanced than some commentators. Like many books of this ilk, he is long on description and a bit short on prescription. I have to give him credit, though. He does try to provide reasonable prescriptions.

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Doom: the Politics of Catastrophe

Niall Ferguson

Reviewed June 29 by Jon. This was a perplexing book. I think Ferguson was trying to dymystify how we deal with catastrophes such as the pandemic (and also to de-politicze them). It is a big sprawling book with lots of history - some of which was pretty interesting. But the book seemed unfocused and it was difficult to discern what Ferguson's point was.

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Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas

Marc Levinson

Reviewed June 23 by Jon. I had previously read Levinson's first book The Box - about how the invention of the shipping container increased shipping efficiency and drove globalization - so I was looking forward to this book as a more comprehensive explanation of globalization. Levinson did not disappoint. Outside the box is a pretty comprehensive look at globalization - starting with David Ricardo's theory of competitve advantage. Levinson covers a lot of history. He describes four phases of globalization:

1. Industrial capitalism. From the nineteenth century through WWII .
2. Free Trade. WWII through the early 1980s - companies traded commodities and manufactured goods - this was the era of efficiencies in shipping - the box and super ships.
3. Global Supply Chains. Making of roducts got disaggregated into long global supply chains
4. Stuff to Ideas. This is where we are now - where we move from physical goods to intellectual property.

This was a good book, and does put a perspective on globalization. We are just beginning the fourth phase and the shift from physical stuff to digital software and services is just beginning. That, combined with the growing tension between the US and China (as well as other poltiical tensions) will surely affect globalization moving forward. The question is "how"?

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Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems

Derek Cabrera and Laura Cabrera

Reviewed June 16 by Jon. This is a simple book by two Cornell instructors on systems thinking. They contrast their work and approach to systems thinking with most work in that their work is about how we think about systems - i.e the metacognition of systems thinking. They posit for simple rules:

1. Distinctions rule. Any idea or thing can be distinguished from other ideas or things it is with.
2. Systems rule. Any idea or thing can be split into parts or lumped into a whole.
3. Relationship Rule. Any idea or thing can relate to other things or ideas.
4. Perspectives Rule. Any idea or thing can be the point or view of a perspective.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I applaud its intent - to demystify systems thinking and its philosphy is sound. The rules seem pretty straightforward and useful. On the other hand the book seemed almost too glib. The authors are somehow associated with some softwre called Plectica, and -- at times -- the book felt like an advertisement for Plectica. It also seemed like the authors were dismissing other views on systems thinking and espousing their way as the one true way. I would also have liked more exercises in applying their rules. Perhaps a workbook is a good next step.

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Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service

Carol Leonnig

Reviewed June 13 by Jon. This is a comprehensive look at the secret service from its inception to the present day. It covers the growth of the agency, it's trauma at the Kennedy assasination and its triumph in preventing the Regan assassination. Leonnig is an investigative reporter for the Washington Post (she was co-author of A Very Stable Genius) and she clearly had lots of sources. The book is well written and hard to put down - although it does drag a little bit in some places where she goes thought the byzantine machinations of the politics of replacing the director. It provides and inside view of how the secret service operates and a bunch of the tensions they undergo - cultual, fiscal, and political. There was a lot of coverage of the Regan years and Clinton years. I wish it had a bit more coverage of the Obama and Trump years. It seems logical for her to continue her reporting to cover the events leading up to and occuring on January 6. I hope she does. She would do a good job covering.

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Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

Mariana Mazzucato

Reviewed June 6 by Jon. I've read several of Marzucatto's book, seen her speak, and spoken with her. Her fundamental premise is that we have an incorrect view of the role of government in innovation. She says that most economists see governments role as fixing market failures - e.g. healthcare, poverty, environmental degradation. Her view (which I increasingly share after my exposure to her ideas) is that government should be the risk-takers in innovation - doing things that are too risky for the private sector to do. This book is about mission-oriented innovation. Her canonic example is the US space program in the 1970s where the mission was to put a person on the moon. The mission was driven by the US government with lots of help from the private sector. The mission focused innovation and allowed the US to create all kinds of innovation that benefit us today. She describes the role ARPA (later DARPA) plays in innovation and a nummber of mission-based initiatives she has helped foster in Europe and the UK. Adopting Marzucatto's approach requires different leadership styles (integrative system thinking), talent management (and compensation), and most of all - a different mindset both within and outside of government about what government is for and how it should work. This is a short, readable book that brings together many of her ideas into a pretty strightforward manifesto.

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We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump: A Front Row Seat to a Political Revolution

Gerald F. Seib

Reviewed June 2 by Jon. I saw Gerald Seib moderate a Wall Street Journal panel and was impressed. I found this book and found it fascinating. Seib has clearly been a political insider since the Regan days. He first chronicles the arc of the Republican party from Reagan to Trump. He clearly revereres the conservatism that Regan espoused and shows how it has morphed over the decadess and turned into Trump populism. He is critical of the republican part for moving from conservatism to libertarianism (free markets with little or no intervention), for the foreign policy debacles (unnecessary wars and nation building), and missing policies that help its base (now mostly working class) cope with socital changes. All of this led to the rise of a populist Donald Trump. They key question is where the Republican party can and should go next. Seib provides some insight. It remains to be seen whether the party can move beyond culture wars to actually doing something constructive for its consituents and the nation.

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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Adam Grant

Reviewed May 31 by Jon. Think Again is about cultivating the ability to change your mind - looking at what you know critialy and changing your mind when warrented. Grant provides insight into how to change your own mind, help others see critically so they can change their minds, and to teach for open-mindedness. He reminds us that the world is complex and dynamic - we are always gaining (and should be seeking) new knowledge and changing our world view based on what we learn. It is a refreshing contrast to authoritatian certainty that some espouse. An easy and informative read.

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Freedom

Sebastian Junger

Reviewed May 26 by Jon. Freedom is a chronicle of Junger's 400 mile walk along a railroad track from Washington to Pennsylvania with a couple of Afghan war vets, a photographer and a dog. They live off the grid and try to get by unnoticed. He uses the walk to talk about the concept of freedom (and responsiblity) by describing the early settlers of the area, the native American tribes and other societies. He gets at the notion of how dependent we are on society and on each other - freedom - as some have asserted - is a myth. This is a very short book, but extremely engaging, readable, and provocative.

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The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

Michael Lewis

Reviewed May 26 by Jon. The Premonition is Michael Lewis's accounting of what happened behind the scenes in preparation - of lack thereof for the COVID-19 Pandemic. As he usually does, he creates lucid, compelling stories about people which he weaves together into a coherent point of view. From the middle-school science fair student who develops a prediction model for diffusion of disease, to the Santa Barbara public health officer who notices how diseases spread in their community, to researchers who compared Philadelphia to St. Louis in the 1918 pandemic and found that St. Louis had far better outcomes because they practiced social distancing and isolation early - all pointed to those who could see what is coming but were ignored or marginalized by the political and scientific establishment. It paints a pretty depressing picture of how our decision-makers ignore those who seek prevention rather than mitigation. Lewis writing style is always entertaining and he seems to be able to get at underlying truths that others cannot see.

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Radical Curiosity: One Man's Search for Cosmic Magic and a Purposeful Life

Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D.

Reviewed May 24 by Jon. Ken Dychtwald is an observer and commentator on aging and I've read several of his books. I expected this books to be about finding meaning in later years. Instead, it was Dychtwald's autobiography. It was not what I expected but I really enjoyed the book. He had a fascinating journey from early days at Esalen in Big Sur to surviving the dot-com crash to the death of his parents. His writing style is engaging and his personal story is fascinating. Again, not what I expected but it was worthwhile reading.

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Communicating the New: Methods to Shape and Accelerate Innovation

Kim Irwin

Reviewed May 12 by Jon. This is, I suppose, a "design thinking" book, but hit has a little more depth than the typical book in this genre. It is about communicating innovation - new ideas. It includes communication as a means of formulating new ideas and diffusing them. The book very much espouses innovation as an interactive and participatory process, not a linear post-facto presentation. Several of my friends and colleagues, such as Hugh Dubberly, John Seely Brown, and Chris Luebkeman, are mentioned in the book. This is a "how to" book, but it also has a useful appendix with a distillation and references to some of the theory and academic work behind the methods. Readable and accessible.

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The Future You: Break Through the Fear and Build the Life You Want

Brian David Johnson

Reviewed May 11 by Jon. My friend, futurist Brian David Johnson, jokes that he wrote a self-help book. It certainly sounds that way from the title, and there is a grain of truth to it. But what Brian really has done is written an accessible book on how to apply future-casting techniques - both to personal challenges and otherwise. He basically describes a process of envisioning a preferred future state, identifying what has to happen to realize that state, and back-casting to create executable steps to get there. Pretty standard strategy/forecast stuff. The "self-help" aspect of the book is almost incidential. It is a good primer on strategic foresight.

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Rock Me On the Water: 1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics

Ronald Brownstein

Reviewed May 10 by Jon. I graduated from high school in 1974 so I clearly remember the culture of movies, music, television and politics of that year. Brownstein, a Senior Editor at the Atlantic, sees 1974 in Los Angeles as a pivotal year for all of these aspects of culture. Brownstein starts with Linda Ronstat and Jackson Brown and weaves a story about their transformation of music (along with the Eagles and Crosby, Still, Nash and Young). He describes who movies went from epics to those with a message/meaning then back to big feel good blockbusters like Star Wars. All in the Family was the pivotal television show that moved us from Leave it to Beaver to more pointed shows such as MASH. Of course, like movies, TV went back to feel good shows. In he political realm, he chronicles Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden and Jerry Brown (1.0). It might be a bit of a stretch to focus solely on 1974 and, in fact, Brownstein uses that year as a metaphor, rather than literally. He covers roughly 5 years before and 5 years after but 1974 is the anchor. It was fun to read about things I remember from a formative time in my past and put them in perspective.

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Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win inthe 21st Century

Jeff Lawson

Reviewed April 25 by Jon. Lawson is a software developer turned CEO of Twilio, a cloud communication platform. The book was recommended by Autodesk visiting fellow Byron Auguste, and I'm glad he did. Lawson first makes the case that the world is increasingly powered by software - especially with COVID-19 as a catalyst for digital transformation. Almost all problems are now software problems. This means we need to pay more attention to those who actually make the software - software developers. Lawon describes modern programming and how software developers work. Early in my career I was a software developer so Lawson's comments resonated with me. In 2017 I had to redesign and rebuild this website because Microsoft discontinued supporting FrontPage – which we used to develop it. I had to get in and learn how web sites are programmed and it brought back my inner programmer. I did a bunch of the things Lawson described – pulling in lots of standard components, fonts, and styles. I wanted a map of all the places we had travelled and did that using Google Maps – way more capability than I could have programmed but I got it “for free” from Google. Same with Google Analytics. The menuing system is also pretty sophisticated and I did that using a standard menuing component – customized to my needs. I use YouTube for videos since they have done all the work to figure out video and codecs for various devices and resolutions. I learned a lot and did so in a very project-based approach (I had a goal and that drove my learning). Ask Your Developer resonated with my experience. I learned how sophisticated the technology is behind a simple web site and how to use standard components and systems, just like Lawson explains. The book is OK, it's real value is bringing the importance of software development back in focus.

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Medicare and You 2021: The Official US Government Medicare Handbook

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, US Department of Health and Human Services

Reviewed April 19 by Jon. Of all of the books I have read on Medicare, this government publication is the simplest and clearest. Maybe it is because it omits some information but it seems more actionalble than the othres I have read. I will be most useful as I navigate the medicare thicket.

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AARP Medicare for Dummies

Patricia Barry

Reviewed April 13 by Jon. This is one of the better books on Medicare, it is pretty clear and well-organized. The author clearly has a lot of experience. I have the same critique as I do of other Medicare books - it is organized by topic and tries to cover all of the special cases and permutations. The reader is left to pick their own path though a complex system. I am still waiting for a book organized by common cases and paths. Despite my critique, this was a useful book.

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2034: A Novel of the Next World War

Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, USN

Reviewed April 13 by Jon. The title describes this book well. It is about war between the US and China. The US is clearly at a technological disadvantage due to better Chinese cyber-warfare and technology. Both sides inflict damage on each other and neither wins. A dark horse country seems to be the victor. Sad, alarming, and probably a pretty accurate scenario of what might happen. I presume the authors wanted to create a cautionary tale. They succeeded.

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Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning

Tom Vanderbilt

Reviewed March 31 by Jon. Tom Vanderbilt writes about learning new things as an adult. He has lots of examples of new things he tries to learn - singing, juggling, surfing, meditation, drawing, jewelry making... and tries to draw some lessons from them. Among the lessons are that you have to become incompetent before coming competent, the value of critical feedback, peer learning, and learning for its own sake, not for an instrumetal purpose. The book is OK. The stories sometimes were a bit long and I would have liked the lessons to be a bit more distilled, but - heading into a period of my life where I can devote more time and curiosity to learning, the book was timely and useful.

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Maximize Your Medicare: Qualify for Benefits, Protect Your Health, and Minimize Your Costs

Jae W. Oh

Reviewed March 22 by Jon. As I near retirment (and the magic age of medicare eligibility), I am looking into how to sign up, beneifts, costs, and various programs. What a byzantine program. There are all kinds of rules, exceptions, gotchas, and just plain complexity. This should be simple. I started to understand in 2019 when I read Get What's Yours for Medicare - which I have also looked through as a refresher, but now that I am confronting actually registering, it is a reality. I am reading several books to triangulate. I wish the system were simpler and the books were more straightforward.

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What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life's Third Age

Ken Dychtwald and Robert Morison

Reviewed March 20 by Jon. Retirement is not what it used to be. It is longer and more active than in the past - and more diverse as well. This is mostly written for businesses who want to serve retirees (each chapter ends with business suggestions), but it is also a useful guide to retirement. Dychtewald has studied aging and retirement for many years and has lots of insights at how retirement will unfold.

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs we Need

Bill Gates

Reviewed March 13 by Jon. Bill Gates wrote a wonky but accessible book on climate. He says that he got interested in climate a few years ago wneh working on global health and figured out that climate was a big and related issue. He is clear that we have a big problem and won't be able to avert it completely but we can do a lot to mitigate. Gates, as one would expect, focuses on innovation as a solution. He surveys the causes of climate change and a myriad of practical solutions - some of which we have now and some of which require new innovation. He then calls on government, the private sector, and individuals to proactively do what is necessary to mitigate cimate change and drive innovation to do so. It is heartening to see Bill Gates apply his considerable intellect and gravitas to this important problem.

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Caste: The Origins of our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson

Reviewed February 28 by Jon. Caste looks at American racisim thorough the lens of a caste system. Wilkerson compares caste in India, Nazi Germany, and the U.S. Racism makes more sense when viewed through this lens. This book creates understanding. Now the challenge is to get rid of caste altogether. As Wilkerson points out, that is easier said than done.

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How to See: A Guide to Reading our Man-made Environment

George Nelson

Reviewed February 25 by Jon. Originally written in 1977 by iconic designer, George Nelson, this is a 2003 re-release sponsored by Design Within Reach. How to See is similar to the 99% Invisible City in that it shows us how to see the ordinary in a new way. With photos taken from Nelson's extensive photo library, the author illustrates common patterns and scenes from our human-made environment and explains what they mean and how they came to be.

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A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change

Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown

Reviewed February 24 by Jon. First of all, this book makes a distinction between teaching and learning, which is important. Secondly, it describes how tacit knowledge is acquired rather than explicit knowledge. Our primary model of education is instilling explicit knowledge but that is less important now that information is so widely available (and often has a short half-life). The authors talk about the what of knowledge as being less important than the where - meaning knowing where to look and find knowledge is more important now that actually possessing the knowledge itself. They discuss creating experiences to help build tacit knowledge - a key idea in making and project-based learning. They also make the case that multiplayer games help build tacit knowledge in teams. That is possibly true, I'd imagine that explicitly design games and simulations do a better job of that than random shoot-em-up games.

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The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to The Hidden World of Everyday Design

Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt

Reviewed February 23 by Jon. Roman Mars is host of the 99% Invisible podcast that talks about the hidden impact of design on everyday life. The 99% invisible city is about cities and a bunch of the stuff in cities from signage, to roadways and buildings, to manhole covers, to guerilla urban design movements. Mars makes the ordinary and invisible visible and explains its origin and purpose. THe book is a quirky collection of gritty urban details that helps bring the idea of urbanism to life. I is a very entertaining book that happens to be informative as well.

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The Ten Rules of Succesful Nations

Rachir Sharma

Reviewed February 19 by Jon. Sharma is an economist who has studied the factors that makes a nation successful. Some are expected, others are a surprise. Here they are.

1. Population. Successful nations fight demographic decline.
2. Politics. Successful nations rally around a reformer.
3. Inequality. Successful nations produce good billionares. This requires more explanation. A "good" billionarie became one by entrpreneurship, a bad one through inhereted wealth.
4. State Power. Successful nations have right-sized governments. Not too big, but not too small.
5. Geography. Successful nations make the most of their location.
6. Investment. Successful nations invest heavily, and wisely.
7. Inflation. Successful nations control the real inflation threats. A real inflation threat is that of goods and services, not financial insturments.
8. Currency. Successful nations feel cheap.
9. Debt. Successful nations avoid debt mania (and phobia).
10. Hype. Successful nations rise outside the spotight. Meaning they think ahead, don't just go with the current conventional wisdom

This was an ok but not fabulous book. A good but not outstanding book. It incrementally added to my understanding of development economics. The advice is more general than nations - it might apply to companies and people as well!

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The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism

Grace Blakely

Reviewed February 7 by Jon. The premise of this book is that the pandemic has changed capitalism forever by socializing risk and privatizing reward - something that was said during the 2008 financial crisis as well. Blakely says we should just admit that as the truth and design our economic and political structures to acknowlege it. The book is pretty lefty, but speaks a lot of truth. I'm not sure I'd go as far as Blakely recommends but I lean in that direction.

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Think Like Amazon: 50¹⁄₂ Ideas to Become a Digital Leader

John Rossman

Reviewed February 1 by Jon. This book is just what the title says, 50¹⁄₂ leadership and management ideas from Amazon. I was familiar with most and most seem like common sense - although many companies fail to practice them. This book is a nice compendium of customer-focused leadership ideas. No wonder Amazon is so successful.

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The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

Sonny Liew

Reviewed January 29 by Jon. This is a graphic novel about the life of Singaporean cartoonist Charlie Chan Hock Chye. In covering the cartoonist's life, the book also provides a recent history of Singapore and some color of what life was like growing up in 20th century Singapore. It was particularly interesting since we were in Singapore a year ago. The book brought back memories. This is a fun but also informative read and has piqued my interest to find out more about the history and culture of Singapore.

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The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World

Judy Samuelson

Reviewed January 20 by Jon. Samuelson is with the Aspen Institute, and has been working for several years on a project that redefines business success. She is particularly interested in what is being taught in business schools (the most popular major in the U.S). Her biggest concern is the singular focus on maximizing shareholder value - which she (and I) consider pathological. Her book posits a new sense of value for business that is more multidimensional. Here are her six rules:

1. Rethinking Risk. Reputation, trust, and other intangibles drive business value.
2. The Question of Business Purpose. Businesses serve many purposes beyond shareholder value.
3. Responsibility Redefined.. Corporate responsibility is defined far outside the business gates.
4. The Voice of the Employee. Employees give voice to risk and competitive advantage.
5. When Capital is No Longer Scarce. Culture is king and talent rules.
6. When the System is at Risk. Co-create to win.

This was a reasonable book, but not a great book. Samuelson takes aim at the idea that shareholders "own" the company and that the company is beholden to them. They are but one of many stakeholders. She does point out that corporations fundamentally only benefit from the stock market at their IPO or when they issue stock. Otherwise most are self-financing. Tying executive compensation to the stock price has created a pathological focus on share price and "maximizing shareholder value". It is good that Samuelson is in dialog with business schools because, long-term, that is where new values and culture are inculcted in business leaders.

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The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm

Lewis Dartnell

Reviewed January 14 by Jon. This book is just what it's title says it is - a catalog of the basic knowledge needed to rebuild civilization after a disaster. Ironically, the author chooses a pandemic because that would kill many of the people with knowledge but keep the basic infrastructure intact. He starts with very basic things like agriculure, food and clothing, and then gradually builds to more advanced technologies like medicine, power, transportation, communications, navigation, etc. It is very clear that there is a lot of path dependence to our technology - one thing builds on another. It is a bit frightening because it makes our knowledge base seem like a house of cards. But also reassuring because I understood, at a basic level, what he was talking about. The book did make me question whether there is a knowledge repository someplace where all of this knowledge is kept. At the end of the book he talked about the ways we create knowledge - measurement and the scientific method. This book really made me appreciate all of the hard scientific and engineering knowledge needed to run the world. It left off the institional knowlege - how to set up an education system or court system, but -- I suppose -- that is best left for another book. This was informative and entertaining as well as thought-provoking. You cannot ask for more.

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Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Fareed Zakaria

Reviewed January 12 by Jon. Zakaria is a CNN commentator and a keen observer of the world. I have read his columns and his book, The Post-American World. I generally find his insights on target and useful. This book is about what might change after the pandemic. He points to forces that mostly existed before the pandemic that might be amplified because of COVID-19. He identifies 10 lessons:

1. Buckle Up. Be prepared for an unstable world.
2. What matters is not the quantity of government but the quality. We need government to solve big, systemic challenges and need government to be top notch.
3. Markets are not enough.. Despite free-market orthodoxy, unregulated markets are insufficient to solve every societal problem
4. People should listen to the experts - and experts should listen to the people. We beed respect for expertise - but the experts also need to be in touch with people's views.
5. Life is Digital. We are moving beyond a purely physical wrold to life that is lived digitally.
6. Aristotle was right - we are social animals. It is in our nature to interact and intermingle.
7. Inequality will get worse. Self-explanatory - in the absence of intervention, inequality will increase
8. Globalization is not dead. While globalization has taken a step backward, we will not back away wholesale from global integration.
9. The world is becoming bipolar. With the rise of China, we will have two large blocks, led by the US and China.
10. Sometimes the greatest realists are the idealists. Those who built the post WWII insitutions did so to create integration and peace.

Zakaria describes these lessons with lucidity and clarity. After enumerating these lessons, Zakaria asserts that we have agency. The world does not just happen to us, but we can make choices about the world we want. He describes some pretty compelling choices - good advice to follow.

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Embrace the Suck: The Navy Seal Way to an Extraordinary Life

Grent Gleeson

Reviewed January 4 by Jon. This is a self-help book written by a former Navy Seal. It's core message is about mental toughness. Embracing the SUck is aobut confronting unpleasant tasks or situations and prevailing. Gleeson urges the reader to get out of their comfort zone. The book intersperses stories from Seal/BUDS training and deployments in Iraq and Aghansistan with life lessons. There was some good stuff in here but it was mostly pretty predictable.

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