How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 16. Richardson is quickly becoming my favorite American historian. She traces the south's hierarchial culture that supported slavery - the wealthy landowners lording over the poor and the enslaved - from the South to the west. Once the south was defeated in the civil war, the oligarchy tried to impose its view on the newly opened territories of the west, subjugating Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americas, in addition to blacks. She describes the lionization of the cowboy as exemplar of the American independent hero - although most were employees of large cattle operations and many were black and Mexican. She shows how political figures like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan arose from this thread. She traces this thread through to the modern day and the right's adoption of culture wars to mask an oligarchic agenda. This is pretty consistent with things I have read before and adds a bit more color to the origins of the right's view of elites controlling society through hierarchy.

Purchase How The South Won The Civil War from Amazon.com

Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic

Kenneth R. Rosen

Feb 9. Rosen's thesis is that as the planet warms and arctic ice melts, the arctic will become more important from a military standpoint. The book consists of a number of vignettes around the arctic (including many places we have been) to describe what is happening from a military standpoint - training, infrastructure, ships, etc. It is clear that the U.S. is way behind and will depend upon assistance from partners - mostly NATO countries, including Denmark/Greenland. The book builds on the themes in Arctic Passages to show how the opening of the arctic will affect national security. This is a fascinating subject which I expect we will hear more about in the coming years.

Purchase Polar War from Amazon.com

Maintenance: Of Everything

Steward Brand

Feb 4. Stewart Brand, author of The Whole Earth Catalog, has written a very interesting book about the value of maintenance. Like the Whole Earth Catalog, he meanders through a bunch of topics - motorcycles, electric vehicles, military strategy, gunmaking, rust, youtube, bicycles, ... The central theme is about maintenance as sustainment mindset - keeping things working and, in some cases evolving. This is a somewhat natural evolution from one of Brand's other books How Buildings Learn, which described how buildings evolve over time. Brand starts by referencing Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, one of my all-time favorite books, so he had my vote. The book is very electic and wanders through a bunch of topics but has a clear and important message. It is very readable and well-crafted. I'd recommend the hardcover version since it has lots of illustrations and sidebar comments.

Purchase Maintenance from Amazon.com

Moral Ambition: How to Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference

Rutger Bregman

Feb 3. I read ths book because I saw a podcast from Davos of Bregman saying that our best and brightest were wasting their talent in fields such as finance, consulting, and corporate law. He asserted that these fields did little to help society or solve the worlds biggest problems. I thought the book would talk about reallocating priorities to fields such as science, technology, education, and healthcare which, arguably, do benefit society. He does this but spends most of the book talking about how to identify a big problem and solve it through philanthropy. OK, as far as it goes but philanthropy can only go so far. The bigger issue is that society values the wrong things. Excessive financializaton of the economy has gotten us to focus on making money for money's sake and unnecessary burearucacy (tax policy, health insurance, unnecessary litigation). Philanthropy can help but it cannot address the more fundamental problems - particularly at scale. I was hoping that Bregman would addrss the real underlying problem of misallocation of resources to activities that do not benefit society and how to refocus resource allocation on jobs that do. My hopes were not realized. Someone needs to write about this. Unfortunately, despite the promise of his initial comments, Bregman was not the one to do so.

Purchase Moral Ambition from Amazon.com

The Secret of Secrets

Dan Brown

Feb 1. This book 6 of the Robert Langdon series. In this one Langdon is in Prague with his girlfriend, a fellow professor, who is about to publish a book that reveals, among other things, some secret research that the CIA is doing. This is a minute by minute thriller with lots of hocus pocus and pseudo science - as well as a dose of conspiracy theory. The story is pretty implausable but it was entertaining. It was an OK escapist read, but candy.

Purchase The Secret of Secrets from Amazon.com

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History - and How it Shattered a Nation

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Jan 30. This is Sorkin's epic story of the 1929 stock market crash. It is written like a novel and very readable. He portrays the various characters who were responsible for (and benefitted from ) the 1929 crash. I'm not sure how much insight it provided for today's world, but it is clear that speculation and over-use of debt as well as overconfidence on the part of the finance bros of the time led to the crash.

Purchase 1929 from Amazon.com

Common Sense: Modern, Updated English Translation

Thomas Paine

Jan 26. Like my recent reading of the Federalist Papers, reading this famous pamphlet was made easier by the translation. Paine basically makes the case for independence and an elected leadership by debunking why monarchies do not work. He basically says that monarchs are chosen somewhat at random and there is no guarantee of competent leadership - this is especially true of their descendents. He makes that case that democratically elected leaders are best and the the colonies need to be independent of England. No big surprise but it was worth reading - even if it was very short.

Purchase Common Sense from Amazon.com

The 5 Types of Wealth: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge

Ian Kumakawa

Jan 25. This book describes aspects of the global economy by tracing the history of a barge built in Scandanavia to house offshore oil workers. The book traces its life - and that of a sister barge - from construction to decommissioning. Over its life the barge was also used to house troops in the Fakland Islands, prisoners in New Yrok and the UK, and factory workers in the Netherlands in addition to Oil workers in Nigeria and elsewhere. The author uses the barge's life as an armature to talk about aspects of the global economy - oil exporation, the penal system, the Fakland war, factory globalization, the conversion of NYC from a manufacturing to a financial center, etc. It also covers shipbuilding and the murky world of marine law and ownership. A pretty entertaining and informative book.

Purchase Empty Vessel from Amazon.com

The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life

Sahil Bloom

Jan 10. I'm often dubious about "self-help" books that propose a bunch of exercises. Not that I am opposed to the idea, I just find the exercises tedious. Sahil does provide a valuable framework, though. As described in the title, he describes five types of wealth:

1. Time
2. Social
3. Mental
4. Physical
5. Financial

He asserts that one needs all five kinds of wealth and keep them in balance. This echos the lessons in a book called True Wealth that I read many years ago that urges one to think of wealth beyond financial wealth - more in a multidimensional way. Despite my skepticism about the book, Sahil did a good job outlining the five types of wealth and how to cultivate all five. This book is worth reading, even without doing the exercises.

Purchase The 5 Types of Wealth from Amazon.com

Rogue Elephant: How Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos

Paul Heideman

Jan 6. This is a history of the Republican Party from roughly Nixon/Reagan to the present. The author posits two factors that led to the rightward shift of the Republican Party (or as he states it the shift to chaos) - ambivalent relationship with business and weak party structure. He triest to make these points with a deep historcal analysis of the 70s and 80s, which was -- frankly -- kind of boring. The more interesting part was more modern history - Clinton through the present time. I'm not sure I got a lot of new insights but did get a sense of how business related to and now relates to the Republican party and how the Tea Party and Trump complicated that relationship.

Purchase Rogue Elephant from Amazon.com