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.

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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.

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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.

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