2018 Books in Review
I follow a number of people on social media (mostly Twitter) who I consider to be thought leaders in their respective fields. Some of them I know personally while others I don’t. But all of them share insights publicly that help deepen my understanding of the world. Towards the end of each year, many of them share which books they’ve read and include a quick summary of each plus a quote or two that either captures a motif from the text or is otherwise inspirational.
I love seeing these lists, because they help me build a reading plan of my own for the year ahead. Drawing from the education of a variety of people diversifies my learning experiences and sharpens my understanding of a wide range of topics.
This year I’m posting a reading list of my own, albeit a much shorter one than most of the people I follow. I would relish the opportunity to hear your recommendations as well.
Two and out!
I’m also changing the way I approach reading, an early New Years resolution of sorts. It was suggested by one of the people I follow and goes like this: Start as many books as you can and simply put them down after about two chapters if they aren’t worth finishing.
This seems simple enough. But I’ve always felt the need to finish every book I start. Digesting each word was an accomplishment, and not finishing was a failure, a waste of time.
In retrospect though, finishing books of little value is the real waste of time. As a husband and father, time is sacred. My aim is to maximize consumption of worthwhile material and minimize low value activities.
2018 Book Reviews
(1) How to Think by Alan Jacobs
(See my full book review posted in May for more details)
Summary
A serious, provocative and timely introspection on the discipline of thinking well. This short but dense book is for those willing to challenge their own assumptions and instinctive emotions in pursuit of brokering solutions rather than just winning arguments or delivering catchy punchlines.
The quotable text is an eye-opener about our tendencies in the age of casual criticisms on social media, particularly as it relates to politics. It reads as a treatise between one’s emotions and the logic that shapes them. When read purposefully, it can help train our schemas – the “moral matrix” by which ideas and arguments are filtered and shaped – to ingest, process, and re-deploy information justly and with integrity.
Selected excerpts
This is what thinking is: not the decision itself but what goes into the decision, the consideration, the assessment. It’s testing your own responses and weighing the available evidence.
…the life of the mind always requires triage, the sorting of the valuable from the less valuable, the usable from the unusable…
…when we do not know, or we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts… [T.S. Eliot]
I’m going to argue that we go astray when we think of our task primarily as “overcoming bias.” For me, the fundamental problem we have may best be described as an orientation of the will: we suffer from a settled determination to avoid thinking. Relatively few people want to think.
(2) The Last Republicans by Mark Updegrove
Summary
These types of character profile books have a tendency to be “sugarcoated,” drawing out feel-good themes without poking around at the more controversial topics. This one falls into that category but is a pleasant, easy read nonetheless.
It chronicles the Bush family history and the relationship between George H.W. and his son throughout their political lives. The book helped fill in some gaps in my understanding of their early years, particularly about W’s business ventures in West Texas.
The primary value to me though was its inspirational tone and messages. George W wasn’t much for academics, but he was full of adventure and exuded confidence at every turn.
Selected excerpts
If life is to be lived to the fullest, you take risks
Fear of failure sucks the fun out of life. Without it, you’ll do more than you would otherwise
(3) Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner
Summary
Are outcomes predictable? The practice of modelling is common across industries and governments. But their usefulness and accuracy depends on how how we use data and information to calibrate our understanding of events as they unfold.
In this way, some of the lessons overlap with those in “How to Think” (above). But this book is less existential and more practical with great real-world examples, including insight into the model-based intelligence that went into the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
Extremely relevant for anyone in a strategic role within their profession.
Selected excerpts
All models are wrong… but some are useful.
The humility required for good judgement is not self-doubt…It is intellectual humility. It is a recognition that reality is profoundly complex, that seeing things clearly is a constant struggle, when it can be done at all, and that human judgement must therefore be riddled with mistakes.
We have all been too quick to make up our minds and too slow to change them. And if we don’t examine how we make these mistakes, we will keep making them.
Superforecasting demands thinking that is open-minded, careful, curious, and – above all – self-critical.
Doubt is not a fearful thing.
Never stop doubting. Pointed questions are as essential to a team as vitamins are to a human body.
It is wise to take admission of uncertainty seriously…declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.
A brilliant puzzle solver may have the raw material for forecasting, but if he doesn’t also have an appetite for questioning basic, emotionally charged beliefs he will often be at a disadvantage relative to a less intelligent person who has a greater capacity for self-critical thinking.
Far too many people treat numbers like sacred totems offering divine insight. The truly numerate know that numbers are tools, nothing more, and their quality can range from wretched to superb.
(4) Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro
Summary
An expose of our 36th president in his capacity as a U.S. Senator. This masterpiece is the 3rd in a four-part series that explores Lyndon Johnson’s life. This instalment focuses on his time in the Senate as the larger-than-life character who consolidated power in the Majority Leader position, which fundamentally changed how the Senate works to this day.
LBJ was a mixed bag when it came to character and accomplishments. His career is best understood in the context of the racial tensions of the 1950s and 1960s. The text painstakingly chronicles the origins of the civil rights legislation we know today (often credited to LBJ) through the stories of Emmett Till and Thurgood Marshall.
At the end of the day, LBJ was a chameleon. His tenure was colored by the balancing act of shoring up southern support while convincing liberals he was sympathetic towards civil rights. The reality was more complicated, a perpetual internal struggle between genuine empathy and unrestrained ambition.
The book is equally an historical perspective of the Senate as an institution, outlining the many seasons of its influence, both good and bad. LBJ brought backroom deals into the norm and pulled the Senate away from speech-driven debate and deliberation. On one hand, this “made the Senate work,” but ultimately eroded the health of the body.
Examining history in its totality and in context informs our understanding and shatters half-baked notions. The ultimate benefit from this is a more tempered and empathetic world view. This book is a good reminder that history is complex and that judgement on its cast of characters is often too simple. Those we idolize aren’t entirely good, and those we call villains aren’t always all bad.
Selected excerpts
…on Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Johnson’s sentences were the sentences of a man with a remarkable gift for words, not long words but evocative, of a man with a remarkable gift for images, homey images of a vividness that infused the sentences with drama.
During Lyndon Johnson’s previous political life, compassion had constantly been in conflict with ambition, and invariably ambition had won. Given the imperatives of his nature, in such a conflict, it had been inevitable that the ambition would win. For the compassion to be released, to express itself in concrete accomplishments, it would have to be compatible with the ambition, pointing in the same direction. And now, in 1957, it was.
Of all the archaic rules and customs and precedents that had made the Senate of the United States an obstacle to progress, the seniority system had been the strongest. For decades men had been saying that no one would ever be able to change the seniority system. Lyndon Johnson had changed it in two weeks.
…Debates grew shorter – and ever less important….Thus did Lyndon Johnson revolutionize the Senate, severely modifying its proud heritage of unlimited debate without changing a single rule.
…on the Senate
…the emotions of men in the mass ran high and fast, they were ‘liable to err…from fickleness and passion,’ and ‘the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority.” [James Madison on the role of the Senate in protecting the minority]
“The use of the Senate,” Madison wrote, “is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” It should, he said, be “an anchor against popular fluctuations.”
“{classical history] informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a Senate.’ In two of the three ‘long-lived’ republics of antiquity, Sparta and Rome, and probably in the third – Carthage…These examples…when compared with the fugitive and turulent existence of other ancient republics, [are] very instructive proofs of the necessity of some institution that will blend stability with liberty.” [James Madison]
But [Senator] Paul Douglas believed in the Senate’s ‘informing function,’ believed as he was also to write, that “even if every battle was unsuccessful, constant but peaceful struggle would hasten the ultimate coming of needed reforms.” …”their [the liberals’] only power was to make noise,” nonetheless “it was an uncomfortable noise that grated upon the ears, and, in time, the national conscience…”
“A fight is worthwhile even if you know you’re going to lose it,” he told Ross. “It’s the only way to crystallize attitudes, educate people.”
“It had set in motion an intellectual counterforce to emotional adulation that for a time had run so strongly through the county: It had done, in short, precisely what the Founding Fathers had wanted the Senate to do, what their Constitution had designed it to do: to defuse – cool off – and educate; to make men think, recall them to their first principles…” [Regarding the Senate’s handling of an investigation into General MacArthur]
…on civil rights
“Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man; but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German today.” [Roy Wilkens, NAACP]
The black Americans who had been denied justice for so long were being denied justice still. Their condition was still, in 1955, the grate contradiction between the Republic’s professed ideals, the ideals embedded in its Constitution, and the reality of the actual conditions in which sixteen million of its citizens still lived.
Passing a civil rights bill would require an ability to suddenly recognize, amid the turmoil, the cut and thrust and parry, of a legislative body in furious contention – amid the barrage of motions and amendments, amid the rapid-fire parliamentary maneuvers and countermaneuvers, the quick back-and-forth ripostes of debate and the magisterial drum roll of long, formal speeches – to suddenly recognize, amid the grate mass of cutting words, witty words, brilliant words, empty words, those words that mattered, the phrase that could change the mood, the amendment that could turn the tide, that could swing votes if put to proper use…
(5) The Professor’s House by Willa Cather
Summary
My only fiction book of the year. Set in the 1920s, this story piques a number of themes. Ones that standout are: Aging, finding solace in familiarity and in nature, honorable pursuits – namely adventure and scholarship, and old money vs new.
Selected excerpts
When he remembered his childhood, he remembered blue water. There were certain human figures against it, of course…But the great face in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. It was the cow pasture studded with shaggy pines, and it ran through the days like the weather, not a thing thought about, but a part of consciousness itself.
St. Peter had always laughed at people who talked about “day-dreams,” just as he laughed at people who naively confessed that they had “an imagination.
(6) Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
Summary
An allegory with lessons on management and how individual roles can make an outsized impact on organizations, for better or worse.
Warning, one or more of the characters in the story may hit too close to home to you. But a deeper self-awareness of ourselves and how others perceive us is, I think, the book’s intended purpose.
(7) Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Summary
This book is about the discipline of fiction writing. In the spirit of my New Year’s resolution, I chose not to finish this one, because my interest in writing is limited to non-fiction.
But for those who day dream about writing a novel, this is a great starting point. There are poetic and sometimes funny musings about the process of writing and the experiences that inspire it.
Selected excerpts
[On writers] …And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out.
…becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.
The Economist*
This magazine has been my go-to since 2008 for thoughtful, get-smart-quick insights on every topic under the sun. But I’m curious to hear other suggestions for magazines in the same category.
Baby books
This year my wife and I welcomed our twin girls into the family. As new parents, we were, and still are, eager to learn how best to care for and raise our daughters. We read three books during pregnancy and have more in the queue.
- Babywise by Gary Ezzo, M.A. and Robert Bucknam, M.D. A good resources for sleep/feeding schedules, understanding your baby’s natural cycles. But beware, your baby may not have had time to read this book in the womb, so don’t get frustrated if they don’t adhere to its instructions.
- Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman Great perspective for parents prone to micromanaging their babies’ every move.
- Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina An science-based take on understanding baby’s needs through the lens of its neurological development. Interesting but not essential.
I would love to hear which books had an impact on you during 2018 and which ones are on your 2019 reading lists.
Happy New Year!