Happy Holidays to you, dear reader. In the spirit of last year’s 24 podcasts for 2024, I’m covering a few books I read this past year that I would recommend you consider in the year ahead. Not all these books are recent—in fact, most are not.
We’ll go through twenty-five of my favorite reads from the past year. For each, I’ll give some overview and comments. This is technically a countdown ranking, but I didn’t put a ton of thought into how I ranked the books, and I won’t spend too much time trying to justify it; it’s a subjective point anyway. And of course, not every book I read will make the final cut (looking at you, Karl Marx).
When I read, I often come across interesting ideas and themes that feel “blog-worthy”, but likely couldn’t produce a full post’s worth of content. Where applicable, we’ll spend some time diving into these tangents.
Let’s begin, and happy reading!
#25: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
Elizabeth Rosenthal (2017)
This book was recommended to me by a colleague who covers the healthcare sector. Rosenthal’s central argument is that warped incentives and other complications have made healthcare work great for business but poorly for patients. It is not entirely clear where Rosenthal places the blame for this—the profit motive is a candidate, as is inefficient or side-effect-inducing regulation—but she appears to lean toward blaming the business actors. Either way, it’s a reminder of Adam Smith’s adage that the businessman understands his own interest better than the general population understands theirs, and that policy decisions made at the recommendation of businesses tend to favor those businesses.
Our healthcare system is certainly not at the head of the class. But jumping to blame that on either excessive regulation or excessive free market avarice is likely going to miss the problem. The system is confused because its design is confused—it is not a hybrid, but a mongrel. Bernie Sanders can criticize corporate greed because it’s part of the system, and Republicans can criticize socialist elements because those are also part of the system. Whether a pure free market or universal public healthcare would be better is an unending debate beyond Rosenthal’s scope and ours.
What An American Sickness does make clear is that the combination of regulation and corporation is a toxic mix. As regulations and Medicare guidelines create incentives, they’re writing the playbook for businesses to exploit. Add layers upon layers, and you get a system where the medical billing process requires the same amount of university study as nursing.
Where does that leave customers? Holding those bills, of course. True to her title’s promise, Rosenthal packs the final third of her book with strategies and tactics for patients to apply as they navigate a system that increasingly sees them as wallets to loot rather than people to heal. I would recommend taking notes on these sections and reviewing them before any medical appointment.
Another interesting idea I thought of reading the book: what if doctors were required to take fiduciary responsibility for their patients? That is, they are required to make decisions in the best interest of their patients—both medically and financially. It would put the responsibility on healthcare providers to keep costs down for their own patients, and would begin to rid the healthcare world of the toxic conflicts of interest that we’ve spent the past century fighting against in finance.
#24: Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson (2023)
A great biography is a fascinating study in character and complexity which few writers can pull off. When you read a biography, you should leave it feeling as if you know the person. This is especially difficult when the subject is still living, but Isaacson’s book on Musk is a fantastic read.
With almost no exceptions, biographies cause me to admire the subjects, and also cure me from an envy toward them. It’s easy to covet Musk’s billions, but his personal life is no cakewalk: a troubled childhood, marital inconstancy and discontent, difficult relationships with his children, etc. None of these are unique to Musk—in fact, it makes me suspect that success in business or politics is negatively correlated with personal happiness and satisfaction with relationships, and that this is not a coincidence. I consider myself to have plenty of ambition, but this trend puts things in perspective. I’m beyond blessed to be a husband and father, and it’s unthinkable to me to trade those blessings for any amount of fame or success.
Beyond the usual biographical soul-searching, Isaacson’s book captures the reach that makes Elon Musk so fascinating. Tesla alone would have enough of a story for one lifetime—yet Musk’s tale includes PayPal, SpaceX, artificial intelligence (including OpenAI), and Twitter. Post-publish, Musk is about to run a Department of Government Efficiency that will act as a private advisor to the Trump White House. Good heavens, is there anything he’s not doing?
This reach makes the biography easy to read. The chapters are very short, and the story jumps frequently between different companies and projects Musk was working on at any given time. But this comes at the expense of details, which is the book’s key weakness. Plus, the book doesn’t cover the “twilight years” of Musk’s life, as they haven’t happened yet. In most biographies, this is a telling period—facing death is a part of life, and one which exposes who we truly are. Without this perspective, the book feels as if it’s missing something—as if it’s more of a sketch than a portrait.
#23: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
Michael Lewis (2021)
Lewis is better known for his The Big Short and Liar’s Poker. Here, he sticks to his standard modus operandi: follow some unsung characters through the depths of a complex problem misunderstood by most. The subject this time is America’s response to COVID-19 in late 2019 and early 2020, but the story begins well before then. He traces the circuitous path that leads a local public health officer in California to collaborate with an ICU physician from Chicago.
If there is a villain (outside of COVID itself), it is almost certainly the Center for Disease Control, or CDC. 2020 saw the CDC go from occasional cameos in dystopian science fiction to a household name. The CDC comes off as unresponsive, dogmatic, and ineffective, providing a classic example of a large organization that manages to become emphatically less than the sum of its parts. Lewis describes the pandemic response as a puzzle to which a handful of people in the public health domain each held critical pieces. Instead of ensuring that these people communicated with each other, the CDC generally made such communication far more difficult.
Where Lewis stops, however, is criticizing the actual response the COVID. The dose of social distancing, lockdowns, school closures, and accelerated vaccines was, according to him, exactly what the health authorities should have done. The argument of the book is not that this was a failure, but that it was pulled off miraculously, largely in spite of the CDC, thanks to the tireless work and timely expertise of a few under-the-radar people. But Lewis also explains that it’s difficult to convince people to take stern measures to prevent distant and unlikely catastrophes. The CDC learned this the hard way in the 1970s, when their concerns over swine flu led to a nationwide proactive vaccination campaign. But the feared epidemic never came, and some vaccine side effects brought the ire of the nation and Congress upon the institution. In a sense, it’s a reminder of how important and difficult probabilistic thinking is.
The Premonition also highlights just how inefficient the U.S. administrative state is. It consists of hundreds of piecemeal acronym-bearing entities, each of which was created (usually by Congress) to solve an incredibly specific problem. The result is a surplus of narrow-scope agencies, many of whose responsibilities overlap on paper, but all too rarely communicate with each other in practice. Each of these agencies is a “box”, and sometimes the solution to a problem in one box is found in another box. The pandemic story is a cautionary tale of just how things could go awry if these boxes fail to interact effectively.
#22: The History of the Church
Eusebius (4th century AD)
A key theme of the year for my family and I revolved around re-examining our Christian faith and what it means. As a lover of history, I was curious to understand the history of early Christianity. The Bible gives quite a bit of detail on Jesus’ life across the four Gospels (those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). The fifth book of the New Testament is Acts (the “Acts of the Apostles”), which is ostensibly meant to cover the deeds of the twelve apostles whom Jesus instructed to spread the Gospel message.
But Acts really only covers a few of the apostles in detail, with a particular focus on Paul (not one of the original twelve) and Peter. Further, Acts ends abruptly once Paul is brought to Rome as a prisoner to await the judgement of the Roman Emperor. In this sense, the narrative portion of the New Testament ends on a cliffhanger. From history, we know that Christians remained a persecuted minority throughout most of the Roman world for almost three centuries after Christ. It is this period that Eusebius, an eminent Christian scholar of his time, explains.
Eusebius begins with a brief summary of Christ’s life, the last days of Christ on earth after his resurrection, and the charge He gave to the apostles. The first half of the book covers the journeys of these apostles and explains some differences between the churches they established. Mark went to Egypt, Paul and Peter to Rome, etc. The text also provides context around political events in Israel in the years after Jesus’ life—an understanding of this history sheds light on many of the prophecies Jesus made during His life.
In terms of structure, the early church was decentralized almost from the very beginning. Not until the conversion of Emperor Constantine would the Bishop of Rome be formally elevated above the Bishops of Alexandria and Jerusalem.
The second half of the book is not as rewarding; it’s basically just a laundry list of who was martyred, what for, and how. Roman leaders did plenty of martyring in the centuries before Constantine. The appearance of Constantine, who embraced the Christian faith and promulgated its acceptance throughout the Empire, is hailed by Eusebius as a glorious final victory for the faith.
On the whole, it seemed to me that the preaching of Christ really revolved around two distinct messages. The first and most important of these was the Gospel: the good news that He was the promised deliverance from sin for all people. The Gospel’s purpose in this is universal and timeless—it applies equally to all people in all times. The second was far more specific: since Jesus was the embodiment of God on earth at a particular time and place, he shared much that was relevant to the people of that time and place. Examples of this include His foretelling of the destruction of many of the region’s cities, as well as the temple in Jerusalem. We as Christians can often confuse ourselves today by trying to interpret some of Jesus’ contemporary comments as part of the immutable Gospel—the fact that He foretold the ruin of Capernaum likely does not contain a direct message for us today. But this should be a comfort to us, as it gives some proof that Christ is not some distant and rigid spirit, but a living and knowing one, who understands the times and circumstances in which we live today.
The book is decent from a historical standpoint, but those without some knowledge of the Bible will find it a difficult read, as Eusebius presupposes a fair amount of familiarity with the New Testament, which he quotes extensively. For those without much exposure to Christian ideas, I suggest skipping this for the time being, as there will be a couple books on this list that are excellent building blocks of Christian faith.
#21: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou (2018)
Carreyrou’s tale of Theranos, the ill-fated biotech startup that landed founder Elizabeth Holmes in prison, is a cautionary tale of how startup culture can go awry. Holmes had a vision for what Theranos could become, but lacked the willingness to compromise with technical realities. Further, the company invested too much in being seen as the transformative company that it simply wasn’t. Marketing—to customers, channel partners, and investors—came before building a robust product.
The result of all this was the company scrambling to catch up to promises already made, and this was Theranos’ undoing. That, and the culture of intimidation and silencing that Theranos’ hyperactive lawyers created. Reading the book, one imagines that Theranos overspent wildly on lawyers, with its legal team threatening retaliation if a terminated employee mentioned anything amiss at the company even to a friend.
Whether Holmes was simply more infatuated with being a celebrity founder than with actually building the business isn’t entirely clear. The book provides a number of anecdotes that suggest something more sinister: that Holmes knew what she was doing and continued to mislead investors and the public. In this vein, it’s an interesting psychological survey.
The message for anyone who wants to create their own business is clear: any glamour and celebrity associated with entrepreneurship is icing on the cake—but it’s not the cake. Building a legitimate and enduring business is the goal. Theranos was neither legitimate nor enduring.
#20: Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs
Josh Hawley (2023)
Ah, the so-called “manosphere”: those havens of discourse that remain of, by, and for men. As a young man, I have mixed feelings about this sphere. In a world where men increasingly abdicate responsibility, there are plenty of voices glorifying this. These voices would have men be passive consumers of modern luxuries and vice. Some get to this conclusion in their efforts to “smash the patriarchy”; others get there simply by advocating comfort and convenience over character. Either way, Hawley identifies such voices with the Greek philosopher Epicurus, whose worldview could be summarized by “eat, drink, and be merry”.
But take Jordan Peterson, for instance. (Set aside his political views for a moment—they are beside the point.) Peterson is a psychologist who has gained increasing fame since his 12 Rules for Life. His message to young men is radically different: take responsibility, improve and strengthen yourself, and yet still show kindness and gentleness to those you love. In a world seeking to blame others for everything, Peterson exhorts men to look within, to be agents in their own lives. This is where Hawley’s Manhood makes its stand.
Hawley describes six roles a man is to play: we can think of these as the morality-laced version of Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage”. The roles are: the husband, the father, the warrior, the builder, the priest, and the king. As with the Bard, Hawley’s roles are fluid throughout life, with each man in his time playing many parts. His descriptions of each are woven through with Christian thought and classical philosophy alike.
One example of the sort of responsibility-infused message Hawley delivers has stuck in my mind. It concerns Adam and Eve, the original humans, whom God placed in the Garden of Eden—this can be found early in the Bible’s book of Genesis. The common interpretation of the story is that Satan appeared to Eve as a serpent, convinced her to eat fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, and Eve likewise convinced her husband. God discovers their mistake and banishes humanity from the Garden.
Chronologically, it was Eve who sinned first—she ate the apple first. But Hawley offers an interesting take. God’s charge to Adam had been to “keep” the Garden: in the sense of the word meaning protect the Garden. Because of this charge, the fact that Satan was in the Garden at all suggests that Adam was shirking his duty of keeping the Garden—and his wife—safe. Eve’s “Original Sin” was only made possible by Adam’s lapse. Thus, Adam sinned first and caused Eve to sin after, instead of the other way around. This gets back to man’s responsibility toward his wife and children: the responsibility of a protector.
I can’t say for certainty whether this interpretation is true—but as a man with a family, I find it immensely powerful. Hawley’s book makes one want to pray and run through a brick wall at the same time; how much more manly can one get?
#19: Plutarch’s Lives: Volume 1
Plutarch (1st or 2nd century AD)
Plutarch was a Greek philosopher living in the Roman Empire. His most famous work is his Lives, sometimes called the Parallel Lives. It is a series of brief biographies, grouped in pairs. Each pair includes one eminent Greek and one eminent Roman, with a similar story. For instance, Romulus, co-founder and namesake of Rome, is paired with Theseus, the founder of Athens (and the same Theseus who slew the Minotaur of legend). Plutarch’s focus is less on the minute biographical details, and more about character studies. In this sense he is not quite a psychologist, but he is not quite a historian either. The brevity of each biography makes for quick reading, and any fan of classical literature and history will get an occasional flash of recognition. And if you are particularly a fan of this sort of thing, Plutarch wrote a few more volumes of them.
The Lives also give a fascinating glimpse—as all history does—into just how different antiquity was from our own time, and yet how similar. The structures and customs change, but the same moral arguments, character traits, and human instincts continue to shape our lives. There is, it seems, nothing new under the sun. We will return, later in this list, to ancient history.
#18: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Michael Lewis (2015)
Another Michael Lewis book makes the list: this one about the proliferation of high-frequency securities trading in the 2000s. As often happens in Lewis’ books, the big organizations (in this case, the large investment banks) come out worse in his telling, and a few plucky rebels are cast as the heroes.
The narrow point of the book is more relevant to trading than investing. Let’s say another financial firm has access to data about your trades before you execute them, and uses that data—and their milliseconds-lower latency—to jump the line and trade ahead of you. Just like someone cutting the line at the DMV steals a few minutes of your time, this front-running steals a few pennies of your money. If you’re a long-term investor who wants to buy a stock to hold it for years, this is a minute tax that likely won’t affect your holding period’s return. But if you’re day-trading, and getting in and out of a stock every hour, it will add up big time.
The broader point, though, is relevant to finance as a whole, at least for the vast majority of us. The system is rigged, and it’s rigged against you. The game is still worth playing; it’s easier to get rich holding some financial assets than holding none. But doing this requires caution, planning, and patience. If you need any further reminding that this system punishes naïveté, read this book.
#17: Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott (1819)
This was my first foray into fiction in a long time. Ivanhoe is to “chivalry fiction” what Robinson Crusoe is to “desert island fiction”. The storyline is classic, and I powered through this in less than a week. I truly enjoyed it and would recommend it, but I must also have some fun at its expense.
Scott’s title character is Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a young knight who returns to England from the Crusades, disowned by his father and distrusted by Prince John, regent in absence of King Richard the Lionheart. This is, incidentally, the same time period in which the legend of Robin Hood occurred, and characters like Robin of Locksley, Little John, and Friar Tuck are all discernible amidst Scott’s narrative. It’s unclear how much of this Scott invented as opposed to borrowed from pre-existing legends. Other elements of the story have a clear root in history, whether true or not: the enmity between Saxon petty lords and the Norman conquerors is palpable throughout the book, although it takes place well more than a century after Hastings. Richard did in fact spend most of his reign away from England.
But I digress. The book is about Ivanhoe, but it is written in omniscient 3rd-person narrative, and many of the scenes take place with Ivanhoe either in disguise or entirely absent. He also spends large parts of the book recovering from severe wounds. At multiple points it isn’t even clear where Ivanhoe is! A better title would have been “Where’s Ivanhoe?”
Much of the romantic drama centers around the Saxon noblewoman Lady Rowena, and Rebecca of York, the daughter of a Jewish merchant. Anti-Semitic language is throughout the book, mostly directed at Rebecca and her father, Isaac. One need not doubt that such feelings and expressions toward the Children of Israel did in fact exist in 12th-century England. But Scott sure seems to lay this on thick, more so than is needed to advance his story. Apparently, there was a time when writers jumped into stereotypes with both feet—not anymore.
My final bone to pick: the storyline is great, but it often seems to build to climaxes that resolve themselves far too easily. I won’t give spoilers, but a difficulty will often be seen as insurmountable at the top of a page and then easily overcome at the top of the next. I know it’s good writing to make your characters suffer, but even that is ill-done. For goodness’ sakes, Scott named the book after Ivanhoe and then knocked him out of action for two-thirds of the book. Absolutely wild stuff.
#16: Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron
Robert Bryce (2002)
Robert Bryce makes this list a couple of times. Last year we highlighted his work in the podcast world. Here, one of Bryce’s first books covers the story of Enron.
Pipe Dreams is in the same vein as the Theranos book we covered last time, and that vein is “Get a load of this absolute dumpster fire.” Bryce tells the story with a Texas swagger that brings readers up close to the larger-than-life disasters and deceptions of Enron’s story.
Robert Bryce is an energy guy and a journalist, but he’s not as knowledgeable about finance (unlike the Bryce who runs this blog!), and it shows. Some of the statistics he cites about Enron’s stock price, for instance, aren’t as meaningful as he’d have readers believe. A stock price alone can’t indicate whether a company is expensive or cheap—something like a price-to-earnings ratio captures this much better, in my opinion. But that critique aside, Bryce makes the maze of accounting shenanigans understandable in layman’s terms.
Enron’s downfall came from the evolution of a modest and cash-generating pipeline business into a firm that tried to turn itself into the “investment bank of energy”. This effort led to a strange corporate culture, wildly risk-seeking behavior, and ultimately a mix of exposures and frauds that brought the company down.
Bryce’s writing style is irreverent and endearing. He makes complex things simple and isn’t afraid to crack a joke or two. Even two decades after the fact, it’s a good read.
#15: American Happiness and Discontents
George F. Will (2021)
One of Robert Bryce’s taglines: “I’ve never had a real job; I’m a journalist.” Reading George F. Will, one can see just what Bryce meant. This book is a collection of Will’s columns in the years 2008-2020. He covers myriad topics: politics, constitutional law, culture, economics, and beyond. Each of these columns is short, digestible in less than ten minutes.
I’ve mentioned before another Will masterpiece, The Conservative Sensibility, in which his viewpoints are largely consistent with those in his columns. Yet in the columns, Will treats specific issues with deftness and an ink-slinging delight. His erudite style makes him appear a typical establishment apologist—but he does not shy away from criticizing that same establishment.
What comes across as sacrosanct in Will’s arguments is the set of ideas intended to make America a just and free society—and the targets of his criticism are the many ways in which the republic fell short of its own founding ideals. But Will would not have us think this an indictment of those founding ideals—far from it. To him, America’s founding principles, faithfully executed, represent the best of our history and our future.
In part, the book is inspiring and encouraging. In another part, it is embarrassing and convicting. Readers can take from it what they wish—but should take both.
#14: The National System of Political Economy
Friedrich List (1841)
List was a German economist and philosopher whose National System is a fully articulated defense of protectionist trade policies. I considered adding a piece on List during my recent series on great economic theories, but ultimately left him out. His work does not fit clearly into the way I was thinking about economic debate at the time—but given President-elect Trump’s plans to reignite trade disputes in his second term, List’s arguments should be given a seat at the table if we are to understand what Trump’s reasonings might be.
What Hayek was to Keynes, List was to Adam Smith: a German-speaking intellectual foil who had the advantage of seeing his rival’s theories challenged by time. One of Smith’s core points was his thorough critique of the mercantile system of trade, in which trade surpluses were tools to preserve a nation’s supply of gold and silver currency. This supply of coin could be spent to put armies in the field. Smith’s argument in The Wealth of Nations is that a system of unrestricted free trade makes all players better off. He introduces here concepts such as comparative advantage. We’ve covered his arguments in our economics series.
List’s response seven decades later is a big fat “easy for you to say”. He argues that Britain favored free trade in the late 18th century because they were the dominant manufacturing and commercial power. In the 17th century, when Dutch commercial interests rivaled those of Britain, British policies were the furthest thing from unrestricted. The Navigation Acts of 1651 practically barred any foreign ships from participating in Britain’s trade with her colonies (the U.S. has a similar statute, the Jones Act, still on the books). Make no mistake: List is not a mercantilist. He argues that societies should not seek to hoard gold as much as they should husband manufacturing power. Gold can buy ships, guns, and uniforms, but factories and shipyards can make them.
The National System admits that Smith’s arguments about free trade are, in part, correct. Unrestricted free trade is the best way to maximize the global economic output of the entire world. Because of this, List calls Smith’s view on trade the “cosmopolitan” theory, as it presumes to ignore national borders. Unlike Smith, List spent time formulating trade policy. He was the architect of the German Zollverein, a customs union that served to the as-yet disunited German states the same purpose that the Common Market would serve 20th-century Europe.
List therefore did not have any intent of taking a cosmopolitan view. He didn’t take about the global economic pie; it was his job to care about the size of Germany’s slice thereof. Taking this approach, he argued, would sometimes mean that tariffs were a benefit to the country that set them. He argues that seeing tariffs as a burden on a nation is too short-term a view. In the long run, the wealth of a nation will follow its “productive power”.
His theory, in brief, prescribes the following:
- For an impoverished or agricultural nation, unrestricted free trade is best. This will enable that nation to gain some access to foreign goods and foreign capital, some of which may be spent in improving the nascent manufacturing industry.
- In the transition from agricultural to manufacturing nation, tariffs will protect the manufacturing sector from stronger foreign competition. Without such protection, the domestic manufacturing is likely to die.
- Once a nation has achieved manufacturing superiority, a policy of unrestricted free trade again favors that nation. Why? Because only then can this nation hope to prolong their advantage.
Readers of List who see increasing arguments in favor of tariffs in the U.S. and Europe will find these rumblings ominous. The mid-20th century did not see many American economists supporting tariffs. Instead, the wisdom of unrestricted free trade has been taking for granted since World War II. Why? Because it was “easy for you to say”. With China’s rise to manufacturing dominance, perhaps it no longer is.
The book itself covers the history of the trade policies adopted by various European nations, as well as an outline of List’s economic theory. His central point is readily grasped, but he has a German philosopher’s taste for seeking to overcomplicate things. As long as these traps are avoided, the book is a fairly easy read.
#13: The Histories
Herodotus (5th century B.C.)
We return again to the history of the ancient world—this time, to the original historian himself. Herodotus’ work is an outstanding history of the ancient eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. He begins where the Trojan War ends. As with history itself, the book is full of subplots and tangents, but the central story is Persia’s conquest of Asia (what Anatolia was then called) and beyond, followed by the confrontations between the Greeks and Persians. Mythical characters like Croesus and Cyrus come to life, as do other larger-than-life persons like Themistocles and Leonidas.
Beyond simply the narrative, Herodotus offers some glimpses into the different cultures in the region. He offers a thorough account of Egyptian customs as a sidebar during the Persian conquests on the Nile. He covers many of the political unrests and intrigues among the Greek cities. Much like Plutarch’s work, the Histories leaves readers with a profound sense of how different antiquity was, and yet how similar to today it remains.
The book is difficult to read, and I found it helpful to do so with a pen in hand to take notes in the margins. It is also helpful to look up the old names of rivers and cities to visualize just where the story is taking place at any given time. That said, it will repay careful study.
#12: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Mark Twain (1889)
Mark Twain’s fiction can never be accused of taking itself too seriously—and this is the case with A Connecticut Yankee. The premise is easily grasped in the title. A late 19th-century factory worker takes a blow to the head and wakes up on the outskirts of Camelot. He is incredulous at the blind and dumb superstitions that rule in the mythical 6th century. The Yankee employs some good old-fashioned technology—gunpowder, telegraph wires, steam power—and passes it off as sorcery, raising himself to great power in the kingdom. Ultimately the only power that dares challenge him is that of the Roman Church.
As with other of Twain’s books, one suspects that A Connecticut Yankee’s blithe mocking of Dark Age dogmas is a social critique in disguise—that Twain’s witty put-downs of the bygone era were in fact directed at his own.
#11: A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations
Robert Bryce (2020)
This book goes a long way to reframing electricity as a global issue rather than a national one—and for many nations, it is a very different debate. Billions of people today use less electricity than a single household refrigerator—and yet the rush to decarbonize all too often ignores the needs of these billions.
Robert Bryce would have us Americans think ourselves blessed for the access to electricity we enjoy, and embarrassed for the way we lecture other parts of the world about their own energy needs. He also pushes back aggressively against wind and solar power, especially wind. He describes oft-suppressed accounts of wind farms having deleterious health effects on local populations, as well as the overnight destruction of property values brought on by such alternative energy installations.
His ultimate pitch is for nuclear power. A pro-nuclear sentiment underlies most of Bryce’s work on energy. Every part of his book is filled with data—a critical element in a debate often governed by emotion.
#10: The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith (1776)
Smith did not invent capitalism, but he took great steps to defining it. I’ve already covered Smith’s work at length in a series of other posts, so for our purposes here a brief recap must suffice.
The Wealth of Nations comprises five volumes. The first of these is a summary of the various interests and factors which make up income. Wages are due to labor, profits are due to capital, and rents are due to property. These three components make up the prices of goods and the economies of nations.
Volumes 2 and 3 cover the nature of capital (or “stock” in Smith’s preferred term) and how it accumulates, as well as development of economies as a whole.
Volumes 4 and 5 [BP25] treat the subject of political economy. In this section Smith takes strict definitions of government’s fiscal obligations, and levies arguments in favor of free trade.
Fortunately for those without the time to pore over primary-source economics text, the blog posts linked above cover plenty of key insights from Smith’s masterwork.
#9: Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
Meredith Angwin (2020)
Just how much do we take our electricity infrastructure for granted? Angwin’s book sheds light on just how these utilities work. She sheds light on the opaque and unaccountable structures common in American grid governance. As one would expect, the regulated monopoly model creates ample room for complications.
One fascinating thing I took from the book was some data on how different electricity generating resources get paid. Baseload sources like coal and nuclear derive virtually all their revenue from selling kilowatts of power to the grid operator in structured auctions. Natural gas, however, gets less than half its revenue from selling power, and a substantial portion from selling their own commitment to produce power if called upon. They do this mostly as a reliability stopgap for grids that rely significantly on wind and solar because—get this—wind and solar gets less than 20% of its revenue from selling kilowatts. These power sources get paid in the form of a renewable energy credit (REC) that acts as a subsidy.
The implications for this are easy to grasp. Wind, solar, coal, nuclear, and gas all bid in the same auctions for power. It’s obvious that coal and nuclear plants need to price their bids above their marginal cost given that’s how they make money—but it’s not so for renewables. Since they get paid in the form of the REC, wind and solar providers can undercut the bids of other providers—in many cases, they bid a price of less than zero! This puts downward pressure on the price that coal and nuclear providers receive, and they are the most price-sensitive producers. The result of this? Disincentivized investment in any new energy capacity that isn’t getting a REC.
Angwin also details that the lower kilowatt price on the grid doesn’t translate to cheaper utility rates for consumers. Because renewable power is intermittent and subject to the weather, it requires a backup to prevent blackouts, and natural gas fills this role. So even though they can buy cheap renewable power, grids often need to buy the power twice: once in the actual power market and again in the “commitment to make power” market.
The book doesn’t shy away from getting technical. It may best be read with a pen & notepad close at hand.
#8: Investing in U.S. Financial History
Mark Higgins (2024)
Higgins offers a survey of American history from a financial point of view. Some of it is familiar: creation of the Federal Reserve, the Great Depression, the beginning of securities regulation. Some of it is less so: the series of economic panics in the early and mid-19th century. The book covers monetary history as well as the evolution of America’s financial sector.
After World War II, the book loses some of its insightfulness. It sometimes seems like Higgins is trying to shoehorn the last seven decades of American financial experience to fit two conclusions:
- The U.S. investment profession has completed its long march to respectability, as evidenced by the increased popularity of the CFA Institute’s programs.
- Active investment management is going the way of the dodo bird, as passive, index-based strategies are simply better.
The first point is fine, I suppose. Higgins holds the CFA Charter and so do I. I’ve written about my experience with the CFA Program here, and I think it does offer some value. But while CFA Institute and its members do adhere to rigorous ethical standards, we should remember Machiavelli’s warning: any who is virtuous will likely come to grief among those who are not.
It’s the view about passive investments becoming supreme that I simply can’t agree with. It surely has a meaningful place in the asset management world, but it can’t ever fully replace active management for two reasons.
- Having everyone simply mimic the market creates a massive prisoners’ dilemma in which every market participant has an incentive to deviate from the uniform view to seek better returns. A 100% passive world results in stocks being illiquid and difficult to value in which markets are not so much inefficient as nonexistent.
- Human beings are by nature competitive and ambitious. Even if passive investment strategies can beat the average active investor, no active investor sets out to be average. It’s just like how virtually all drivers consider themselves to be better than average. We tend to overrate our own abilities—overconfidence bias ensures both supply of and demand for active money management.
The book is still really good, though. Read it for the economic history and the outstanding pieces of data that Higgins includes.
#7: The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe
Martyn Rady (2023)
These next three books are ranked together for a few reasons. They are all outstanding, but they also offer some insights into historical epistemology which I find interesting. Rady’s The Middle Kingdoms spans the area roughly covering Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and the northern Balkans. One definition he offers is “everything east of France and west of Russia”.
The book’s thoroughness sheds light on just how West European bias affects so many accounts of European history. I remember my own European history classes, which tended to focus heavily on Franco-British rivalry and Spanish decline. Germany is seen as a brief battleground during the religious wars and then vanishes forgotten until reemerging as the continent’s Bismarckian bogeyman in the late 19th century.
By contrast, Rady tells the history of Central Europe for its own sake, not as a sideshow to France and Britain. And for much of that history, the eyes of Central Europe looked to the east, not the west. Huns, Avars, Magyars, Mongols, Tatars, Vikings, and Russians all came conquering from the east. The kings and princes of the European heartland were the last line of defense that prevented marauders from overrunning France.
Central Europe followed many of the same themes as the West, but with variations. Feudalism left a mark on both, but the ethnic diversity east of the Rhine forestalled any impulse to consolidation. Legal codes throughout medieval Germany resembled the Roman, ensuring a development far different than that of the common law in Britain. And the proximity to successive waves of conquerors from the east brought cultural turnover and upheaval which the English haven’t experienced since 1066 when William of Normandy was victorious at Hastings.
From an Anglo-American perspective, it’s easy to diminish the role of Central Europe in the last two centuries to one of supervillain, given Germany and Austria fought two world wars against the West. But the roots of these conflicts can, to some extent, be traced to cultural differences. The Enlightenment in the West promoted concepts of liberty, natural rights, and limited government. In Germany and Austria, Enlightenment thought promoted bureaucracy, administrative strength and efficiency. This can even be seen in the differences between Adam Smith’s cosmopolitan and liberal approach to economics and Friedrich List’s nationalistic one. The philosophical foundation in Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century was far different from the one in the West—a distinction that partially explains the rise of extreme national socialism in Germany.
#6: China: A History
John Keay (2011)
Perhaps no country (Egypt, maybe?) has so long a history as China does. This book dives further into Chinese dynasties and politics than most world history courses are willing to. It also derives heavily from historical records written during each of these dynasties.
Keay makes a critical point regarding these records: none of them were free from bias. Many were in fact blatant rewriting of earlier historical records. Chinese historians understood the power of historical narratives to frame the present. Grasping this long tradition helps put China’s current censorship regime in context.
The book covers a lot of fascinating stuff—I consider myself well-read in world history and there was still plenty to learn here. The names of dynasties and emperors, the conflicts with outsiders that formed China’s frontiers, the cycle of prosperity and turmoil that marked each dynasty, and the drama of Warring States, Three Kingdoms, and Century of Humiliations; this makes for an excellent story.
Knowledge of the past helps give explanation to the present. In China, the dynastic cycle was marked by a Mandate of Heaven. The Mandate was a social contract under which a ruler was seen as legitimate as long as they preserved peace and prosperity—and were lucky enough for no natural disasters to occur. Famine, plague, or nomadic incursions were all seen as evidence that an emperor’s Mandate was forfeit and therefore the dynasty was no longer legitimate. On one hand, this suggests the untenable nature of bad regimes that neither respect liberty nor provide comfort. China never truly adopted liberty and individuality as key tenets of any dominant philosophy—but even an autocrat could not hold sway when harvests were poor and the empire was weak. This suggests that in the very long run, those with power act in the best interests of all—although this cycle is far longer than any one lifetime.
It also provides context around China’s recent economic weakness and actions the government has taken. If the train of economic growth grinds to a halt, the Communist Party might be seen to forfeit the Mandate.
#5: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Winston Churchill (1940s) and Andrew Roberts (2007)
Winston Churchill wrote his original A History of the English-Speaking Peoples spanning from the pre-Roman tribes to the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1901. He wrote this in four volumes. Andrew Roberts, a Churchill biographer and eminent British historian, grasped the baton and wrote a fifth volume, covering 1900 and on, ending in the early-2000s.
Both authors are unapologetically chauvinistic, but this is what makes the work appealing. Churchill extolls the virtues of the mythical King Arthur without insisting that he actually existed. He covers in fantastic detail the sheer messiness of medieval English politics. And he spends a great deal of time covering the exploits of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who fought back the tide of French aggression in the early 18th century. When he begins his discussion of America, he treats the Revolution as an intermission rather than a clean break—and his telling of American history is particularly interesting as he brings an Anglocentric perspective to it.
Roberts picks up this same refrain. He’s got plenty more territory to cover, and goes back and few between Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of the British Empire. Yet he follows Churchill’s lead of focusing heavily on what the English-speaking world holds in common.
What makes the combined work so refreshing is how unabashedly pro-West it is. No one can accuse Roberts of leaning left. On the contrary, he is quick to defend Britain and America alike, putting many American historians who seem ashamed of their country’s record to shame. Whether you agree entirely with this view or not isn’t the point; Roberts sometimes is too positive for my taste. But it’s worth noting that history is, in part, a form of national self-talk, and our views on history do much to form our sense of patriotism and our national self-esteem. The faults of Britain and America are certainly many—and are worth studying. But the Anglo-American world has set a higher standard for humanity than any culture before or since—and yet they are the only culture that is judged by that standard. The contributions the world prosperity and liberty made by the English-speaking peoples are without peer. To borrow Orwell “All histories are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” The history of the English-speaking peoples is such a one.
#4: Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy (1878)
My forays into fiction were few this year, and Anna Karenina stood apart. This was my first experience with Russian classics. The stereotypes had prepared me for tragic and morbid motifs, but not at all for the density of Tolstoy’s work.
It is astounding how much time his characters seem to have on their hands. These are the Russian elites, after all, and few if any of them are ever caught doing an honest day’s work. Instead, their lives are a flurry of leisure spent in over-conscious social anxieties—does that sound familiar?
The general tone of the book appears to be one of anxiety and tension: partly due to the nature of the plot, but largely due to the writing style of the book. It is written in 3rd-person omniscient point of view, and each of the principal characters is worthy of an Inside Out spinoff in their honor. Seemingly innocuous conversations turn fraught with stress when Tolstoy beckons his readers into the shoes of his characters.
Contributing to all of this is the inconsistent pace at which events take place. Characters can remain undecided on critical choices for a hundred pages, only to make an irrevocable decision in the final two lines of a chapter. As I read, I did not dare to skip the long tangents on the state of Russian agriculture just in case a character caught smallpox halfway through. Thus, Tolstoy creates characters who always appear on edge, and then sets readers on edge by varying the pace.
Readers will rightly ask why I rank this book so highly when I seem so critical of Tolstoy’s style. My answer to that is simple: Anna Karenina is excellent. It is a story where complexity brings richness to tragedy, one where readers can choose from many options who’s to blame for it all. The story is sad in many ways, but it is not unmitigated tragedy. A work this nuanced can be made to serve many masters of literary analysis. This is fodder for bad high-school English teachers, but these debates are what make the literature so compelling.
#3: The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Friedrich Hayek (1991)
If The Road to Serfdom launched Hayek’s free market crusade, The Fatal Conceit was its capstone. But while his earlier work is fraught with anxieties about the war and fresh off the intellectual climate of the 1930s, The Fatal Conceit reads more like a victory lap. Written after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is less a warning against socialism than it is an obituary for it. As in his earlier work, Hayek draws heavily on a thoughtful knowledge of anthropology and human development, as opposed to purely economic expertise. This makes for a more reflective piece.
I’ve already covered The Road to Serfdom in great detail here, and I would still recommend this book most highly of all the Hayek works I’ve reviewed. The Fatal Conceit gets a nod here because I technically read the others in 2023, and out my intellectual regard for Hayek’s total corpus of work.
Readers will by now have discerned my fondness for Hayek. But even he cannot crack my top two books of the year because…
#2: The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis (1942)
As mentioned earlier, strengthening faith was a key theme for my family in the past year. We spent time rethinking some of our assumptions about what Christianity is and is not. Two books by C.S. Lewis (yes, the same guy who wrote Narnia) were particularly illuminating to me.
The first of these, The Screwtape Letters is written as correspondence from a high-ranking official in Hell, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is a junior demon tasked with watching over the soul of a man and ensuring no salvation comes to him. Screwtape’s letters are full of advice to Wormwood as to how to achieve damnation.
If you hold Christian faith and seek to live it out in your life, The Screwtape Letters are like getting a copy of the enemy’s plans before the battle. For instance, Satan wants us to focus on judging our fellow-Christians rather than enjoying fellowship with them. I came away from the book with a new perspective on just how much of what I had considered to be Christianity was actually infiltrated by the other team. In this sense, it is fascinating.
#1: Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis (1952)
Where The Screwtape Letters explores the devil’s perspective, Mere Christianity is a first-principles account of what Christianity is. C.S. Lewis was originally an atheist, whose own efforts to disprove God’s existence led him instead to believe in God. In Mere Christianity, Lewis expounds the very basics. He does not endorse any denomination, and avoids more pedantic doctrinal points. His view on these minor religious arguments is simple: that Christians are often blind to how much they have in common, because of their obsession with very minor differences.
What makes Mere Christianity such an outstanding read is that it requires virtually no familiarity with the Bible or any other part of religion to get something out of it. Lewis takes nothing for granted, beginning with determining whether or not human morality is endogenous and subjective or something objective that originates beyond us. He settles on the latter and endeavors to prove this. From this foundation, the existence of God is difficult to deny, and Lewis goes on to describe the basics of Christian ethics and belief.
I can’t recommend Mere Christianity enough. In fact, it just might be the sort of book that one should read every year.
Happy Reading!
The list above includes books that I’ve read in the past year and would recommend others take a look at. I hope you enjoy & we at Ten Minute Major wish you a happy New Year!