top of page

301-350

fabric cosmos.PNG

THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS: SPACE, TIME AND THE TEXTURE OF REALITY

Brian Greene

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Brian Greene and Sean Carrol are experts at teaching complex physics to us mortals. This book contains pretty much everything you want to know about classical mechanics, relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory. It is not as detail in each subject as other books but that is understandable given the amount of topics covered. P.S. Written in 2016 so discoveries like gravitational waves and the Higgs boson are not included.

Memorable Parts

  • "The insights of modern physics have persuaded me that assessing life through the lens of everyday experience is like gazing at a van Gogh through an empty Coke bottle."

  • "And that's the origin of  a huge puzzle. Nothing in the equations of fundamental physics shows any sign of treating one direction in time differently from the other, and that is totally at odds with everything we experience."

  • "If velocity is something that makes sense only by comparisons - by saying that this is moving with respect to that - how is it that changes in velocity are somewhat different, and don't also require comparisons to give them meaning?"

  • "Special relativity declares a similar law for all motion: the combined speed of any object's motion through space and its motion through time is always precisely equal to the speed of light."

  • "And one day in 1907, Einstein realized that this was no mere analogy. In one of those flashes of insight that scientists spend a lifetime longing for, Einstein realized that gravity and accelerated motion are two sides of the same coin."

​

ruth bader.PNG

IN MY OWN ORDS: RUTH BADER GINSBURG

Marry Hartnett & Wendy W. Williams

Skip

Summary​

  • This book is a a collection of RBG's speeches and dissents, something you can get online without spending your money buy a book. Perhaps half a page of context before each speech / dissent.

Memorable Parts

  • "First, I had a mother who, by her example, made reading a delight and counseled me constantly to 'be independent,' able to fend for myself, whatever fortune might have in store for me."

  • "Ruth is somebody who is simply not afraid of dead air time. If you ask her a question that requires a thought-through answer she will stop, think it through, and then answer it."

  • "All smiles, our daughter announced she had grown up in a home in which responsibility is equally divided: her father did the cooking and her mother the thinking."

  • "Traditionally, [differential treatment on the basis of sex] was rationalized by an attitude of 'romantic paternalism' which, in particular effect put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage."

  • "I have been typing the word sex, sex, sex, over and over. Let me tell you, the audience you are addressing, the men you are addressing...the first association of that word is not what you are talking about. Use the word gender."

  • "Thurgood Marshall and those who worked with him in the campaign against racial injustice, carefully set the steppingstones leading up to the landmark ruling. That did not happen in Roe v. Wade."

​

authentic happiness.PNG

AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS: USING THE POWER OF  POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TO REALIZE YOUR POTENTIAL FOR LASTING FULFILLMENT

Martin E.P. Seligman

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • A follow-up to his outstanding book "Learned Optimism." For every 10 research papers in psychology, only one is dedicated to positive psychology. Martin Seligman is the leader of the latter.

Memorable Parts

  • "Not all rats and dogs become helpless after inescapable shock, nor do all of the people after being presented with insolvable problems or inescapable noise. One out of three never gives up, no matter what we do."

  • "Raising children, was far more that just fixing what was wrong with them. It was about identifying and amplifying their strengths and virtues, and helping them find the niche where they can live these positive traits to the fullest."

  • "Everyone already has the skills of disputing, and we use them when an external person accuses us falsely of some dereliction. When, however, we say the same accusing things to ourselves, we usually fail to dispute them."

  • "If you find that your desire to engage in  particular pleasure diminishes to zero when you space it far enough, you are probably dealing with an addiction and not a pleasure."

  • "Pleasure is  powerful source of motivation, but it does not produce change; it is a conservative force that makes us want to satisfy existing needs, achieve comfort and relaxation."

  • "In fact, there are few stronger predictions of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong companionship with one's best friend."

​

SUPERINTELLIGENCE.PNG

SUPERINTELLIGENCE: PATHS, DANGERS, STRATEGIES

Nick Bolstrom

Recommended

Summary​

  • Great coincidence that the week that I decide to finally read this book (I bought it a year ago) the Washington Post published an article about a Google engineer (now ex-Google) who claimed that a bot was sentient. Extremely detailed book about the strategies and dangers of AI. It is worth noting that the book was written in 2014.

Memorable Parts

  • "The Ptolemaic system represented the state of the art of astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over centuries by progressively complicating the model. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus."

  • "As the automated navigation system of cars become smarter, they suffer fewer accidents; as military robots achieve more precise targeting, they cause less collateral damage. A broad erroneous lesson is inferred from these observations of real-world outcomes: the smarter the AI, the safer it is."

  • "The original AI may be indifferent to its own demise, knowing that its goal will continue to be pursued in the future. It might even chose a strategy in which it malfunctions, encouraging the engineers to believe they gained an insight and place more trust in the next system they design."

  • "Final goal: Make more humans smile. Perverse action: Paralyze human facial musculatures into constant beaming smiles."

  • "An 'Ethernet port of Eden' could be installed: a fake port that can detect when the AI tries to escape by making an internet connection."

  • "Why would humans make decisions about their personal life when there are executive AI modules that can scan your goal system and manage your resources to achieve your goals better than if you tried to do it yourself?"

​

STRONGWOMEN.PNG

STRONG WOMEN: 15 BIOGRAPHIES OF INFLUENTIAL WOMEN HISTORY OVERLOOKED

Kari Koeppel

Recommended

Summary​

  • Unfortunately, most historical role model I know are men. I bought this book to be able to talk to my daughter about famous (or in this case, overlooked) female role models. The biographies lack depth but they make up for it in the range of women selected.

Memorable Parts

  • "Together we are powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that give us confidence that, yes, we can change the world because we have many times before." - Rebecca Solnit

  • "In 1843, Ada Lovelace laid out  a plan to use punched cards to perform a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, and in doing so created what is considered today to be the first computer program."

  • "Coworker Joe Barbera (later of Hanna-Barbera productions) harassed Mary Blair daily."

  • "Ida B. Wells' fight would go on for 122 years; the Senate confirmed the first anti-lynching law in 2018."

  • "The first woman millionaire in the United States was not only self-made, she was also a single black mother only a generation out of slavery."

​

marriage.PNG

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES FOR MAKING A MARRIAGE WORK: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FROM THE COUNTRY'S FOREMOST RELATIONSHIP EXPERT

John M. Gottman

Recommended

Summary​

  • Why do people wait for their marriage to be in trouble to start reading about how to fix it? We read business books regardless of the state of our business, why not do the same with one of the most important parts of our life?

Memorable Parts

  • "Researchers were able to predict the fate of newlywed couples ten years later just by measuring ACTC stress hormone levels in their blood during their first year of marriage."

  • "Happy couples create a climate a climate of embracing each other's needs. When addressing a partner's request, their motto tends to be a helpful 'Yes, and...' rather than 'Yes, but....'"

  • "At the heart of this book is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other's company."

  • "The presence of the fours horsemen in conversations (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling) alone predicts divorce rate with 82% percent accuracy."

  • "If your hear rate exceeds 100 bmp, you won't be able to hear what your spouse is trying to tell you no matter how hard you try. You need to take at least a twenty-minute break."

  • "A crucial goal of any marriage is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions."

​

black hawk.PNG

BLACK HAWK DOWN: A STORY OF MODERN WAR

Mark Bowden

Recommended

Summary​

  • The story of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. The book does a superb job at showing the fog of war and chaos. A must read to understand how chaotic (and ineffective) modern warfare can be despite all of the technological improvement.

Memorable Parts

  • "It makes no difference what men think of war. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade waiting the ultimate practitioner." Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridien

  • "Somali men were addicted to khat, a mild amphetamine. Midafternoon was the height of the daily cycle. So today's mission called for going in to the worst place at the worst possible time."

  • "Men in battle drink up information like water - it becomes more important than water. Panic was a virus in combat. A deadly one."

  • "At one point so many rounds came flying down the road, kicking up dirt and chipping the sides of buildings, they created a wave of energy that the sergeant could actually see coming."

  • "And yet these Americans, with their helicopters and laser-guided weapons, were going to somehow sort it out in a few weeks? There were trying  to take down a clan, the most ancient and efficient social organization known to man."

​

the undoing project.PNG

THE UNDOING PROJECT

Michael Lewis

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Another home-run (no Moneyball pun intended) by Michael Lewis. The book follows the friendship of geniuses Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. A must read for those interested in behavioral economics.

Memorable Parts

  • "He'd deliver entire lectures straight from his head without a note. To his students he'd seemed to have memorized entire textbooks, and he wasn't shy about asking them to do it, too."

  • "No matter what the topic was, the first thing Amos thought was in the top 10 percent."

  • "Amos liked to say that stinginess was contagious and so was generosity, and since behaving generously made you happier than behaving stingily, you should avoid stingy people and spend your time only with generous ones."

  • "With 'regressing to the mean', it is part of the human condition that we are statistically punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them."

  • "When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens."

  • "Don't talk. Don't interrupt. Just sit and listen. Meeting with Amos Tversky is like brainstorming with Einstein."

  • "How people's anticipation of happiness differed from the happiness they experienced, and how both differed from the happiness they remembered."

​

THE END OF AVERAGE.PNG

THE END OF AVERAGE: UNLOCKING OUR POTENTIAL BY EMBRACING WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT

Todd Rose

Recommended

Summary​

  • Rose is the director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A "terrible student" who found his way and his manifesto on why comparing ourselves to the average is a mistake.

Memorable Parts

  • "The air force had designed the cockpit based on average measurements. Of the 4,063, not a single airman fir within the average range on all ten dimensions. There was no such thing as an average pilot."

  • "In an averagarian mentality you would conclude that if you wanted to reduce the number of errors in your typing, then you should type faster. But this is a group level conclusion."

  • "Doctors developed a baby's developmental milestones based on the myelination theory. Thelen formulated a new hypothesis about what was causing the disappearance of the stepping reflex: chubby thighs."

  • "We live in a world that encourages - no, demands - that we measure ourselves against a horde of averages. Once you free yourself from averagarian thinking, what previously seemed impossible will start to become intuitive, and then obvious."

  • "A 2012 Vanity Fair article called the era when Microsoft relied on stack ranking 'the lost decade.' The rating system forced employees to compete for rakings, killing collaboration."

  • "If someone proposes to combine height, weight and exercise into a single metric to represent a person's condition, we would consider it laughable...Yet every day, teachers combine aspects of student's achievement, attitude, effort, and behavior into a single grade."

​

JERUSALEM.PNG

JERUSALEM

Alan Moore

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • It is daunting to try and write a review for this novel, but I will try. The best way to describe it is JAZZ. The book is a work of love by Moore to his hometown of Northampton, particularly the Boroughs. It is a dream, an LCD trip, a work of art, a history lesson, a economics lesson, a fairy tale, a horror story, a symphony. Mind blown. I have never read anything like it.

Memorable Parts

  • "The turn, the bend, the twist, the corner: there were quite a few in Alma's family who'd gone round it."

  • "He saw there were two sides to being poor, to having nothing, not even ambitions. It is true they didn't have his drive, his talents or his opportunities for betterment, but then they didn't have his doubts, his fears of failing or his nagging guilt to deal with, either."

  • "Angels' were the people of a tribe that had invaded England. This second meaning had connected to it by association a quote from Pope Gregory...'Non Angli, sed Angeli'...uttered while inspecting English prisoners in Rome."

  • "Nomen est omen. The name is a sign. Vernalls, as their father had defined the term, were those responsible for tending to the boundaries and corners, to the edges and the gutters."

  • "The troops had sacked and burned the previously prosperous and pleasant town, while in reaction to the rabble-rousing students it had been decided that it would be Cambridge that became the seat of learning, rather than Northampton."

​

CHURCHILL ORWELL.PNG

CHURCHILL & ORWELL: THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

Thomas E. Ricks

Average

Summary​

  • There are thousands of books about Churchill. I hypothesize that the author 'used' Orwell as a differentiator and justifies writing another Churchill book. The book is 80% Churchill and 20% Orwell. Nevertheless, it is worth reading.

Memorable Parts

  • "Most of the things one imagines in hell are here in the coal mine - heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space."

  • "The 1930s were horrible in many ways. There was a growing sense among many people that a new Dark Age was at hand. These fears began with the great economic and social dislocation of the global Great Depression. There was a general feeling that it was then end of Western civilization."

  • "Churchill's post-Pearl Harbor address to Congress was a work of political genius. Its structure was artistic, with four sections that could be titled: I, We, They, Us Against Them."

  • "Churchill's genius was that he did not look for consensus, instead he examined the differences between advisors and asked them for their assumptions."

  • "Churchill and Orwell faced a genuinely apocalyptic situation, in which their way of life was threatened with extinction. Many people expected evil to triumph and sought to make peace with it. They did not."

​

CRITICAL THINKERS.PNG

RAISING CRITICAL THINKERS: A PARENT'S GUIDE TO GROWING WISE KIDS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Julie Bogart

Skip

Summary​

  • The fights between these men are considered among the best of all time. They all became Hall of Famers. The author suggests that the reason we don't see these types of fights anymore is that the business has migrated into protecting 'golden geese' fighters and avoiding matches that might jeopardize that.

Memorable Parts

  • "Intimacy in learning means developing an ongoing relationship to that discipline, allowing it to morph and change, which requires humility. Mastery is a myth."

  • "One of the inherent dangers of textbooks is that they reek of unacknowledged authority. Students learn to treat the interpretations of the facts in a textbook as equally factual."

  • "Students are rewarded with better scores when they train themselves not to see, meaning they reshape their direct perceptions to match stereotypes and well-accepted relationships: irons are hot."

  • "Reading laterally means opening several browser windows to verify the source before allowing the website to cast its spell of credibility on you."

  • "Most use passive voice to describe bad things that happen to women, as though there's no agent. We talk about how many women were raped last year, not how many men raped women."

​

FOUR KINGA.PNG

FOUR KINGS: LEONARD, HAGLER, HEARNS, DURAN, AND THE LST GREAT ERA OF BOXING

George Kimball

Recommended

Summary​

  • The fights between these men are considered among the best of all time. They all became Hall of Famers. The author suggests that the reason we don't see these types of fights anymore is that the business has migrated into protecting 'golden geese' fighters and avoiding matches that might jeopardize that.

Memorable Parts

  • "Tonight, the man [Duran] became a legend, and the boy [Leornard] a man."

  • "Duran was nicknamed El Cholo. Food was scarce; unable to take care of him, his mother literally gave the boy away on several occasions. He was often found foraging the garbage cans of El Chorrillo."

  • "The fight ended in a draw and many of those gambling refunds were never collected. Thousands of fans, believing their bets had been lost, discarded their betting slips. That night the stoopers at Caesar's made a fortune."

  • "Most fight fans would not spend a dime to watch Van Gogh paint Sunflowers, but they would fill Yankee Stadium to see him cut off his ear."

  • "Leonard hasn't gone near drugs for over fifteen years. 'The triumph,' he said, 'comes from where you are now, not what you've done.'"

​

YUGOSLAVIA.PNG

THE FALL OF YUGOSLAVIA: THE THIRD BALKAN WAR

Misha Glenny

Recommended

Summary​

  • This book was written in 1992 and ends with the war still going on (there is a third revised edition). I can't remember if I have ever read a book from a war correspondent's point of view but this will definitively not be my last.

Memorable Parts

  • "With Knin outside of its control, Croatia faces insurmountable difficulties in developing its tourist industry. Without Knin, Croatia is an economic cripple. But it is here in Knin, where the Croats least need it, that the toughest Serbs in Croatia happen to live."

  • "Vojna Krajina can claim to be one of the most active and disruptive historical fault lines in Europe. Apart from forming the border between the empires of  Islam and Christendom for three centuries, it is also the line of fissure between Rome and Constantinople, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian faiths."

  • "By 1991, Serbia had become known as the 'Land of Mordor' among foreign journalists in Yugoslavia, thus honouring J.R.R. Tolkien's dark vision of a fallen kingdom."

  • "In extreme situations, nationalism appears to neutralize that part of the mind which can fathom complex equations. Instead, action is motivated by a single Lenin principle: 'Those who are not for us, are against us.'"

  • "Bosnia has always survived by dint of a protective shield provided either by a Yugoslav state or the Austrian or Ottoman empires."

​

THE RIGHTEOUS.PNG

THE RIGHTEOUS MIND: WHY GOOD PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED BY POLITICS AND RELIGION

Jonathan Haidt

Recommended

Summary​

  • Written in 2013 and is probably more relevant and urgent than ever. The title will mislead you into thinking it focuses mainly on religion but the author provides a good of general psychology, science and evolutionary theory.

Memorable Parts

  • "As the Roman poet Ovid said, 'Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.'"

  • "I disliked being criticized, and I had felt a flash of negativity by the time Jayne had gotten her third word. Even before I knew why she was criticizing me, I knew I disagreed with her. My inner lawyer went to work searching for an excuse."

  • "Sure enough, people made harsher judgments when they were breathing foul air. We use affect as information."

  • "It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a log together."

  • "Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people."

​

EPICTETUS.PNG

ECHIRIDION

Epictetus

Average

Summary​

  • I strongly recommend you read 'A Guide to the Good Life' first and get your intro to Stoicism. Otherwise, this book of quotes will make little to no sense without  Stoic context.

Memorable Parts

  • "For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, that belongs to another."

  • "Think of both times, of the time when you will enjoy the pleasure, and of the time after the enjoyment when you will repent and will reproach yourself."

  • "Check your passions so that you may not be punished by them."

  • "If a man should transgress moderation, the things which give the greatest delight would become the things which give the least."

  • "Be careful to leave your sons and daughters well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."

  • "Nature had given to men one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak."

​

EMPIRE SUMMER MOON.PNG

EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON

S.C. Gwynne

Recommended

Summary​

  • I guess "Dances with Wolves" romanticized a lot of the Native American culture. This book deep dives into the Comanche tribe, by far, the most powerful, lethal, and dangerous tribe of all. 

Memorable Parts

  • "No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even close."

  • "If the Comanches ran low on water, they were known to drink the contents of a dead horse's stomach, something even the toughest Texas Ranger would not do."

  • "It is one of history's great ironies that one of the main reasons Mexico had encouraged Americans to settle in Texas in the 1820s was because they wanted a buffer against Comanches, a sort of insurance policy on their borderlands."

  • "But no Indian plan of battle in American history ever included sacrificing large numbers of lives to take a position. That was what white men did, exemplified in attacks later on at places like Little Round Top, Iwo Jima, and Gallipoli."

  • "They had defeated the Europeans, cowed the Mexicans, and had so thoroughly mastered the far southern plains that they were no longer threatened by other tribes. An empire under the bright summer moon."

​

ANTIMEMETICS.PNG

THERE IS NOT ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION

qntm

Recommended

Summary​

  • This book is a very original sci-fi horror novel. It almost reminded me of the movie Memento. A fun and quick read.

Memorable Parts

  • "An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it."

  • "Marion recognises a few of the faces - the Site 19 site director, the head recruiter for Western Europe. none of them glance in her direction."

  • "There is an invisible monster which follows me around and likes to eat my memories."

  • "We... we watch the blizzard. And we guard the little fire. We are called the Foundation."

  • "Originally, there were three capital-G Gods. And sometime in the past hundred and fifty years, the Foundation had killed two of them."

​

THE BODY.PNG

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE: BRAIN, MIND, AND BODY IN THE HEALING OF TRAUMA

Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • By far, the best book I have read about trauma. The book skews towards childhood trauma but there are stories about domestic abuse and war. It is tragically remarkable how much childhood experiences affect adulthood.

Memorable Parts

  • "Research by the CDC has shown that  1 in 5 Americans was sexually molested as a child; 1 in 4 was beaten by a parent; 1 in 3 couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and 1 in 8 witnessed the mothers being beaten."

  • "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves."

  • "The survivor's energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life. These attempts to maintain control can result in a whole range of physical symptoms."

  • "Breakdown of the thalamus explains why trauma is primarily remembered not as a story (middle, beginning, and end) but as isolated sensory imprints."

  • "For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety."

​

EVOLUTION.PNG

THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION

Robert Axelrod

Recommended

Summary​

  • My Game Theory business school made a huge deal about this book. I bought it in 2008 and finally got to it! It focuses on a very specific problem (Prisoner's Dilemma) but the insight is so important that it is a worthwhile read. Written in 1984, had a US-Soviet Union case study and it hasn't surprisingly and unfortunately aged.

Memorable Parts

  • "To my considerable surprise, the winner was the simplest of all the programs submitted, TIT FOR TAT. Start with cooperation, and thereafter doing what the other player did on the previous move."

  • "In the midst of this bitter WWI conflict, the front-line soldiers often refrained from shooting to kill - provided their restraint was reciprocated by the soldiers on the other side."

  • "Surprisingly, there is a single property that distinguishes the relatively high-scoring entries from the relatively low entries. this is the property of being nice, which is to say never being the first to defect."

  • "TIT FOR THAT never scored better in a game than the other player! In fact, it can't. It won the tournament, not by beating people, but by eliciting behavior from the other players which allowed both to do well."

  • "TIT FOR TAT's robust success is due to being nice, provocable, forgiving, and clear." 

​

BEST BUSINESS.PNG

THE BEST BUSINESS BOOKS EVER: THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL MANAGEMENT BOOKS YOU'LL NEVEN HAVE TIME TO READ

Robert Axelrod

Skip

Summary​

  • I've been carrying this book for the past 18 years. I recommend you download the list and read the books. There is very little insight you can get from just reading summaries. Hey! I was young when I bought it.

Memorable Parts

  • "The best approach is to attack the other side's strategy; next best is to attack his alliances; next best is to attack his soldiers; the worst is to attack cities."

  • "Success comes from a sound set of beliefs, on which the corporation premises all its policies and actions. Beliefs must always come before policies, practices, and goals. The latter must always be altered if they are seen to violate fundamental beliefs."

  • "Nations don't compete. Companies compete. Nations can make it hard or easy for them to do so."

  • "A company surrenders today's business when it gets smaller faster than it gets better. It surrenders tomorrow's business when it gets better without getting different."

  • "There are as many stupid ways to grow as there are to downsize."

  • "Companies will pay millions of dollars for the opinions of McKinsey's bright 29-year old, but ignore their own bright 29-year-olds."

  • I don't think we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems with psychological, ethical, and economical aspects."

​

sputnin.PNG

SPUTNIK SWEETHEART

Murakami

Recommended

Summary​

  • Part love story, drama, detective novel and dream. My first Murakami novel but will definitively not be my last.

Memorable Parts

  • "I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it'd lose even its imperfection."

  • "What's nurtured slowly grows well."

  • "I never can get it out of my mind that's it's all made up [novels]."

  • "My father was actually fairly short, but the statue made him look like some towering figure. I was only five at the time, but I was struck by the way things you see aren't always true in life."

  • "And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own space orbits."

​

ASEOP FABLES.PNG

AESOP'S FABLES

Laura Gibbs

Recommended

Summary​

  • Stories that have been told since BC times. I read them because I want to read them to my children. Short stories with a lesson. What is there not to like?

Memorable Parts

  • The Donkey and the Ox: "If only you had been kind enough to help the ox pull the load you would not have died this untimely death, with carrion birds feasting on your flesh."

  • The Shepherd and the Lion: "The king commanded that the lion be spared and that the gentle shepherd be sent back home to his family."

  • Socrates and His Friends: "My house is not small. I can barely fill it with true friends!"

  • The Goat and the Donkey: "The doctor said that the donkey could be cured by a potion made from the lungs of a goat."

  • Greed and Jealousy: "The gods agree to grant our prayers, but the thing that one of you requests will immediately be given twofold to the other.

​

THE STATUS GAME.PNG

THE STATUS GAME

Will Storr

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Since the  'Sapiens' book there has been an explosion of books that try to explain our actions and world with the evolution lens. I thoughts this book as going to be another one like that, but I was wrong. It is using our search for status as THE lens. Very insightful book.

Memorable Parts

  • "Life is a game. There's no way to understand the human world without first understanding this."

  • "Our brains continually, and in countless ways, measure where we sit versus other people. They automatically layer them and the groups they belong in into hierarchies."

  • "There's no opting out of the game. A study of around 3,700 who'd practiced specifically to 'reduce attachment to the personal self and ego needs such as social approval and success' found they scored highly in measures of 'spiritual superiority'."

  • "It's in this way that children in countries such as India overcome the pain of eating spicy foods. Mimicking the actions of high-status people is so desirable, it's argued, their brains reinterpret the pain signals as pleasure."

  • "Captain James Cook ordered that the experimental sauerkraut be served only in the 'Cabin Tale' and not to the crew. This was the prestige cue. The moment they see their superiors set value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff in the world."

​

NO DRAMA.PNG

NO-DRAMA DISCIPLINE: THE WHOLE-BRAIN WAY TO CALM THE CHAOS AND NURTURE YOUR CHILD'S DEVELOPING MIND

Will Storr

Average

Summary​

  • This book should not be 255 pages long. If it were 150 pages, I would have recommended it. Too much repetition on valuable insights and suggestions for parenting. 

Memorable Parts

  • "When your child misbehaves, what do you want to accomplish? Are consequences our ultimate goal? In other words, is the objective to punish? Of course not. It is to teach."

  • "So you can [parent] be patient and loving, but sometimes you're choosing not to be? Why would you expect your child to be different."

  • "The child's attention shifts from her own behavior and how to modify it, to the caregiver's response to the behavior, meaning that the child no longer considers her own actions at all. Rather, how scary her parent was in the moment."

  • "We have to pay attention to our background music. 'Shark music' takes us out of the present moment, causing us to practice fear-based parenting."

  • "1-2-3 discipline focused on one definition (teaching) and two principles (wait until your child is ready, and be consistent but not ridgid).

​

FEYNMAN JOKING.PNG

"SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER

Richard P. Feynman

Recommended

Summary​

  • Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, a playboy?! Womanizer?! Brazilian Carnival participant?! Get ready to be amazed at the life this man had.

Memorable Parts

  • "He got me other jobs, and kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying 'He fixes radios by thinking!'"

  • "So I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew."

  • "I only realized later that a man like Wheeler could immediately see all that stuff when you give him a problem. I had to make the mathematical calculations, but he could see."

  • "The man standing next to me said, 'What's that?' I said, 'That was the Bomb.'"

  • "Wait a minute! It´s the middle of the afternoon. There's nobody here. There's no social reason to drink. I never drank ever again. I get such fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine."

​

EXECUTION.PNG

EXECUTION: THE DISCIPLINE OF GETTING THINGS DONE

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Average

Summary​

  • It is a decent book about execution from the perspective of a successful CEO. What made me lower my rating is that it was written in 2002. Examples are outdated or, worse, use GE as a prime example for execution and success. Regardless, you can get interesting ideas from reading it.

Memorable Parts

  • "Many people regard execution as detail work that's beneath the dignity of a business leader. That's wrong. To the contrary, it's a leader's most important job."

  • "How good would a sports team be if the coach spent all his time in his office making deals for new players while delegating actual coaching to an assistant?"

  • "People imitate their leaders. If your organization is worried, you've got a problem, because you said you're not."

  • "Given the many things businesses can't control, from the uncertain state of the economy to the unpredictable actions of competitors, you'd think companies would pay careful attention to the one thing they can control- the quality of their people."

  • "It's nonsense that complex strategy can't be reduced to a page. That's not a complex strategy. It's a complex thought about the strategy."

​

AMUSING.PNG

AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH: PUBLIC DISCOURSE IN THE AGE OF SHOW BUSINESS

Neil Postman

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Written in 1985 about the dangers of television in education and politics. Boy oh! boy. If the author saw what was going on with social media today he would turn in his grave. A very relevant book given today's environment of misinformation, propaganda, social media, etc...

Memorable Parts

  • "By the age of sixty-five, a person will have spent twelve uninterrupted years in front of the TV [1985]."

  • "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."

  • "How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides some insight into some problem you are required to solve?"

  • "There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television."

  • "If I were to pause this book here, tell you that I will return to my discussion in a moment, and then proceed to write a few words in behalf of United Airlines. You would think that I had no respect for you."

​

DONT BELIEVE.PNG

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK: WHY YOUR THINKING IS THE BEGINNING & END OF SUFFERING

Joseph Nguyen

Skip

Summary​

  • The first half of this short book is very strong. It contains interesting and practical insights that you can apply in your life. The second half is too metaphysical for me and repetitive.

Memorable Parts

  • "We only want external things  because we want to experience certain feelings inside such as joy, love, peace, and fulfillment. The feeling is really what we want in our lives, not the physical  things, but the trap that we believe the physical things will give us those feelings. The secret lies within the feelings."

  • "Thinking, on the other hand, is the act of thinking about our thoughts. You don't have to engage with each thought in your mind, but when you do, that is thinking."

  • "The samurai was consumed by rage and drew his sword [that is hell]. The samurai's eyes filled with tears and put his palms together and obsequiously bowed in gratitude for this insight [that is heaven]."

  • "Goals set from 'desperation' feel constrictive. We feel like we HAVE to do these things instead of WANT to. These goals are created from analyzing our past and are really means to an end."

  • "What we're ultimately looking for in life are feelings. We want money to get security. We want to spend time with our family to feel joy. But we keep thinking that the goal or object we want will give  us those feelings. This idea is flawed since our feelings can only be generated from within us."

​

FROM STRENGTH.PNG

FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH: FINDING SUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND DEEP PURPOSE IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE

Arthur C. Brooks

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • The author was motivated to write this book after a plane ride. He overheard an old lady tell her husband, "of course people still care  about you and respect you." When the author finally looked he was shocked that this man was extremely famous and successful. The book talks about how we can confront our inevitable cognitive decline.

Memorable Parts

  • "I had found a list written on my fortieth birthday. I had met or exceeded all of them. And yet... I wasn't particularly satisfied or happy."

  • "When asked what 'being old' means, the most popular response among Americans was 'turning eighty-five'. In other words, the average American (who lives to seventy-nine) dies six years before entering old age."

  • "Senior citizens who never or rarely 'felt useful' were nearly three times as likely as those who frequently feel useful to develop a mild disability and more than three times as likely to have died during the course of the study."

  • "When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom. When you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old, you know what they mean and how to use them."

  • "Every other kind of sin has to do with the commission of evil deeds, whereas pride lurks even in good works."

​

ANTIFRAGILE.PNG

ANTIFRAGILE: THINGS THAT GAIN FROM DISORDER

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • There is no antonym for fragile. 'Robust" comes to mind but something robust or fragile is indifferent to disorder and chaos. Antifragile things gain from disorder. The author is narcissistic and egotistical but you have to give him credit that he has a very, very unique voice. This book (right now Sep 2022) is in my top 20.

Memorable Parts

  • "Lucretius problem - after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed."

  • "Had Prozac been available last century, Baudelaire's 'spleen', Edar Alla Poe's moods, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, the lamentations of so many other poets, everything with a soul would have been silenced."

  • "My idea of a modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking."

  • "Poverty makes experiences hominem experiri multa paupertas iubet."

  • "What I was given to study in school I have forgotten; what I decided to read on my own, I still remember."

  • "Remember that food would not have a taste without hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn't so when stripped of personal risks." 

​

OPPOSITE OF SPOILED.PNG

THE OPPOSITE OF SPOILED: RAISING KIDS WHO ARE GROUNDED, GENEROUS, AND SMART ABOUT MONEY

RON LIEBER

Average

Summary​

  • The authos is a New York Times finance columnist. The book is filled with anecdotes from families across the US and wealth spectrum. You can probably get 2 o 3 tips out of this book that you probably hadn't thought about before. The rest of the book is common sense.

Memorable Parts

  • "Spoiled children have four things in common: few chores or responsibilities, there aren't many rules that govern their behavior, parents lavish them with time and assistance, and they have a lot of material possessions."

  • "Childhood innocence is less a description of reality than a way for adults to project their fantasies onto children. Those children are out in the world, seeing things on TV and on the iPad."

  • "Turn children away after an uncomfortable question was asked and they're likely to go straight to their equally confused friends or Google. "

  • "The Nobel prize-winning physicist was always asked by his mother after school: did you ask any good questions today? instead of: what did you learn today?"

  • "What most of my classmates don't know is that, even though I am taking 4 AP courses, I still go dumpster diving with my mother four days a week."

​

PHILOSOPHY.PNG

A LITTLE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Nigel Warburton

Recommended

Summary​

  • It is difficult to keep track of the timeline of philosophy and the contribution of each key philosopher. This book is a practical refresher. Contains 3-4 pages on each key philosopher and is in written in chronological order. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Socrates, as a young man, had been a brave soldier fighting ni the Peloponnesian wars against the Spartans and their allies."

  • "'One swallow doesn't make summer.' Happiness for Aristotle wasn't a matter of short-term joy."

  • "For the Stoics, the basic idea is that we should only worry about things we can change. We shouldn't get worked up about anything else."

  • "Descartes saw that even if the demon existed and was tricking him, there must be something that the demon was tricking. As long as he was having a thought at all, he, Descartes, must exist."

  • "Slaves turned the heroic values of the aristocrats on their head. Instead of celebrating strength and power, they made generosity and care for the weak into virtues. Nietzche expressed that the idea of a morality of kindness had its beginnings in feelings of envy."

​

WORLD FOR SALE.PNG

THE WORLD FOR SALE: MONEY, POWER AND THE TRADERS WHO BARTER THE EARTH'S RESOURCES 

Javier Blas & Jack Farchy

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • This reads more like a horror story. This is a world that, from the outside sounds boring and mundane (i.e. soybean futures) but the power and influence that these FEW companies have across the world are impressive. They have shaped the flow of history and politics across every continent.

Memorable Parts

  • "The 5 largest trading houses handle 25% of the world's petroleum. The 7 agricultural traders handle 50% of the world's grain and oilseeds. Glencore, the largest metals trader, accounts for 33% of the world's supply of cobalt."

  • "The family that owns Cargill contains no fewer than fourteen billionaires -more than any other family in the world."

  • "The episode became known as the 'Great Grain Robbery'. They realized there wouldn't be enough American grain to go around. Belousov had outsmarted the Western grain traders. The very secrecy so loved by the industry had backfired."

  • "The easiest way to create a political problem is to have hungry people."

  • "With little fanfare, the commodity traders helped free the global oil market from the 7 Sisters, re-carved the economic landscape of Russia, and empowered resource-rich governments from Congo to Iraq."

​

PATHWITHHEART.PNG

A PATH WITH HEART: A GUIDE THROUGH THE PERILS AND PROMISES OF SPIRITUAL LIFE

Jack Kornfield

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • [Disclaimer] I recommend this book if you have at least 6 months of insight meditation practice.

  • Given the author's background, it is evident that the book will tilt towards Buddhism but I was surprised how spirituality broad he kept it. Great guide into what to expect with your meditation journey.

Memorable Parts

  • "Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use."

  • "How do you think one gets the Nobel? Wanting love. Wanting it so bad one works all the time. It's a consolation prize."

  • "When we come to the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding."

  • "We become angry either when we are hurt and in pain or when we are afraid."

  • "Not just sit there like an idiot."

  • "Out beyond wrong doing and right doing there is a field of luminous consciousness. I'll meet you there."

​

the magic of reality.PNG

THE MAGIC OF REALITY: HOW WE KNOW WHAT'S REALLY TRUE

Richard Dawkins

Skip

Summary​

  • This book was written for a 10-year-old. There is a chapter on Cosmology that is barely worth reading. The rest, you learned in elementary school. 

Memorable Parts

  • "We come to know what is real, then, in one of three ways. We can detect it directly, using our five senses; or indirectly, using our senses aided by special instruments; or even more indirectly, by creating models."

  • "How many great-great ancestors do we need for our thought experiment? Oh, a mere 185 million or so will do nicely!"

  • "Over a very long time, sediments can harden to make layers (or 'strata') of sedimentary rock."

  • "All mammals have approximately the same number of letter differences from a frog (about 140), for the simple reason that they are all exactly equally close cousins."

  • "The Greek for 'cut' is tomos, and if you stick an 'a' in front of a Greek word it means 'not' or 'you can't'. So 'a-tomic' means something too small to be cut any smaller, and that is where the word 'atom' comes from."

​

MATCHING SUUPLY.PNG

MATCHING SUPPLY WITH DEMAND: AN INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Gerard Cachon & Christian Terwiesch

Recommended

Summary​

  • I took two weeks of this course in business school but then switched to another (more fun!) course. I have been seeing this book on my shelf for 13 years and finally decided to finish it. Great intro and tools for anyone working in operations. In my case, running a retail and distribution company.

Memorable Parts

  • "Thus, we find that it takes KMART - on average - 67 days to translate a dollar investment into a dollar of - hopefully profitable - revenues."

  • "The objective of our analysis remains to predict the three basic performance measures of a process: inventory, flow rate, and flow time."

  • "The operational yield (Flow Rate / Resource) measures how many resources we need to support the flow rate."

  • "Thus, if any point falls outside the control limits, we can claim with a 99.7 percent confidence level that the process has gone 'out of control', that is, that an assignable cause has occurred."

  • "To ensure that each sales representative holds a reasonable amount of inventory, each sales representative is given a par level for each product."

​

POTTY TRAINING.PNG

POTTY TRAINING IN 3 DAYS: THE STEP-BY-STEP PLAN FOR A CLEAN BREAK FROM DIRTY DIAPERS

Brandi Brucks

Average

Summary​

  • Yes. The time has come for this new adventure. Fingers crossed! The book gives common sense advice but it is actually refreshing to get rid of all the clutter of advice and stick to one plan.

Memorable Parts

  • "If your child is more than two and a half years old, there is a good chance she is ready for potty training. If she is three years old, she is definitively ready."

  • "Nothing is more confusing to a toddler than inconsistency. If the parents have a nanny with different bathroom procedures, it can take longer to train."

  • "When my mother was frustratingly trying to potty train me, my father would often have to remind her, 'She is not your boss.'"

  • "Coupled with a food treat, I also use a sticker chart that I tape on the bathroom door."

  • You will want the shirt to be short enough so you can fully see her underwear and quickly detect if there has been an accident."

​

CEO EXCELLENCE.PNG

CEO EXCELLENCE: THE SIX MINDSETS THAT DISTINGUISH THE BEST LEADERS FROM THE REST

Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller & Vikram Malhotra

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Insights from "200 of the best CEOs of the 21st century." I must read if you are an entrepreneur or CEO. Valuable insights and framework for those in the only peerless position of a company.

Memorable Parts

  • "From our interview six key responsibilities emerged: setting the direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing through leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness."

  • "Set the right course - the intersection of four circles: what the world needs, what you are good at, what you are passionate about, and how you can make money."

  • "The average lifetime of an organization in 1935 was ninety years, in 2015 it was eighteen years."

  • "We once asked a CEO how much time he spent managing people's egos. His response was 20 to 30 percent. We then asked what percent of time he spent managing his ego, there was silence."

  • "A common analogy is that managers are thermometers, and leaders are thermostats. Managers react to the environment. Leaders influence their environment."

  • "Humility is defined as freedom from pride or arrogance. Not that it doesn't say anything about lack of confidence or competence."

​

ONLY THE PARANOID.PNG

ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE: HOW TO EXPLOIT THE CRISIS POINTS THAT CHALLENGE EVERY COMPANY 

Andrew S. Grove

Recommended

Summary​

  • Written in 1996 by the man that steered Intel from memory chips to microprocessors. The chapter on the Internet is eye-opening! 

Memorable Parts

  • "Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk until there is nothing left."

  • "At some point along the way, like a kid who suddenly looks down at his father, our sizes reversed."

  • "He, like most CEOs, is in the center of a fortified palace, and news from the outside has to percolate through layers of people from the periphery where the action is."

  • "It was as if Steve Jobs and his company had gone into a time capsule when they started Next. They work hard for years, competing against what they thought was the completion, but by the time they emerged, the competition turned out to be something completely different and much more powerful."

  • "'If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?' Gordon answered without hesitation, 'He would  get us out of memories.' I stared at him, numb, then said, 'Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?'"

​

how to stop.PNG

HOW TO STOP LOSING YOUR SH*T WITH YOUR KIDS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO BECOMING A CALMER, HAPPIER PARENT

Carla Naumburg, PhD

Average

Summary​

  • 3,000+ positive Amazon reviews are more a reflection of how much we all struggle as parents, looking for help, rather than how good this book is. I would recommend reading it so you find opportunities to have some self-compassion.

Memorable Parts

  • "The New York Times published an article a few years ago that described shouting as the new spanking and labeled us 'a generation that yells'."

  • "They're wired to trust their parents and caregivers because we're the ones who are supposed to keep them safe. As a result, when we lose our shit with them, they tend to blame themselves because that's easier than questioning or doubting the person who keeps them alive and runs their lives."

  • "Multitasking while you're with your kids. The idea that any of us can do more than one thing at a time is a myth; if even one of those things involves your kids, well, forget it."

  • "Stress is the belief that you cannot handle whatever is happening. Multitasking is a surefire way to trick yourself into believing you can't handle what's going on."

  • "Don't give a happy child ice cream. This is one of y favorite pieces of parenting advice, and it comes from the actor Jack Black. If your child is happy, leave well enough alone."

​

MACHIAVEL.PNG

THE MACHIAVELLIANS: DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM

James Burnham

Recommended

Summary​

  • A great book to understand the current state of affairs in the world and the future of democracy. Written in 1943 and relevant as ever. I first heard about this book while listening to the Sam Harris podcast when he was interviewing Jonah Goldberg (conservative, anti-Trump).

Memorable Parts

  • "Cities, thus, had a head start. But the very factors that had brought their early advantage were, by the 16th century, turning them toward ruin. As the new world began to take more definite form, these first children of the world were already old and socially decadent."

  • "Machiavelli understood politics as primarily the study of the struggles for power among men."

  • "The very virtues of the good state contain the seeds of its own destruction. The state is feared by neighbors and therefore left in peace. War and the ways of fore are neglected. Peace brings idleness, luxury, and political corruption."

  • "The truth is that they answer a need in man's social nature, and this need of governing and knowing one is governed not on basis of force but on the basis of a moral principle."

  • "Sometimes it is said that these events which require quick decision are 'exceptional' and therefore do not count in the general history of organizations. But it is just these events that are the great and crucial events, settling the fate of organizations."

​

ADRIFT.PNG

ADRIFT: AMERICA IN 100 CHARTS

Scott Galloway

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Best said by the author: 'adrift does not mean lost.' Written this year (2022) and it is a graphical way of explaining where America was and is right now. I think we all know and realize the pain points America has right now. The question is, what will America be like in the future?

Memorable Parts

  • "About 1 in every 5 U.S. roads is in poor condition. Forty-five percent of Americans do not have access to public transit. A water main break occurs every two minutes."

  • "Between 1973 and 2014, net productivity grew 72%, but hourly worker compensation grew just 9%."

  • "What Wheeler could have said is that 8% of the water in America is not safe to drink. If 8% of Americans drank that water, 26 million people would be at risk. To put the number in perspective, 97% of American adults have a cell phone."

  • "The U.S. healthcare industry accounts for 45% of all medical spending globally."

  • "In 2010 we spent 3% of our waking hours on our phones. in 2021, that number was 33%."

​

it starts with you.PNG

IT STARTS WITH YOU: HOW IMPERFECT PARENTS CAN FIND CALM AND CONNECTION WITH THEIR KIDS

Nicole Schwarz, LMFT

Average

Summary​

  • A bit too repetitive for my taste. There are no original insights but rather a regurgitation of conclusions about parenting that other past books have already mentioned. In conclusion, it is you, not the kids.

Memorable Parts

  • "Most of us picked up an unhealthy focus on our faults when what we need is grace. We can't teach children to behave better by making them feel worse."

  • "Before you ask 'How do I get her to brush her teeth without complaining?' I'd encourage you to ask, 'Why does her resistance bother me so much?'"

  • "Biologically, their brains are still in a very early stage of development. What they need from you is calm, confident comfort. They need you to be their prefrontal cortex."

  • "If a parent yells, punishes, or overreacts their child from their behavior on a consistent basis, the child may head into a shame spiral. Instead of seeing their actions as mistakes, they see themselves as the problem."

  • "You don't want to take a bath (empathy)...Well, you're dirty from playing in the yard today (logic)...so you have to take a bath (solution)."​

​

ON ANIMAL.PNG

ON ANIMALS

Susan Orlean

Average

Summary​

  • By an animal lover to animal lovers. A mixture of fun facts and humor regarding animals and our interactions with them. A light-hearted read.

Memorable Parts

  • "'That's nice,' the landlord said. 'Dogs are fine. It's just the lawyers that aren't okay.'"​

  • "John arrived with the day's mail, which included a package of thirty thousand baby predator wasps that will be released in the cow pasture, where they are supposed to eat the flies that have been pestering the cattle."

  • "Thanks to her, Jackson, New Jersey, has more tigers per square mile than almost anywhere in the world."

  • " The mule's commitment to survival is interesting in a Darwinian context because mules - the hybrid result of mating a male donkey with a female horse - have an uneven number of chromosomes and are sterile. Every mule, then, is sui generis. It can leave no legacy beyond itself."

  • "If you don't like your mother-in-law, don't put her on this mule, because she'll love this mule and she'll move in with you."

​

wake up grateful.PNG

WAKE UP GRATEFUL: THE TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE OF TAKING NOTHING FOR GRANTED

Kristi Nelson

Recommended

Summary​

  • Kristi Nelson was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at the age of 33. Her position as Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living gave her many tools to overcome the difficult years and months ahead. I took notes of about 30 different tools that I will incorporate into my life.

Memorable Parts

  • "Each year that passed, I built up a kind of gratitude tolerance - what used to be enough got left in the dust in the pursuit of having more. Having cheated death, I began cheating life."

  • "It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy."

  • "Gratitude is great; gratefulness is better. Gratefulness does not reserve itself only for when good things happen or we get what we want."

  • "In challenging moments, we remember that painful experiences have taught us courage. Greater joy and freedom have been earned in being with life as it is. We remember that it is possible to emerge from our difficulties with compassion for ourselves and others."

  • "Through the lens of gratefulness, the proverbial glass half-full, glass half-empty story moves beyond optimism and pessimism. We are able to see a new story about the privilege of having a glass at all."

  • "Gratefulness is the opposite of taking life for granted. We stop operating on the assumption that there is nothing more to understand."

  • "All of this [commercialized world] leads to getting caught on the hamster wheel of life, forgetting again and again that the present moment is truly all we have, and it is precious and fleeting."

​

SIDDHARTA.PNG

SIDDHARTHA

Herman Hesse

Recommended

Summary​

  • I remember seeing this book on a teacher's bookshelf in high school. The book is short (150 pages) and I was always tempted to read it. I am glad I waited. This book will be a "plus" for those who have some experience meditating and are parents.

Memorable Parts

  • "The Illustrious One spoke in a soft but firm voice, taught the four main points, taught the Eightfold Path; patiently he covered the usual method of teaching with examples and repetition."

  • "I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it, but I could not conquer it, I could only deceive it, could only fly from it, could only hide from it."

  • "He is like Govinda, he thought, smiling. All whom I meet on the way are like Govinda. All are grateful, although they themselves deserve thank."

  • "Siddharta does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water."

  • "Siddharta now also realized why he had struggled in vain with the Self. Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much doing and striving. He had been full of arrogance; he had always been the cleverest, the most eager - always a step ahead of others. His Self had crawled into this priesthood, into this arrogance, into this intellectuality. It sat there tightly and grew, while he thought he was destroying it by fasting and penitence."

​

LIGHTS OUT.PNG

LIGHTS OUT: PRIDE, DELUSION, AND THE FALL OF GENERAL ELECTRIC

Thomas Gryta & Ted Mann

Recommended

Summary​

  • Chronicles the tumultuous reign of post-Jack Welch CEO Jeff Immelt let and his predecessor. Buckle up!

Memorable Parts

  • "As Flannery paged through the financials, he realized that GE Power had somehow run out of cash. This discovery wasn't just shocking - it was unthinkable."

  • "Jones was modest to the point of self-effacing. When Jones gently clarified, the town's mayor exclaimed, 'You run the whole fucking company?'"

  • "During a weekly credit meeting, a new senior manager asked about EBIDTA. He wasn't raising concerns about the estimates. Rather, he'd never heard the term before."

  • "Afloat on fracking profits during an oil boom, Lufkin had caught GE's eyes and been swallowed up at an expensive price, only to become a casualty when the conglomerate couldn't abide the hit to earning that a prolonged dip in the price of oil represented."

  • "GE hired armies of employees and gave them all the resources they wanted to build its vision. It was like an auto company building an assembly plant, hiring workers, and leaving them standing on the production line, waiting for the vehicle to be designed."  

​

THE BIGGEST IDEAS.PNG

THE BIGGEST IDEAS IN THE UNIVERSE: SPACE, TIME AND MOTION 

Sean Carroll

Average

Summary​

  • Sean Carroll is, in my opinion, of the best physics book authors. I have read all of his previous books and have found them extremely accessible, witty, and down-to-earth with their explanations. This book is definitively on the heavier side of mathematics (derivatives, matrices, curvature, etc.) I have an engineering degree and found the mathematics book challenging at times. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Pedantic but important aside: modern physicists distinguish between 'classical' mechanics, which is a broad framework, and 'Newtonian' mechanics, which is one specific model within that framework."

  • "'I've solved your problem, I think,' says the physicist. 'What is it?' replies the farmer excitedly. 'Well, first assume a spherical cow...'"

  • "Energy and momentum aren't two distinct ideas; energy is the timelike version of momentum."

  • "This equation has ended up correctly predicting the evolution of the universe, the existence of black holes, the propagation of gravitational waves, and other phenomena that Einstein had no inkling of at the time."

  • "It might seem counterintuitive that paths of greater distance take less proper time. That's okay. If it were intuitive, you wouldn't have needed to be Einstein to come up with that idea."

​

iron john.PNG

IRON JOHN: A BOOK ABOUT MEN

Robert Bly

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Blown away by this book and before the controversy begins, this is not an anti-women book. It is a book about men, period. The author's thesis is that the journey from "boy to man" has been interrupted by our modern times and this has negative consequences for men.  

Memorable Parts

  • "We have defective mythologies that ignore masculine depth of feeling, assign men a place in the sky instead of earth, teach obedience to the wrong powers, work to keep men boys, and entangle both men and women in systems of industrial domination that exclude both matriarchy and patriarchy."

  • "The men who live today have veered away from the Saturnian, old-man-minded farmer, proud of his introversion, who arrived in New England in 1630, willing to sit through three services in an unheated church."

  • "The man has to do it bucket by bucket. This resembles the slow discipline of art: Rembrandt, Picasso, and Yeats. Bucket work implies much more discipline than most men realize."

  • "Another man stole the key when he confronted his family and refused to carry any longer the shame for the whole family."

  • "It's becoming clear to us that manhood doesn't happen by itself; it doesn't happen just because we eat Wheaties. The active intervention of older men is needed."

  • "The traditional way of raising sons, which lasted for thousands of years, amounted to fathers and sons living in close -murderously close -proximity and seeing the father work. The Industrial Revolution damaged that bonding."

​

©2020

bottom of page