Reading

One of my favorite pastimes is reading a great book. Here’s what I’ve been reading recently along with a few of my thoughts from each book.

The Friend: A Novel
by Sigrid Nunez
December, 2018.

A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
September, 2018.

The Selfish Gene (Popular Science)
by Richard Dawkins
August, 2018.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
by Stephen R. Covey
July, 2018.

The Underground Railroad: A Novel
by Colson Whitehead
A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. Whitehead crafts incredibly vivid imagery that interleaves truth with fiction in a novel that leaves a distinct impression. I've read a few other books about slavery and oppression, but none have been so raw and so real. The Underground Railroad instills in the reader the dark and terrifying journey of two slaves that escape and seek freedom in the North. Through all the hardship is a story of perseverance, fortitude, and the deepest possible generosity by a select few. May 5, 2018.

Thinking fast and slow
by Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky changed how we think about how we think. They explored dozens of biases and cognitive shortcuts that define how we see (and remember) the world. The implications touch nearly every aspect of life. If you've read about psychology, bias, decision making, or behavioral economics in the last twenty years, chances are some of the ideas you read about trace back to Kahneman and Tversky. This is the book that ties the history of ideas together. What an amazing read - definitely one of my all time favorites! April 17, 2018.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J. D. Vance
A wonderful example of a memoir! JD Vance gracefully interleaves a personal story with cultural commentary. This book pulls you in and is hard to put down - I finished it in one sitting! April 8, 2018.

Ten Restuarants
by Paul Freedman
A fun tour of famous restaurants that left a mark on American history and culture. I found the historical perspective fascinating, though a bit dry and encyclopedic at times. As a millennial, most of the restaurants were new to me. As a food lover, the influence of the restaurateurs, chefs, and menus was fun to learn about. Now, when I go into a restaurant, I can see how the choices of design in atmosphere, service, and menu were influenced by the great eating establishments of the twentieth century. If you are a foodie and you enjoy history, you will love this book. April 6, 2018.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
by Marshall B. Rosenberg
March, 2018.

Evicted
by Matthew Desmond
This 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner is simply fantastic. Reading this book transports you to the intersection of wealth and poverty in America. The book is an insightful and compelling narrative about the day-to-day realities of poor Americans. This book should be required reading for high school students. As a researcher myself, I'm blown away and inspired by the lengths Desmond went to in order to craft this story - don't skip the prologue, where Desmond describes his investigation and his recommendations. February 19, 2018.

The Singal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't
by Nate Silver
Nate Silver gives the reader a way of thinking probabilistically without getting lost in the math. A good portion of the book discusses Bayes theorem with a strong emphasis on the role of prior beliefs and context in successful predictions. Silver comes back to the fact that many successful predictions rely on a combination of both statistical analysis and expert insight. The book is full of simple explanations that are easy to understand and entertaining examples from everyday life including Silver's analysis of baseball, poker, earth quakes, global warming, and terrorist attacks. January 31, 2018.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance
Vance interviewed over 300 people including Elon's family, friends, and notable employees to create a biography with an investigative flair. The book addresses Elon's success and his failures with equal vigor. While the overall tone often reproduces awe and reverence often found in news articles, Vance also digs into several critiques of the SpaceX and Tesla founder. Vance goes into depth in describing the qualities that separate Elon from other entrepreneurs including his willingness to accept huge risk to realize his vision, his exceptionally high expectations, his incredible memory, and his laser focus. This book is a rare glimpse into one of the most influential people of our time. January 15, 2018.

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior
by Jonah Berger
A fascinating discussion touching on many of the subtle details of the human mind. Berger follows a natural progression that gives a plain-English explanation of the psychology that underpins everything from why we are likely to name our children after a hurricane to why BMW makes so many different models, options, and colors. January 6, 2018.

Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do
by John Bargh
Dive into intriguing explanations of the unconscious mind. John Bargh provides a guided review of seminal research by himself and others to give insight into why we do what we do. Bargh intertwines personal anecdotes with research studies to tackle the role of our unconscious in parenting, politics, business, economics, social interactions, and race relations. January 2, 2018.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
by Daniel James Brown
A riveting account of the 1936 winning crew team from the University of Washington. This is my favorite book from 2017. Brown has managed to tell a fantastically captivating story of triumph in athletics while commenting on American life, the history of rowing, income inequality, the politics of the 1930s, and Nazi Germany. This book was educational, emotional, and hard to put down. December 16, 2017.

Pygmalion
by George Bernard Shaw
The original play that was the inspiration for several other works including My Fair Lady, and She's All That. The Pygmalion Effect, where higher expectations lead to higher performance, was named after the book December 14, 2017.

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
by John Vaillant
A vivid description of logging in the Pacific Northwest is woven into the story of the Golden Spruce, a famous Spruce with golden needles. A logger turned environmentalist cuts the tree down in a deranged act of defiance. Vaillant gives us a perspective into the transformation of natural beauty and tribal life into natural resources harvested with devastating efficiency and the ever-spreading western lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. December 10, 2017.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
by Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth unlocks the secrets of perseverance. She shows how grit separates the highest achievers from the rest. By describing the role grit played in her own journey, Duckworth adds a personal touch that gives the reader a sense of connection to her. My favorite take-away is the hard-thing rule: in Duckworth's family, everyone has to do at least one hard thing, you have to finish what you start, and no one gets to pick the hard rule for anyone else. November, 2017.

Stress Test
by Timothy F. Geithner
Geithner's account of the Great Recession is an interesting read, but a bit dry. Geithner describes his efforts to maintain liquidity and contends that the crisis could have been much worse. The bottom line is that a systematic underestimation of risk lead to hugely overvalued assets. October, 2017.

Fire
by Sebastian Junger
A compilation of Junger's experiences living in and writing about dangerous situations throughout his career. The book includes one account after another of death, war, and destruction, which made it hard to read. However, one passage resonated with me: '...as life has becoming staggeringly easy, it has also become vaguely unfulfilling' and then continues 'it should be pointed out that people whose lives are inherently dangerous, like coal miners or steel workers, rarely seek adventure. Like most things, danger ceases to be interesting as soon as you have no choice in the matter. For rest of us, threats to our safety and comfort have been so completely wiped out that we have to go out of our way to create them.' September, 2017.