Elon Musk 

By Walter Isaacson
688 pages
Published Sept. 12, 2023

This was my book club’s selection for January. I was glad it was selected because I was going to read it anyway.

When Musk claimed the coveted title of “richest man in the world” at $200 billion, I wondered if he could hold onto that spot with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg moving up behind him. The next year, Bezos broke Musk’s historic record with an estimated net worth of $240 billion, but by that time Musk had broken through the $300 billion barrier. And today, the top five are, Bernard Arnault (LVMH) at $184 billion, Larry Ellison (Oracle) at $210 billion, Zuckerberg (Meta) at $240 billion, Bezos (Amazon) at $250 billion, and Musk still very dominant at $415 billion.

So, that’s one reason I wanted to read the book: to know more about wealth accumulation at those heights.

Another was the astonishing fact that Musk has done so much more than Tesla. Look at any of the top 20 richest people and, aside from Musk, you’ll find that they all made their fortunes by sticking to one thing.

A third reason was his supposed overspending to buy Twitter and transform it into a more diverse and less-censored social media platform. (Which he has done.)

And, of course, there was his recent move into politics as Trump’s chief of slashing government spending.

What kind of man is he? Or is he, as some have suggested, an Alien?

What I Liked About It 

* Musk’s story. Before reading Isaacson’s book, I knew only what most people knew about Musk – i.e., that after making his first little fortune on PayPal, he went on to buy Tesla and lead the company in building the first (and still the only) high-performance, reliable, and cost-efficient electric car. I also knew that he had some sort of rocket company that was supposedly competing with NASA. And that more recently he had engineered a hostile takeover of Twitter. But his story, as told by Isaacson, is much more impressive than even that. I don’t feel I’m exaggerating by saying that Elon Musk had contributed more to America (and really the world) at 53 years of age than any other American since Benjamin Franklin.

* Insights into his personality: The book is chock full of valuable insights into Musk’s nature, and how his upbringing and his Asperger’s affected his success.

* Business and wealth-building ideas: It is absolutely jam-packed with good and very good ideas about entrepreneurship and business management – many of which I’ve been thinking and writing about for more than 20 years.

What I Didn’t Like 

At first, I was disappointed in Isaacson’s prose style. I suppose I was looking for something literary since he has such a good reputation as a writer. And to be sure, his style is not literary at all. It’s more reportage. And almost stenographic reportage at that. But this reservation faded as I lost myself in the story and in the ideas that came to me on almost every page.

Interesting 

The book is rich with intriguing and fascinating facts about Musk, his approach to business, and his motivations. Isaacson also offers many examples of how his career impacted the lives of hundreds of millions of people – hell, the entire planet – in ways I never knew.

A few of the anecdotes that were most interesting to me…

* Musk got himself caught up in the Russia-Ukraine war after he provided the Ukrainians with thousands of land-based communication systems hooked to Starlink. However, when he found out that Ukraine intended to use his satellites to launch an offensive against Russian assets in Crimea, he cut off the Starlink connection in that area. In the months that followed, he negotiated with top generals on both sides but refused to move away from his position of aiding the Ukrainian people but not the military in its advances against Russia.

* He was originally a Democrat and supported Obama, but that started to change when he saw how the Dems were using censorship against him from 2016 to 2020. He was also, at the time, becoming chummy with Libertarians like Joe Rogan and Dana White and with Libertarian thinking. And then, when more info came out about the Biden administration’s involvement in interfering with the democratic process as the 2024 election approached, he began to change his mind about Trump.

* Musk liked Twitter because it was like a digital game in which acting impulsively and battling one’s opponents was just plain fun. He was also impressed by its reach. So he began quietly buying shares. As he became more aware of Twitter’s biases, some of his Libertarian friends suggested that he should buy Twitter itself. And he did.

Critical Reception 

Reviews of Isaacson’s biography have been mixed. Some critics recommended it strongly, as I’ve been doing since I finished reading it:

* “With Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson offers both an engaging chronicle of his subject’s busy life so far and some compelling answers.” – Wall Street Journal

* “Whatever you think of Mr. Musk, he is a man worth understanding – which makes this a book worth reading.” – The Economist

* “The book is bursting with stories…. A deeply engrossing tale of a spectacular American innovator.” – New York Journal of Books

* “[Isaacson’s] portrait of the tech maverick is fascinating.” – The Telegraph

On the other hand, it was almost universally dissed by the leftist media:

* New York Times critic Jennifer Salai wrote, “Isaacson… is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient.”

* Brian Merchant of the Los Angeles Times criticized the format as extremely dated and took issue with Isaacson’s persistent framing of Musk as a “moody but brilliant world-mover.”

* In The Guardian, Gary Shteyngart called the book a “dull, insight-free doorstop.”

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.3
* Verticality: 2.8
* Stickiness: 3.5
* Literary Richness: 2.8
* Average Score: 3.0

* Bonus Points: 0.8 (for becoming a huge fan of Musk, thanks to this biography)
* Overall Total: 3.8 out of 4.0

About My Rating System 

Last month, I introduced you to the system I use for the books and films I review here. To remind you…

My Rating System for Most Books/Films 

* Horizontality: How much and how well did the book/film provide a sense of a particular place, time, community, and/or culture?

* Verticality: How deeply did the book/film go in mining the depths of the human experience?

* Stickiness: How tightly did the book/film keep me glued to the story?

* Literary/Visual Richness: How well did the written descriptions/cinematography enhance the story?

And sometimes, as you can see in my review of Elon Musk above, I add bonus points for something I felt was especially good.

 

The Reivers: A Reminiscence 

By William Faulkner
320 pages
First published Jan. 1962

The Reivers was my book club’s February selection.

I suppose that, after a vigorous discussion of the world’s richest man at our last meeting (see my review of Musk, above), the Grand Poobahs that secretly run the Mules must have felt that we members needed to separate ourselves from the current, tempestuous reality by moving to fiction and going back in time.

For my part, as a graduate student in literature, I was always embarrassed by the fact that I could never get into Faulkner, even though I tried. I found his prose style – both in terms of the phrasing and the diction – challenging. I had trouble following the action. Now I know that it was some combination of dyslexia and ADD. And so, in anticipation of running into that problem again, I opted to listen to The Reivers as an audiobook, and that turned out to be a good idea.

I can now say that I’ve read (okay, listened to) a Faulkner novel from cover to cover.

The Plot 

The Reivers is a picaresque novel that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family’s retainers, to steal his grandfather’s car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests’ coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba’s bordello in Memphis. From there a series of wild misadventures ensues – involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs’ deputies, and jail. (Source: Goodreads)

What I Liked About It 

* I liked the story. It is engaging and even uplifting.

* I liked the dialogue, too. Colorful and authentic in a folksy Mark Twain sort of way.

* The principal characters are likeable but not simple. They have full-spectrum personalities, even though there is almost always some aspect of each of their personalities that is exaggerated.

* Faulkner depicted in detail a world I was only vaguely familiar with, and made it come alive. And despite the book’s generally nostalgic sentiment, he did not shy away from depicting all that was troublesome about that world.

* Unlike some of his earlier novels, the narration here is straightforward. Gone are the fancy literary techniques you’ll find in Faulkner’s most highly praised books.

What I Didn’t Like

As much fun as it was to read, the book didn’t change me. It didn’t give me a deeper understanding, or even a different perspective, on the core subject matter – the quotidian experience of life for Blacks and Whites at that time. It touched on many of the same themes presented in Huck Finn, for example, but I didn’t have any Aha! moments or thoughts of “that’s so true.”

Interesting 

The Reivers is technically a comic novel, and as such may seem uncharacteristically lighthearted given its subject matter. For these reasons, it is often ignored by Faulkner scholars or dismissed as a lesser work.

About the Author 

William Faulkner, arguably one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on Sept. 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun, in 1924, but it is as a literary chronicler of life in the Deep South – particularly in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for several of his novels – that he is most highly regarded. In such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, he explored the full range of post–Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters and on the moral uncertainties of an increasingly dissolute society. In combining the use of symbolism with a stream-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to fiction writing.

He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for “his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel.” Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.7
* Verticality:3.7
* Stickiness: 3.4
* Literary Richness: 3.8
* Average Score: 3.6 out of 4.0

 

Poor Charlie’s Almanac:
The Wit and Wisdom of 
Charles T. Munger 

Edited by Peter D. Kaufman
 512 pages
Originally published in 2008

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a collection of Charlie Munger’s best advice given between 1986 and 2007 in the form of commencement addresses and roundtable talks. It covers a wide range of topics, including decision-making, investing, and how to live a good life.

I came across a review of this book that spurred me to read a summary of it, which then spurred me to buy a copy. I haven’t yet finished reading it, but I feel that I’ve already gotten enough out of it that my money was well spent.

What I’m Liking About It 

Munger has an impressive, almost encyclopedic knowledge of business, finance, history, philosophy, physics, ethics, etc. He uses that wisdom to curate the dozens of smart and practical pieces of advice and strategies he provides along the way. A few examples:

* Munger’s “Multiple Mental Models” approach to decision making is as good as it is simple. And much of it is contrarian to common thinking about investing, which makes the reading feel that much more exciting.

* His “Lollapalooza Effect” idea, which explains the confluence of multiple biases on a conscious and unconscious level and how to recognize and avoid them.

What I’m not Liking So Much 

The structure of the book is a bit confusing. I would have preferred to see the ideas listed in some orderly way, and maybe, as one critic suggested, “with pictures given alongside – in line with Munger’s idea to ‘make the mind reach out to the idea’ thereby increasing the idea’s retentiveness in memory.”

Interesting 

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is considered to be something of a publishing miracle – never advertised, yet selling thousands of copies every year.

About the Author 

Charles T. Munger (1924–2023) was an investor, businessman, and former real estate attorney. He was the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the multinational conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett. He was chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 to 2011. He was also chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.

Critical Reception 

Reviews of Poor Charlie’s Almanack over the years have been generally very positive.

* “With 512 pages, there is something for everyone, and Poor Charlie’s Almanack is an impressive and thorough tribute to one of the brightest, most pragmatic, and iconoclastic investment minds ever.” – The Motley Fool

* “Those who know only a little about him think Munger was a paragon of how to pick stocks – which he was. But those who knew him well consider him a moral exemplar – someone who showed how to think clearly, deal fairly, and live fully. He took nothing for granted.” – Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal

“As instructive as Munger’s advice – which affords peeks into how he and Buffett made their implausibly profitable investment decisions – is his unapologetic skewering of the sacred principles of contemporary investing and business education, and of the behavior of the business community generally…. Munger’s painfully honest and occasionally indecorous views on the mainstream investing world make for entertaining reading.” – Dave Mandle, The Los Angeles Review of Books

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.5
* Verticality: 3.3
* Stickiness: 3.6
* Literary Richness: 3.2
* Average Score: 3.4 out of 4.0

 

Ganbatte!:
The Japanese Art of 
Always Moving Forward 

By Albert Liebermann
164 pages
Published Oct. 12, 2021

I think this was a gift to me by one of my Japanese colleagues. Either that or I picked it up at the airport in Tokyo on the way back from my last trip. If I did pick it up at the airport, it was because of its size (only 164 pages) and because the cover (see above) seemed unprepossessing. I would have thought it was the sort of book I could read on the flight home.

But I didn’t read it on the plane. Instead, I spent the 14 hours I was in the air plotting a strategy for a half-dozen business ideas that will probably never see the light of day.

Never mind. I read the entire thing yesterday, in the late afternoon, sitting outside our home in Nicaragua. It took me about three hours to grok it, reading the way I always read how-to and how-it-works books – i.e., super quickly. Not that I miss anything. Books like these often have useful observations or perspectives to offer. But they are generally few and far between. And in between the prose is prosaic.

I knew that Ganbatte! wasn’t going to be a heavy read, and I feared it was going to be vacuous. It wasn’t. The ideas it presented were simple, but hardly simplistic – ideas like these:

* Separating “difficult” from “impossible”
* Making use of failure
* Cultivating patience
* Working mindfully with a sense of awareness
* Continually improving
* Pushing through a crisis

One could say that the Japanese concept of ganbatte is drearily simple: “Do your best!” But as Liebermann explains, it’s more than that – deeper and broader. It’s a choice of how to live one’s life that includes earnestness and effort, to be sure, but also the belief that one’s character and one’s value in life is much more than intention. It is how you perform the quotidian tasks when no one is watching.

What I Liked About It 

There were a half-dozen passages in the book that got me thinking days after I finished it, which is always a good thing. For the sake of your time, I’ll mention only one of them.

About halfway through the book, Liebermann writes about inspiration – having that unique experience when an exciting new thought or perception lights up your imagination and illuminates a worthy path to follow.

It reminded me that whenever I give a speech, I am almost always asked by someone in the audience something like “How do you get your inspiration? How do you get your new ideas about business?” (It came up, ironically enough, the last time I gave a speech in Tokyo.) And I never know what to say.

Liebermann gave me my answer to that question – the answer I had never been able to articulate – in a quote often attributed to Pablo Picasso:

“Inspiration does not come when you are sitting around waiting for it; It comes when you are working.” 

That has been my experience. I get my best ideas when I am working – or at least during a time when I’ve spent days working hard on solving a problem or finding some new approach.

What I especially like about that statement is that it debunks the very wrong idea that inspiration is something one must wait for. As if it is a gift from the gods that is rarely given. A happenstance that comes out of nowhere. A blessing that comes only when one is patient.

If you are waiting, you are not thinking. You are in a state of mindless relaxation. Simply put, waiting is a state of consciousness that is antithetical to breakthrough ideas. Those wonderful ideas that suddenly chart a path forward may happen at a moment of rest, but they are rooted in vexation – long and frustrating hours of vexation. That is a fact of nature. Believe it or not.

When you get an idea while you are working, you have the unique opportunity to jump on it immediately – to start doing something to get it in motion before inertia sets in. But if it comes to you when, say, you are sunning on the beach or having a good meal with your friends, there is a very good chance that it will be gone by the next morning. Never to return.

So that was one gem of an idea that I got from reading Ganbatte! It’s an idea that helped me write this review and may very well grow into an essay or even a book. Who knows?!

What I Didn’t Like 

The book is light on facts and examples. Plus, the assertions made are not backed up. But the more time I spent researching the concept of ganbatte and thinking about it, the happier I was that I was reading it.

About the Author 

Albert Liebermann is a writer and philosopher. He studied art and literature in Europe before moving to Japan, where he decided to put his musings on creativity and personal development down on paper.

Critical Reception 

* “In this enjoyable debut, philosopher Liebermann explores the Japanese principle of ganbatte (translated as ‘do your best and don’t give up’)…. Readers who enjoyed Hector Garcia’s Ikigai for its focus on finding meaning in everyday life will appreciate this comforting take on how to address life’s inevitable failures.” – Publishers Weekly

* “Ganbatte! breaks down the secret sauce to being happy…. From a student, office worker, driver, CEO, teacher, lumberjack, barista, or whatever, it’ll give you some manner of food for thought as to how to improve your mindset.” – Daddy Mojo blog

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 2.0
* Verticality: 3.0
* Depth of Thinking: 2.5
* Literary Richness: 2.5
* Average Score: 2.5 out of 4.0

* Bonus Points: 0.5 (for the half-dozen gems that got me thinking)
* Overall Total: 3.0 out of 4.0

Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero 
A New Translation by Quintus Curtius 

106 pages
Paperback published 2015

I’ve done what I’d consider the basic requirements of Stoic studies since it became the predominant philosophic perspective of the self-help bloggers about 20 years ago.

I’ve read Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and bits of Zeno, Epictetus, and Diogenes. But I’d never read Cicero.

I decided to read Paradoxa Stoicorum (Stoic Paradoxes) – written by Cicero sometime in 46 BCE – after reading somewhere that in it “he attempts to explain six famous Stoic sayings that appear to go against common understanding.”

I’ve always had a weak spot for concepts that are contra-intuitive. I like to learn them and then use them as burrs to irritate the minds of those who are confident in their thinking.

There are, admittedly, other explanations. Your average second-year student of psychology would probably (and correctly) diagnose me as (a) rating high on the “disagreeable” scale, and (b) having recurring “narcissistic” tendencies.

Never mind. The point is that I’m glad I read this. Not only is it intellectually challenging, I have gotten a few nuggets from it that will help me sound like I know what I’m talking about in future conversations about Stoicism.

The Six Paradoxes 

I’m certainly not an expert in Stoicism. However, I feel confident in saying that it is an ethical philosophy that advocates for the development of character based on reason.

In Paradoxa Stoicorum, Cicero examines these six principles of Stoic thought:

1. Virtue is the sole good.

By this (I think) Cicero is saying that there are some goods (things like pleasure and fortune) that, however satisfying for the moment, cannot give us enduring satisfaction. They merely arouse the desire for more of the same. The goods that can satisfy the soul, he says, are honor, honesty, and virtue. And these can be attained only by disassociating oneself from impulses and desires and committing to the fruits of reason.

2. Virtue is the sole requisite for happiness.

Virtue is all that is needed for happiness. Happiness depends on a possession which cannot be lost, and this only applies to things within our control.

3. All good deeds are equally virtuous and all bad deeds equally vicious.

This one I had problems with. Apparently, the classical Stoic idea is that all vices are equal because they each involve the same decision: to break a moral law. Cicero’s argument seems to be that all vices are the same but only if they are equal in terms of the social statuses of the offender and the offended. A person of lower status offending a person of higher status deserves a considerably harsher punishment than a person of higher status offending a person of lower status.

4. All fools are mad.

This one I didn’t get. Or if I did, it is a specious argument. Cicero seems to be saying that people that are not virtuous are, by definition, mad because any sane person, understanding that the only good is virtue, would act virtuously and therefore be immune to punishment or failure, whereas any person that chooses to be unvirtuous, is, by definition, a fool.

5. Only the wise are free, whereas all fools are enslaved.

Here, Cicero seems to be making the same argument (that all fools are mad) in a different way. Virtuous people are free because they are making choices based on reason, whereas people that act in accordance with their desires are always locked into the tyranny of those desires.

6. Only the wise are rich.

Again, this seems to be a variant of the previous three. On the one hand, since virtue is the only good, seeking other goods – such as fortune, fame, and power – will never produce any lasting good. On the other hand, someone who has an abundance of fortune, fame, and power cannot be said to be rich if he has no virtue.

What I Liked About It 

* I believe the subject matter of Stoicism is important because it deals with two of the most important philosophical questions: What is a good and rewarding life? And how does one attain it?

* By finally reading this book, I feel that I now have an understanding (at least a partial and introductory understanding) of Cicero’s contribution to Stoic thinking.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

* Although I now have something to say about Cicero, I don’t have a deeper or even a much broader understanding of the range of Stoic thinking.

* Since the book is a translation of a translation (Cicero translated the Stoic arguments from the Greek), it was pretty much impossible to get a sense of how close the ideas were to the original.

About the Author 

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and philosopher. He is considered a key figure in Roman intellectual history.

About the Translator 

Quintus Curtius is the pen name of writer and translator George J. Thomas, who has written extensively on moral philosophy, ethics, and historical subjects.

My Rating 

I found this to be a good book, but hardly a great one. I would recommend it if you read it as I did: with the purpose of understanding Cicero’s role in Stoic philosophy. If you have little to no interest in that, I wouldn’t bother.

* Vertical Knowledge: 3.5
* Horizontal Knowledge: 2.5
* Depth of Thinking: 3.0
* Literary Quality: 3.0
* Overall: 3.0 out of 4.0

 

The Blue Hotel 

A short novel by Stephen Crane
40 pages
First published in 1898

This was an off-the-shelf read for me. An off-the-shelf read is a book that has been sitting alone and untended for years on one of the many bookshelves in one of five locations that, for whatever reason, calls out to me for attention.

I was drawn to it because of the color of the cover, the title (modest but also promising), the author (by whom I’ve only read one other book, The Red Badge of Courage, and yet I know he is considered a great American novelist), and the small size of it (a book I could read during a busy business weekend in Baltimore).

The Story 

Five strangers, each on his own journey, de-board a train in Fort Romper, Nebraska, a small town at the edge of the wilderness of the American West, for a night’s rest at the Palace Hotel. Pat Scully, the hotel proprietor, persuades them to book rooms and offers them dinner.

At dinner, the men engage in small talk. Afterwards, Scully invites them to play cards, which they agree to. One of the five, referred to only as “the Swede,” is brooding and quiet at dinner, and during the card game predicts that he will die in the hotel that night.

The game resumes. But before the night is over, the Swede is indeed killed.

The rest of the story is about the fairness of the murder trial and the verdict.

What I Liked About It 

I liked the story itself – the simplicity of its structure, the directness of the plot (chronological), the plainness of the prose, and the mood (brooding).

I loved the irony – the fact that the Swede comes to Fort Romper expecting to be killed because of the image he had about the violence of the Wild West, which came from reading dime-novels written by hacks who know nothing about the real West.

And I liked the way the story was written. Crane tells his stories like Hemingway does: straightforward and without sentiment or embellishment. I’ve always felt there is an inverse relationship between the sparseness of the prose and the emotional power that can come from it.

What I Didn’t Like 

Nothing.

Interesting 

The Blue Hotel was published in 1898 in two installments in Collier’s Weekly and has subsequently been republished in many collections. In 1977, it was made into a TV movie directed by Ján Kadár. In 1999, David Grubbs did a musical adaptation – a folk-rock album titled “The Coxcomb.”

About the Author

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

I haven’t read his poetry yet, but I’m going to.

Critical Reception 

The Blue Hotel is considered to be a masterpiece – one of Crane’s finest short novels, along with Open Boat and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.5
* Verticality: 3.75
* Stickiness: 3.5
* Literary Richness: 4.0
* Overall: 3.75 out of 4.0

You can read the full text here – for free – on the Washington State University website.

 

The Last Lecture 

By Randy Pausch 
106 pages
Published April 2008

The title intrigued me. I looked it up and found this:

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is a distillation of his life lessons and experiences. Written with reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, the book is an expanded version of a lecture Pausch gave in 2007 (when he was 47) after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

JSN, one of the great mentors in my life, died from pancreatic cancer.

The book (and Pausch’s lecture) has two parts. The first is a lighthearted explanation of how he achieved six of his childhood dreams: experiencing zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an entry in an encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals in amusement parks, and becoming a Disney Imagineer. The second part, which is more substantial, is about how he used his experience to help others achieve their childhood dreams.

What I Liked About It

His positive attitude and upbeat energy is infectious. Most of the ideas, however mundane, are nevertheless true and important.

For example:

* We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

* How do you get people to help you? By telling the truth and being earnest.

* Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

* Remember: Brick walls exist to separate us from the people who don’t really want to achieve their dreams. Don’t bail.

* Show gratitude. (When he got tenure, he took his research team to Disney World for a week. “These people just busted their ass and got me the best job in the world for life,” he said when asked why he did it. “How could I not?”)

* Work hard. (He got tenure a year early. When asked what his secret was, he said, “It’s pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o’clock and I’ll tell you.”)

* Find the best in everybody. You might have to wait a long time, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting, it will come out. And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.”

About the Author 

Randy Pausch was a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, where he was the co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He had sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and consulted with Google on user interface design.

Critical Reception 

The book was a bestseller. The lecture, which went viral, has been viewed by millions. You can watch it here. 

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 2.0
* Verticality: 3.0
* Depth of Thinking: 2.5
* Literary Richness: 2.5
* Overall: 2.5 out of 4.0

A Ladder to the Sky 

By John Boyne
384 pages
Published: Nov. 2018

The secret deciders of The Mules selected A Ladder to the Sky as our November read. At 384 pages, it’s a bit long for my modest reading speed, but the diction is simple, the grammar direct, and the story compelling enough to make it at least feel like a fast read.

The Plot 

The story begins in a hotel bar in West Berlin, where Maurice Swift, a would-be novelist working as a server, waits on Erich Ackermann, a prize-winning novelist, whom he recognizes. The two strike up a conversation that results in the older writer offering the aspiring one the opportunity to accompany him as a travel assistant and literary mentee on the remaining weeks of a book tour he is taking through Europe.

Because the story is told from Ackermann’s point of view, the reader is privy to the older man’s homosexual interest in turning the apprenticeship into an intimate relationship. Furthermore, because of that same perspective, the reader is allowed to understand the young man’s intentions before the older man does.

As the relationship develops, Ackermann tells Swift about his life 40 years earlier when he was a fledgling writer living in German just before WWII and was infatuated with another aspiring artist – a story that ended in tragedy and betrayal. Which is exactly what subsequently happens between Ackermann and Swift, but in reverse.

The other stories that comprise the novel are similar in that they all revolve around Swift and present the themes of tragedy and irony, as well as ambition and homosexual love.

What I Liked – and Didn’t Like – About It 

I do have some criticisms about Boyne’s writing. But they are the sort of literary peccadillos most readers don’t care about. So, I won’t bother with them here. I don’t want to prejudice your thinking.

At its best, A Ladder to the Sky reminded me of Lolita in that it provided me with a view into a sexual impulse that’s alien to me. But unlike Lolita, the picture it painted of Ackermann was almost one-dimensional. There was, to be sure, plenty of stuff going on with Swift – lust, selfishness, ambition, and naïveté. But I was never able to understand any of those emotions beyond a superficial level, as I was with Nabokov’s disturbingly deep and sympathetic presentation of Humbert Humbert.

An important element of the writing is the way Boyne chose to tell the story. Rather than telling it from the narrator’s perspective or in the third person, it’s told by several characters. But unlike the conventional multi-narrator story, in which different characters recount the same event from their unique perspectives, the characters in A Ladder to the Sky tell different stories about how their lives were affected by the protagonist: Maurice Swift.

This contributed to my enjoyment of the book, because, although it was confusing until I figured it out, it added a layer of complexity and intrigue to the story, which is, if I had to pigeonhole it, a psychological thriller.

Critical Reception 

A Ladder to the Sky was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2018 Irish Book Awards, and, for the most part, received positive reviews from critics and readers.

* “A deliciously dark tale of ambition, seduction and literary theft… an ingeniously conceived novel that confirms Boyne as one of the most assured writers of his generation.” – The Observer

* “Gripping … chilling and darkly comic tale of unrelenting ambition.” – The Daily Express

* “Marvelously engaging, barbed, and witty.” – The New York Times Book Review

On the other hand, here’s a less-than-glowing video review from The Book Worm.

And here’s one from Shawn the Book Maniac, who hated everything about the book, although he admits that most of his colleagues liked it.

About the Author 

Before reading A Ladder to the Sky, I knew nothing about the book or about John Boyne, the author. When I googled his name, I was impressed. He is an Irish novelist, which is always a plus with me. And he has published 16 novels for adults, six novels for younger readers, two novellas, and one collection of short stories. His novels are published in over 50 languages. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was adapted into a 2008 film with the same name.

In this video, he talks about his inspiration for A Ladder to the Sky: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

 

The Message 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
256 pages
Published: Oct. 2024

Ta-Nehisi Coates is about as celebrated as a contemporary writer can be. He’s received a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation and a National Magazine Award. Between the World and Me, his second book, won the 2015 National Book Award and was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years.

His works of fiction – including short stories and comic books – have been successful, too. Most notably his comic-turned-movie Black Panther.

And if all that were not enough, Oprah is his producer.

His latest book, The Message, is an attempt to return to non-fiction. It is mostly about one of his favorite topics: institutional racism in America and the particular danger of White men. But in The Message, he extends his reach significantly with a section on genocidal Jews.

In “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” the book’s lead essay, Coates writes about his childhood impulse to become a writer and his intellectual interest in language. The purpose of the piece seems to have been to alert the reader who was not aware of his many literary awards that he was a deep and sensitive thinker who belongs in the pantheon of the great political and social thinkers of all time. And to be fair to Coates, he is good at sounding deep and thoughtful. In reading this essay, I felt like I was always one step away from being given some exciting thought or observation that would deepen my own thinking. But it never came.

A critic whose name I can’t remember (sorry!) captured my reaction to this essay. He recommended seeing Coates as a composer of moods and feelings rather than a writer of stories and ideas.

The second essay in the book, On Pharaohs, starts with an account of a trip Coates took to Senegal, which leads to an exploration of the relationship between Africans and African Americans. Having lived in Africa for two years, I was eager to learn his thoughts on the subject. What I found was based on the sort of logic that ran through Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist – i.e., African Americans today are victims of White oppression, which was born of hate, formed by slavery and colonialism, and perpetuated by Jim Crow laws, and subsequent more subtle forms of discrimination such as redlining and IQ tests.

If Coates made an original case for any of these views, I would have been interested in hearing them, but I found them all to be almost word-for-word recitals of the leftist, post-modern arguments about intersectionality supported by the crippled logic of the EDI handbook.

In Wealth Culture (a book I’m writing now and will be sharing a chapter of next week), I point out several very significant refutations of this argument, including the history of a half-dozen ethnic groups with long-ago histories of slavery and racism and decades-long suffering from prejudice and discrimination in the States, and yet moved beyond the damage it inflicted on their ancestors and went on to claim positions of precedence over White Americans in income, education, net worth, and almost every other metric of social status.

I also debunk the logic that Colonialism is responsible for group inequities in such metrics by pointing out several notable exceptions, such as the Ethiopians in the US and Europe, who were never subject to Colonial rule and yet exist in the same hierarchy of such social metrics as African Americans generally.

Not to mention the historical fact that Colonialism and slavery were hardly Western inventions by White people. They existed for millennia among people of every color – both colonialized and enslaved – and in much greater number among Africans and Arabs. (There is even an argument to be made that slavery still exists in quarters of the Islamic world today.)

In another chapter, “Bearing the Flaming Cross,” Coates writes proudly about his experience working on the 1619 Projectwhen it was being developed by The New York Times. If you aren’t familiar with the 1619 Project, you should know that its thesis is that America was born not in 1776 but in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to Virginia as indentured servants and that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” The project was celebrated as a triumph of historical revisionism by many leftists and liberals after it was published, but has since been so roundly criticized for uncountable factual errors and logical inconsistencies by established historians of every political orientation and color that it is now largely ignored, even by those who once praised it. Why Coates wasn’t aware of this is puzzling at best.

And then there’s the book’s last essay, “The Gigantic Dream,” in which Coates describes a visit he made to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, followed by a long account of the Israeli-Arab conflict that could have been written by the propaganda arm of Hamas. I don’t think he missed a single charge against Israel that has been made by Islamic terrorist organizations and left-wing academics and their students – almost all of which can be easily disproven by a cursory reading of the facts. Since this is a book review and not an argument defending Israel, I won’t extend my critique of the chapter here, except to say that it was congruent in its thinking and its rhetoric with the previous essays in the book.

Critical Reception 

Reviews of The Message were generally positive.

* “Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual.” – Kirkus Review

* “Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose…. These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race.” – Associated Press

* “A challenging, thought-provoking read that’ll stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page. Coates continues to cement his place as one of our most important contemporary thinkers and writers.” – The Bookshelf Elf

Interesting

* Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates attended Howard University, leaving after five years to start a career in journalism. He is the only child in his family without a college degree.

* The name Ta-Nehisi has its roots in ancient Egypt and carries significant historical and cultural connotations. Derived from the Egyptian language, it translates to Nubia or Land of the Black.

* His father, W. Paul Coates, is the founder of Black Classic Press, which specializes in African American books. He was recently given a controversial lifetime achievement award by the National Book Foundation. Click here for the story.

Click here to watch an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates about The Message with Jon Stewart.

And click here for an interview with Sean Illing on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

 

Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier 

By Kevin Kelly
224 pages
Published: May 2023

We were on our way to a board meeting. SL picked me up in his oversized Ford pickup at my undersized cigar bar/office. I saw it as I heaved myself up and into the shotgun seat: a smallish book with a garish cover. The title was Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. Not the sort of book I’d expect SL to be reading.

The author was listed as Kevin Kelly. A common name. I looked on the inside flap on the back and, yes, it was the same Kevin Kelly that helped launch Wired magazine and wrote bestselling books about technology and the future. I’d not read any of his books, but I’d read a few essays by him. Smart. Forward-looking. Optimistic.

Like all of SL’s books, it was tagged with page markers and busy with underlining and cryptic notes. It looked like SL was gobbling it up. But it wasn’t a novel or non-fiction treatise of some kind. It was a collection of aphorisms.

In the preface, Kelly says that he wrote his first group of 68 when he turned 68 as a present to his three adult children. Then he wrote a few more for others. And a few more for himself. “I kept going till I had 450 bits of advice I wish I had known when I was younger,” he says.

Books of bits of wisdom are as common as photography collections of kittens. Most are written to be used as birthday or holiday gifts, which are put away and deteriorate gradually, unread and mostly unopened.

And for good reason. Most books of aphorisms are banal. Very ordinary explications of very ordinary observations. But there are exceptions: Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer, Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The Analytics of Confucius, Pensées by Blaise Pascal, and so on.

Excellent Advice for Living does not reach those heights, but Kelly admits that in the preface: “I am primarily channeling the wisdom of the ages… offering advice I got from others. I doubt any of it is original, although I tried to put it in my own words.”

But insights and observations that have been made before can still be useful and even inspiring or motivating if they are articulated artfully. About 20% of the 450 aphorisms in this book meet that mark. And that is not a small accomplishment.

Some examples:

* “It is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving.”

* “All the greatest prizes in life in wealth, relationships, or knowledge come from the magic of compounding interest, by amplifying small steady gains. All you need for abundance is to keep adding 1% more than you subtract on a regular basis.”

* “If you ask for someone’s feedback, you’ll get a critic. But if instead you ask for advice, you’ll get a partner.”

* “That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult if you don’t lose it.”

* “Learn how to be alone without being lonely. Solitude is essential for creativity.”

* “Try hard to solicit constructive criticism early. You want to hear what’s not working as soon as possible.”

* “The natural state of all possessions is to need repair and maintenance. What you own will eventually own you. Choose selectively.”

* “You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.”

* “Be a good ancestor. Do something a future generation will thank you for.”

* “No one is as impressed with your possessions as you are.”

Critical Reception 

Not surprisingly – and I think this is partly due to Kelly’s modest disclaimer in introducing the book – I couldn’t find any negative reviews. Here are some examples of what I did find:

* “Hovers between the practical and the poetic… a shorthand manual for living with kindness, decency, and generosity of spirit.” – Maria Popova

* “All will benefit from [Kelly’s] idiosyncratic wit and wry humor.” – People

* “An unapologetically upbeat offering.” – Publishers Weekly

* “If you don’t find at least 17 golden nuggets of advice from Kevin Kelly’s list you’re not awake.” – Daniel Pink

About the Author 

Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and a former editor and publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.

Among Kelly’s personal involvements is a campaign to make a full inventory of all living species on Earth, an effort also known as the Linnaean enterprise. He is also sequencing his genome.

 

Fanny Hill 

By John Cleland
178 pages
Published in two installments: Nov. 1748 and Feb. 1749 

John Cleland wrote Fanny Hill while he was in debtor’s prison in London. It is considered “the first original prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of a novel.” It is also one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.

But it is loaded with euphemisms. Notwithstanding Cleland’s commitment to describing every possible detail of every body part involved in every sexual encounter, he does it only with flowery metaphors and figurative language. For example, the vagina is sometimes referred to as “the nethermouth.” (And, no, “fanny” didn’t mean “fanny” back then.)

The book was banned in the UK, and in 1749, a year after the first installment was published, Cleland and his publisher were arrested and charged with “corrupting the King’s subjects.” A bishop even blamed two earthquakes on the “unnatural lewdness” of the “vile book.”

It stayed banned in the UK for more than 200 years (until 1970), but pirated copies were printed and circulated in England and America. In 1821, it was outlawed by a Massachusetts court in one of the fledgling country’s first obscenity trials. And in 1963, when a new edition was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons under the title Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, a case against it eventually made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled six to three that it was not obscene. Click here.

Why I’m Reading It 

I saw a review of the book in Literary Hub, a digital newsletter on all things literary that my brother recommended to me. The review piqued my interest. But what prompted me to read it was that there was a link at the end that took me directly to the manuscript as it was originally published.

The Plot 

Fanny Hill takes the form of two long letters to an acquaintance identified only as “Madam” from one Francis Hill, a rich Englishwoman in her middle age, who leads a life of contentment with her loving husband Charles and their children. Fanny has been prevailed upon by “Madam” to recount the “scandalous stages” of her earlier life, which she proceeds to do with “stark naked truth” as her governing principle.

Interesting 

Because of the book’s notoriety (and public domain status), numerous adaptations have been produced. Some examples:

* Fanny Hill (US/West Germany, 1964), directed by Russ Meyer

* The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (US, 1966), directed by Peter Perry (Arthur Stootsbury)

* Fanny, Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones (1980), a retelling by Erica Jong purporting to tell the story from Fanny’s point of view

* Fanny Hill (West Germany/UK, 1983), directed by Gerry O’Hara, starring Lisa Foster, Oliver Reed, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Shelley Winters

* Fanny Hill (off-Broadway musical, 2006), starring Nancy Anderson as Fanny

* Fanny Hill (UK, 2007), written by Andrew Davies for the BBC, starring Samantha Bond and Rebecca Night

Thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read it – for free – here.

Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative 

By Jennifer Burns 
592 pages
Published: Nov. 2023

I’ve just begun reading this book – another part of the Milton Friedman binge I’ve been on. So far, I’m very happy with it and would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to understand how and why Friedman’s version of free-market capitalism has been so influential in the public conversation about government and economics that has been going on for more than 50 years.

Had I not already begun to study Friedman, I’m not sure if I would have been able to fully appreciate what a terrific job Jennifer Burns did with this biography. It’s not only comprehensive and detailed, it answers lots of questions I was asking myself as a late-in-life fan of this amazing man.

Critical Reception 

An Economist Best Book of 2023… one of The New York Times’ 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall… named a most anticipated fall book by the Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg… finalist for the 2024 Hayek Book Prize.

Click here to read an extensive review of the book by David. R. Henderson in the Summer 2024 Cato Institute newsletter.

Click here and here to watch two interesting discussions with Jennifer Burns about Friedman and her book.

How the Mind Works

By Steven Pinker
660 pages
Published: 1997

How the Mind Works by the Canadian/American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker is one of those rare nonfiction books that I can’t get enough of.

Like Sapiens by Yuval Harari, it is an engaging and accessible investigation into everything one thinks about when thinking about the human mind: awareness, intelligence, emotion, vision, consciousness, and self-consciousness. Pinker presents a convincing theory about what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.

Pinker’s primary perspective is evolutionary biology, but his erudition is much broader than that, which provides the reader with many rich and interesting ways to understand how our brains work, including philosophical, economic, and social schools of thought. Thus, he gets into such subjects as feminism and “the meaning of life.”

His stance on evolution is nuanced. He explains the basics well and refutes the common misunderstandings. He rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas (e.g., that the mind works like a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection), and challenges fashionable ones (e.g., that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting).

Critical Reception 

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize… a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997… featured in Time magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nature, Science, Lingua Franca, and Science Times… front-page reviews in The Washington Post, Book World, The Boston Globe, and the San Diego Union Book Review.

“This is the best book I’ve read all year!” – Michael Masterson

Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles 

By Samual Graydon
368 pages
Published: Sept. 2023

This my third attempt to understand Einstein – his life and his work. I bought the book because I’d read that it wasn’t a terribly lengthy (as so many bios are) and that, because it was written as a series of vignettes, it is easy to consume. And Einstein in Time and Space did not disappoint.

We all know that Einstein was a genius, that he was eccentric, and that the only subject he managed to earn good grades in was mathematics. But until I began reading Einstein in Time and Space, I had little idea about how complex and interesting his life was.

He was, as one reviewer summarized, “the curious child, the rebellious student, the serial adulterer, the wily prankster, the loyal friend, the civil-rights defender, the intellect unsurpassed in his time….”

Italy in a Wineglass: The Taste of History

By Marc Millon
336 pages
Published: May 2024

I wanted to read Italy in a Wineglass because I am always eager to learn about wine and it was strongly recommended in a magazine I was perusing in my doctor’s waiting room.

I expected it to be relatively short, entertaining, and informative. It was… and much more. Far from simply the guide to Italian wine that I expected, it is also a travel memoir and deep dive into Italian history, starting with the Greeks, Etruscans, and Phoenicians, then moving through Roman antiquity, early Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Florentine Renaissance, the promise of Italian unification, and the two World Wars, and continuing into the present day.

I’m only about a third of the way through. I’m treating it as a bathroom book, reading one chapter at a time – and so far, I’m liking it a lot.

You can listen to the audio version of Italy in a Wineglass, for free, here.

The Wealth of Shadows

By Graham Moore
384 pages
Published: May 21, 2024

One of two books selected for the September meeting of The Mules, The Wealth of Shadows was a terrific read from start to finish.

Briefly, it’s the story of an ordinary man who joins a secret mission to bring down the Nazi war machine by crashing their economy. It is billed, correctly, as a novel, but is a largely factual account of the largely secret economic battle that took place between Maynard Keynes, the British economist who was credited with saving England from financial ruin in the resolution of WWI, and Harry Dexter White, a lower-level American economist and possible Russian spy, over which currency would dominate the world after WWII.

There are many reasons to recommend this book.

Firstly, it’s a thriller, a page-turner about brilliant and ruthless economists whose understanding of the role of economics in war was as different as it was profound.

Second, it is a fundamentally accurate accounting of what went on behind the scenes in the US, America, Germany, and Russia that made WWII inevitable.

Third, it is an accessible treatise on the difference between Keynesian economic theory and that of Milton Friedman – still the two most influential philosophies of how government should and shouldn’t involve itself with free enterprise.

And finally – and this was a bonus for me – it is an in-depth account of the origins and tactics of the Cold War.

I read The Wealth of Shadows just after watching The Octopus Murders, a documentary about the shenanigans behind the 1985-87 Iran-Contra scandal, which was also, at one level, an account of the economics of war. And towards the end of my reading, I was invited to join a clandestine discussion group comprised of Austrian economists, free market advocates, Libertarian philosophers, and what sounds to me like spies and secret operatives that meet virtually every month to explore the people and policies that have been responsible for most of the military and economic conflicts that have plagued the US since the end of WWI.

Had I not watched that documentary and read The Wealth of Shadows, I would not have been prepared to grasp the pace and depth of the conversations in the two meetings I have attended so far.

Click here to watch a video of Graham Moore talking about his book.

A Walk in the Woods 

By Bill Bryson
274 pages
Published: 1998

Bill Bryson is a writer custom-made for busy readers with ADD – like me.

You can pick up one of his books and spend an hour or so learning about history or geography or science, have a completely pleasant time doing so, and then put the book aside and come back to it later.

I began A Walk in the Woods at least 10 years ago. I’ve dipped into it a half-dozen times, and I’m not done yet. Because Bryson writes in vignettes, I’ve always been satisfied with however many pages I could consume in a sitting, without feeling an urgency to finish.

A Walk in the Woods chronicles his attempt to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail during the spring and summer of 1996. On a thematic level, it’s an exploration into the contrasts and connections between the wilderness and civilization. And although it’s rich in details and descriptions, it is much more a smart and funny personal journal than a travel guide.

The Myths of Happiness 

By Sonja Lyubomirsky
320 pages 
Published: Jan. 1, 2012

I found nothing in this book that seemed new. Nor anything that surprised me.

But for a book – and especially a self-help book – to be worth reading, the content doesn’t need to be new and different. It is enough sometimes to provide a better and/or deeper understanding of the problems analyzed and the solutions suggested. And even when that isn’t done, the book can still merit a read (a quick but purposeful read) if the advice itself is something you know but need to be reminded of.

The weakness of The Myths of Happiness was clear to me after the first several pages. I might have put it down, but, always interested in the subject of happiness, I did what I always do with a book like this: I read it quickly, at a speed of about 500 words a minute. Which means that I was able to go through the entire thing (at 250 words per page) in about three hours.

Given that modest investment of time, the book delivered. I found half a dozen suggestions in it that seemed promising. For example: Rather than recommending the common pop-psychology bromide of “Imagine you have just one week to live and you won’t see these people again…” Lyubomirsky recommends imagining that you are about to leave them for a long and indefinite span of time – a good twist, because it obviates the morbidity issue and is thus easier to imagine.