How and What I read in 2020 -- Coping With and Coming Out of Covid
How and What I read in 2020 -- Coping With and Coming Out of Covid
My reading this year fell into places I wanted to dig into more deeply in this astounding year of Covid and endless election, and where I plan to aim my attention the minute we are released to travel and act in the physical world again. The categories were: American History/Stories; American Founders; Antiquity; China; Contrarian Thinking and The Brain; Europe; Faith; Global Perspective; India; Middle East; Science Fiction; South East Asia; Strategy and Leadership; Technology and Entrepreneurship; Writing and Language.
Often I sought reflection and alternative views from on-the-ground experiences. Just as often I dug deeper in an area that intrigued me. Invariably this led me to dig for remarkable and relevant videos on YouTube and elsewhere that complemented my reading visually in wonderful ways.
I need more great fiction in my life and will want to dig more into India and Pakistan and South America, where travel to startups, history and culture will hopefully take me. Any recommendations welcomed!
I am a good filter of worthy reading in part because a good friend freed me some years ago. He reminded me that reading – like however and with whomever we spend time – is a zero sum game. If the book isn’t moving you some pages in, don't finish it but move on. The following reflects what I read and without exception adored and found provocative.
I am also a good filter because I have surrounded myself with exceptional filters. Most of these books were recommended to me by people who have forgotten more about these subjects than I will ever possess but for their advice. I’m not only very grateful, but tying each name to a book brought me back to a wonderful conversation, email or WhatsApp. Much thanks and a quick shout out to:
Eric Adler, Herb Allen, Marc Andreessen, Gina Bianchini, Marcus Brauchli, John Hope Bryant, Ken Burns, Priyanka Chaurasia, Matt Clifford, Lisa Coburn, Tyler Cowen, James Diener, Peggy Dooley, Brad Feld, Nate Fick, John Gardner, Maelle Gavet, Amal Ghandour, Fadi Ghandour, Kim Ghattas, Petch Gibbon, Phil Gordon, Lloyd Green, Steve Hadley, Ian Hathaway, Ben Horowitz, Zach Karabel, Samir Khleif, Kevin Lavalle, Li Ying Ying, Mary Lukens, Carole Madge, Mark Medish, Harry F. Miller, Craig Mullaney, Noah Futures Group 4, Peggy Noonan, Evan Osnos, Jack Pitney, Snigdha Poonam, Elizabeth Ralph, Ben Schroeder, Susan Sagor, Lina Sergie, Aarti Shahani, Jeremy Shane, Charles Tapp, Dan Wang, Sara Watson, Wu Keshin, YPO Action Forum, Bob Zoellick
I recommend each book highly, but highlighted and starred one favorite in each category– impossible as that was.
Enjoy, and happy and healthy New Year!
American History/Stories
Tyler Anbinder: City of Dreams
The rise of New York City and the power of immigration
Peter Baker/Susan Glasser: The Man Who Ran Washington
We will not see his likes again.
James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
Much he shares in the 1960s African American experience resonates today.
David Blight: Frederick Douglass
A magisterial look at an extraordinary, courageous, unrelenting American.
John Hope Bryant: Up From Nothing
No one does more to open opportunity and financial inclusion for all than JHB.
William F. Buckley: A Torch Kept Lit; Great Lives in the 20th Century
Essays and obituaries from a brilliant/controversial man who knew them.
Aida D. Donald: Lion in the White House: T. Roosevelt
Wonderful one-volume on the President who brought us into a new century.
Charles Gallenkamp: Dragon Hunter (Roy Chapman Andrews)
An adventure story of a pioneer in dinosaur investigations here and across Asia.
Paul Hendrickson: Hemingway’s Boat
A personal look at the writer through his relationship with the sea.
W. H. H. Murray: Adirondack Adventures (1869)
For a lover of this region, every page of adventure feels real 150 years later.
James Carl Nelson: Five Lieutenants (Harvard in World War I)
Remarkable young men who gave all their potential bravely for a catastrophe.
Rich look at our next President, where he came from, and how he may lead.
Jeff Rosen: Conversations with RBG
Detailed, personal interviews with a dynamic Justice and Constitutional scholar.
William Rosenau: Tonight We Bombed the US Capitol
Domestic terrorism is not new, but I had forgotten this remarkable story.
Stuart Stevens: It Was All a Lie
How a leader of Republican leader missed so much happening around him?
Poignant and crucial look at the criminal justice system in America.
Donald Williams: Along the Adirondack Trail
Another beautiful, more current look at the Adirondacks today.
One of the best books on the Civil Rights era from one of its greatest leaders.
Robert Zoellick: America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy/Foreign Policy
I had top 5 last year, but came out 2020 - best US Diplomatic history in decades.
American Founders
Bernard Bailyn: Illuminating History: Retrospective of 7 Decades
Bernard Bailyn: To Begin the World Anew
Few understood this period better than he; both wonderful reflections.
Nathaniel Philbrick: Valiant Ambition: Washington/Arnold
It is near impossible to make Washington accessible, this wonderfully does.
Tom Ricks: First Principles (Greek/Romans/Founders)
It's hard to reach the profound impact of Greece/Rome on our founders.
** Gordon Wood: The Radicalism of the American Revolution
With Bailyn, a great figure marvelously looks at the thought of our founders.
Antiquity
I read this slowly and with several guides, and it is astoundingly relevant today.
A wonderful, accessible, beautifully written overview of Rome.
Julius Caesar: The War for Gaul
He simply was one of the great badasses of history, and actually recorded why.
Ryan Holiday/Stephen Hanselman Lives of the Stoics
This is an excellent overview of the earliest stoics through Roman history.
A popular read with clarity on a period that too often conjures emotion today.
From 1951 holds up wonderfully and a great primer to this extraordinary people.
Strauss also makes ancient Rome utterly accessible and relevant to today.
Marguerite Yourcenar: Memoirs of Hadrian
Written is 1951. With I,Claudius as one of the great historic fiction memoirs.
China:
Yuen Yuen Ang: China’s Gilded Age
Ang unpacks provocative elements of corruption with analogy to US history.
Fuchsia Dunlop: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper
She simply captures the art and brilliance of Chinese cooking.
Feng Jicai: Ten Years of Madness (Cultural Revolution)
Oral histories from this little understood time. There are lessons for today.
** Reginald Johnston: Twilight in the Forbidden City
This magisterial memoir was the basis of the great film The Last Emperor.
Rana Mitter: Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II
We too often breeze over the brutal, massively destructive price paid by China.
Stein Ringen: The Perfect Dictatorship - China 21st Century
A blunt look at the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Bertrand Russell: The Problem of China
A great classic that captured China in his life time through a unique lens.
Odd Arne Westad: Restless Empire: China and the World
An important historic look at China’s history and engagement in the world.
Contrarian Thinking and The Brain
Nothing describes our social media world better – only this was written in 1961.
James Burnham: Suicide of the West
My lefty friends won’t like this look at the left unchecked. Hence should read it.
Michel Houellebecq: Submission
Allegory if the Muslim Brotherhood won in France, who would go along…
**Tali Sharot: The Influential Mind
With Simler/Hanson and Tavristhe brain and why we act/are blinded as we are.
Michael Shellenberger: Apocalypse Never: Environmental Alarmism
Not ignoring climate change, but asks us to look at data dispassionately.
Simler and Hanson: The Elephant in the Brain
Michael Strain: American Dream is Not Dead
What if we are doing better than we think but politics is what unravels us?
Carol Tavris/Elliot Aronson: Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me
Tom Wolfe: Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers
As provocative in today’s climate as it was in the climate of the late 1960s.
Peter Zeihan: Disunited Nations
Are we possibly entering an American Decade?
Europe
The stunning memoir of a friend’s Mother who survived the holocaust.
Robert Hopkins: Witness to History (WW II Photos and Yalta)
Memoir of Harry Hopkins’ son who photographed most important moments.
Charles Moore: Margaret Thatcher Vol 3
A remarkable look at this remarkable, controversial and decisive leader.
Jesse Norman: Edmund Burke: The First Conservative
Burke gets no where the attention he should for his impact on political thought.
**Gitta Sereny: Albert Speer - His Battle With Truth
A mind bogglingly brilliant study into the mind, man, evil and human nature.
Faith
A magisterial and provocative history of Christianity from its earliest days.
Timothy Keller: Making Sense of God
Keller is described as the CS Lewis of today, with the power and frustration of he.
Global
Peter Frankopan: The New Silk Roads: Present/Future of the World
Building off of his definitive Silk Road, he turns from history to tomorrow.
Bruce Jones: To Rule the Waves
Crucial new look what naval/shipping power means in the 21st century.
**Pankaj Mishra: From the Ruins of Empire
Brilliant on most influential thinkers across places America often ignores.
India
Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
A beautiful novel of coming of age in India in the last century.
Menon/Bhasin: Borders and Boundaries (Partition)
Women were disproportionate victims of this brutality. Makes us remember.
**William Darymple: The Anarchy
Mind-blowing look at East India Company; how it impossibly came to power.
Nisid Hajari: Midnight’s Furies
A definitive and brutal one volume on the period of Partition.
Pankaj Mishra: Butter Chicken in Ludhiana
His travels in the late ‘70s captures so much of rural India we hear little about.
VS Naipaul: India - Million Mutinies Now
Deep look at Indian politics/culture several decades ago and legacy of Empire.
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
What put him on the map.
Alex Tunzelmann: Indian Summer: Secret History of End of an Empire
Astounding history about the hasty and brutal transition toward Independence.
Middle East
Rabin Alameddine: The Angel of History
A memoir-like novel of growing up gay in the region during the AIDs catastrophe.
Paul Aussaresses: The Battle of the Casbah
A brutal look at the Algerian War by an unapologetic General who led in it.
Juan Cole: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
A beautiful translation and analysis on this beautiful piece of literature.
Sam Dagher: Assad or We Burn the Country
Each page was staggering as Dagher takes us step by step to the Syrian disaster.
Magisterial and historic look at 1979 as a defining year of so much that came.
Philip Gordon: Losing the Long Game
A painful historic/personal look America and regime change in the region.
Zach Karabell: Parting the Desert
Outstanding look at the building of the Suez Canal.
I miss Cairo every time I read him. The first of the great Cairo Trilogy.
**Abd al Rahman Munif: Story of a City: A Childhood in Amman
Not easy to find, but a beautiful memoir of Amman during and after WWII.
Jonathan Phillips: Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin
A terrific one volume of the great and poorly understood figure.
I've not read since college - a dense and brilliant look at history and perception.
Science Fiction
August Cole: Ghost Fleet - A Novel of the Next World War
What happens if our navy is utterly hacked?
**Liu Cixin:Three Body Problem
From the cultural revolution to millennia from now, I couldn’t put this down.
Liu Cixin: Of Ants and Dinosaurs
A wonderful allegory looking at lessons of prehistoric times on behavior today.
South East Asia
James Bollich: Bataan Death March
One of the best one memoirs I’ve read on this brutal time.
** Duong Van Mai Elliott: The Sacred Willow
Stunning read growing up in North, then South, Vietnam during the War.
John Stryker Meyer: Across the Fence
The secret War in Laos - this and Robbins tells of US soldier/airmen’s stories.
A beautiful novelist and veteran who shows us the War from the other side.
Jung H. Pak: Becoming Kim Jong Un
A eye-opening look at where we are today from a former CIA operative.
Christopher Robbins: The Ravens (Secret War in Laos)
See Meyer above.
Strategy and Leadership
Who knew the lessons about leadership comes from the New Zealand Blacks?
A classic of insight usually overlooked or willfully ignored.
Technology/Entrepreneurship
** Brad Feld/Ian Hathaway: Startup Community Way
A brilliant overview and playbook on what unleashes talent anywhere.
Maelle Gavet: Trampled by Unicorns
A hard, scathing and important look at what has been lost and can be regained.
A brilliant look at where we are going with AI from his lens of chess and more.
Eric Schmidt: Trillion Dollar Coach: Bill Campbell
Many friends in the Valley tell me there was no one like him. This is why.
Writing/Language
Aljean Harmetz: The Making of Casablanca
This was a movie that was almost never made multiple times. Until it was.
Ernest Hemingway: Old Man and the Sea
I didn’t like this in high school and adore it now. Means I’ve grown up.
Ernest Hemingway: Sun Also Rises
For me this is he at his best (with a couple of short story exceptions).
Charles McCarry: Tears of Autumn
A novel that gives a wild ride on who killed President Kennedy.
**Emma Smith: This is Shakespeare
A magnificent tour of how/why Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest works.
Geraldine Woods: 25 Great Sentences
I wished I had this book before I wrote my last book.
If you think the history of the semicolon is boring, try pulling it from laws…