Monthly Non-Fiction Reading List 2.25
We have 14 books on this month’s reading list! I haven’t had an itch like this to read in a while, but it was great getting through this many books in February. Unfortunately, not every book on the list is good, but there are a lot of great ones that cover a variety of topics.
Also, the girlfriend and I are taking a vacation this month that involves a 2.5-day train ride both ways, and this is where I get my fiction reading in for the year. So, don’t be surprised if there are 2-3 fiction books on March’s reading list.
Enjoy!
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Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves
This is my second read of the book, and I’m surprised it took me so long to read it. Basically, Reeves’ main argument that it’s not just the wealthy elite that we need to worry about when it comes to the hoarding of opportunities in the United States; it’s the upper middle class. This book really opened my eyes to the fact that parents in the upper middle class, while putting on a front that they’re progressive and for change, they don’t want that change because it would affect their kids.
For example, if we had a fairer system for kids getting into good public schools, it may mean that some upper-middle-class kids would have to go to worse schools. We unfortunately live in a situation where opportunity is a zero-sum game, and the upper middle class knows this. It’s similar to the NIMBY folks who are all about change until it’ll be in their backyard.
While Reeves makes extremely compelling arguments, and I’m sure a ton of upper-middle-class people would agree with his arguments, much like the book discusses, they won’t make the changes because it involves sacrifice.
Personally, I make slightly above the median wage in the United States, and I live comfortably. I have a son who goes to a good public school and gets great grades, and it’s hard for me to picture making sacrifices that might hold my son back. But then again, I wasn’t born into my social position. It took me a lot of work to get here, and that’s not something discussed much in this book, and I think situations like that require a more nuanced discussion than I care to put in a book review.
But yeah, read this book.
The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin and The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin
Sorry, but I’m going to lump the reviews for both of these Seth Godin books together. It’s nothing against Seth, but The Practice and The Icarus Deception are very similar. I’m sure he’d disagree, but they’re both similar, fantastic books. I loved them both. They’re great books for creatives who are trying to make a living from their creative works. Seth is filled with wisdom, and I’ve been binging his books lately to get the motivation to create and put my work out there regardless of the outcomes, and it’s been working.
If you’re a creative, definitely read these books as well as his others.
What's Luck Got to Do with It?: How Smarter Government Can Rescue the American Dream by Edward D. Kleinbard
As many of my followers know, I’m really interested in the topic of luck when it comes to how successful we are in life. That’s why I grabbed this book by Kleinbard, and it started off great. The first part of this book really breaks down how so much of your future success depends on the family you’re born into along with a variety of other factors.
The author’s overall thesis is that the government should provide “insurance”, which is really just different social programs, but he refuses to call it anything close to socialism or anything like that. And I get it, the word “socialism” scares a lot of people off, but overall, he’s very progressive.
The second half of the book just got really boring for me. The author is a professor in tax law or something like that, so it just gets super dull as he drones on and on about tax reform. I’m sure some people would find it interesting, but for me, it was a struggle to finish the book. Overall, great book, but beware if tax discussion bores the hell out of you.
Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler Cowen
I cannot believe I wasted my time reading this book. I checked it out from the library, knowing full well it’d be one of those books that’s so dumb I can’t help but binge it. I didn’t read it, but I decided to renew it and torture myself. I do my best to read books with premises I disagree with to see if they can sway my opinion, and if nothing else, I can better understand their POV. With that being said, the author is either insanely disingenuous or one of the most ignorant people to write this many books. I’m leaning toward the former.
You read the title right. This author is sticking up for big business. You know. Because these companies and CEOs have it so rough. Not only is it just as insane as you’d assume it would be, but the Cowen either cherry picks data or flat-out lies. For example, one of the things he starts the book with is that more Americans favor socialism than capitalism. As someone who favors socialism, I knew this must be BS. The first study that pops up is from Pew Research (a very credible organization), and as you’d expect, socialism is not favored anywhere near as much as capitalism.
Throughout this book, Cowen makes the craziest arguments. He dedicates an entire chapter to why CEO pay is justified, and glorifies them as these renaissance men who have to know how to do everything and understand every aspect of the business. He completely neglects the fact that these CEOs have teams of people helping them and coming up with products and ideas for the company. Instead, he focuses on Steve Jobs who was one of the few innovators, and he even had a ton of help. When arguing how CEOs “deserve” their insane compensation packages, he doesn’t mention a single time how employees are getting screwed out of living wages.
I could write 10 more pages about how dumb this book is, but I won’t waste my energy. Just know that any knowledgeable anti-capitalist who debated this guy would make him look really, really stupid. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote this book just to get some of those insanely high-paying speaking gigs at large corporations.
I honestly haven’t read a book this dumb since The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes
This book was a lot better than I expected. I really dislike all of the tech doomerism books, and most of them all just say the same things about how social media is shortening our attention span, targeted ads are bad, and all that. Don’t get me wrong, Chris Hayes does discuss that quite a bit in this book, but he has a fresh take and looks at the topic from a lot of unique angles.
While I’m not a major fan of history, Hayes discusses a lot of interesting stuff about how the battle for our attention has evolved over the years. He’s also really good at communicating different studies and technologies in a way that people can understand, and I always appreciate that. I still think the panic over tech is a bit overblown, but this is a great book overall.
The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Teresa Amabile
This book starts out interestingly enough, but then it hits the same pitfall that many other books in this genre face. Amabile is a researcher who investigates what makes workers happy and engaged. What she’s found is that when workers are making progress, they’re the happiest, and many employers don’t realize this. She discusses how many bosses think typical incentives are the key to employee satisfaction, but they’re often wrong because workers primarily want to know they’re making progress.
This is a great book that I hope a lot of employers read, but it just get stale about halfway through. The target audience for many of these books is big companies, and oftentimes, the author ends up getting fancy speaking gigs at these companies. Eventually, regardless of how much interesting research they could add to the book, these books always seem to spiral into nothing but anecdotes, and that just gets extremely boring for me. Other than that, it’s a great book. If you’re a boss, it’ll help you motivate your employees better, and if you’re an employee, it may explain why you hate your job.
God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
I wasn’t a fan of this book, and that’s mostly my fault. I know that I’m not a fan of history books, and this says it right in the title. I thought it would be a bit more about the evolutionary psychology of why people create religion, but it was basically just the history of it. While I found it boring, it’s a short read, and I’m sure people who enjoy history books will love this one.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
I’ve read dozens, if not hundreds of books written for creatives over the years, and this is hands down my favorite one. I thought I had read this book five times already, but I haven’t read it since 2020. I’ve been getting back in my creative mode and needed a boost, so I gave this book its third read, and I loved every minute of it.
For those of you who don’t know, this is the author of Eat, Pary, Love, and in this book, she writes short chapters that are super inspirational for creatives. She has a ton of stories of her own struggles with creativity and offers practical advice throughout each chapter. A lot of it is about getting over your fears and just putting in the work. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again. I love this book so much and can’t recommend it enough to fellow creatives.
Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackson
This book was beyond forgettable. I’m a big fan of books discussing the importance of intellectual humility and how it’s alright to be “uncertain”. I saw this book, read the description, and thought, “This is just the book for me!” This was definitely one of those books that I struggled to get through because it was so boring and uninteresting that it felt like an eternity. I can’t remember a single valuable insight from this book, and I feel bad for this awful review, but I also wish I was able to get the hours back that I spent reading this one.
Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People by G. Richard Shell
A lot of these older, insanely popular business books are ridiculous, but this one is not that. This is a classic. It reminded me a lot of How to Make Friends and Influence People. It has a ton of practical advice that’s hard to argue with, but in addition to that, the author actually uses some super valuable research to back his arguments. While on it’s surface, it may seem like this is just a book about negotiating to make deals, it’s much more than that, and the author showcases that within the first few pages.
This book starts with a story of how a neighbor girl asked him to buy some cookies or something like that, and he negotiated with her to have her take care of their pet while they were out of town in exchange for buying some cookies. The point being, we’re bargaining and negotiating every single day, and this book has a ton of great strategies that can help. I loved every minute of it and will most likely read it again.
My only issue with the book is how the author references Trump as this amazing deal maker a few times in the book. It’s not excessive, but each time it happened, I rolled my eyes. The book was originally published in 1999, so I won’t fault the author too much. He also ends the book with some important discussions around ethical negotiating, and while I don’t 100% agree with his views, he gives the reader some interesting things to consider when making a deal.
The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience by Lee McIntyre
I’ve been dealing with a bunch of people recently who don’t care about facts or data, and when that happens, I re-read this phenomenal book from Lee McIntyre. This was my third read, and it just helps me feel less insane. Lee’s a philosopher of science and argues that there’s a certain attitude we should have when doing science or evaluating the information we’re receiving. It’s a must-read, and I need to have my son read it at some point.
A Story is a Deal: How to use the science of storytelling to lead, motivate and persuade by Will Storr
I don’t know how Will Storr does it, but he continues to write some of my favorite non-fiction books of all time. I didn’t have high expectations of this book because I’m not a big fan of storytelling, but Will managed to blow my mind once again. In a sneaky way, this is almost an unofficial sequel to my favorite book by him, The Status Game.
In this book, Storr explains how storytelling is a part of how we evolved and how so much of human behavior can be explained by the stories we tell. Whether it’s our political affiliations or the things we buy, we’re telling a story about ourselves to the world. This book will help you understand yourself and others a lot more, and I can’t recommend it enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if I gave it another read by the end of the year.
Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel by Loretta J. Ross
I didn’t know what to expect from this book. I figured it’d go one of two ways: It’d be by one of those people just talking down to leftists or it’d just be a bunch of silly nonsense. Well, I was happily mistaken, and Loretta J. Ross killed it with this book. This book is a must-read for every leftist, and probably some people on the right as well.
As the title suggests, this book is about “calling in” rather than calling people out. Loretta has been an activist for decades, and the wisdom she provides in this book had me hooked. Basically, she discusses the importance of offering people grace and knowing how to pick your battles if you really want to make a change. People would rather dogpile on people who screw up rather than giving them the opportunity to make a change. As someone who has been canceled, I loved the message in this book.
Loretta has stories from throughout her years of activism and teaching that set an amazing example of how to educate people rather than scream at them or cancel them. For example, she has a story about meeting with these white women who were wives of KKK men, but they met in secret because they didn’t want their children to go down that path. One of them refers to Black people as “colored”, and Loretta explains how she almost called this woman out but paused, realizing the woman just didn’t know better and probably assumed it was the proper term, so Loretta simply educated her in a nice way.
The end of the book does an excellent job summarizing everything she teaches. Basically, she explains how 99% of the things we get “outraged” about don’t deserve a response or our attention. She also discusses how yelling at people on social media isn’t activism. Loretta puts it in much kinder words than I just did, and I really hope this book gets the attention it deserves. If more people on the left followed Loretta’s playbook, I guarantee we’d get more people from the right on our side.
On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy by Lee McIntyre
It’s crazy how important this book is, even though it’s so short. I’ve been re-reading all of Lee’s books lately and realized I never read this newer one from 2023. Lee’s a philosopher of science, and in this book, he explains the dangers of disinformation. More importantly, he explains why it’s such a problem and what we can do about it. I respect Lee because he cares about the truth and what he calls the “scientific attitude”, and I really hope a ton of people read this book.
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