Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 5.1.23
This week, I managed to finish 5 books, and we have a mixed bag of the good and bad. There are two incredible books on this list. One is about how we’re complicit in unethical behavior and the other is about incentives. Then, we have two books that are way overhyped and a mediocre weight loss book. Enjoy!
Each of the links to the books are affiliate links, so if you use my link to purchase any of these books, some comes back to support what I do (and it also helps fund my reading habit).
Magic Words by Jonah Berger
Man, I honestly think at some point in the future, Jonah Berger, a best-selling author of pop-psych books, will go down as one of the biggest hacks of all time. When I first got into non-fiction, Jonah Berger was some of the first books I read, and I absolutely loved them. Then, as I learned about junk science, the replication crisis in the social sciences and the like, I realized that there’s a high likelihood that Berger is just writing a bunch of BS. This book was no different, and it finally made sense once I got to the epilogue: this book is based on the junk science of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor and specializes in the psychology of marketing and selling. Basically, he makes an insane amount of money writing stuff and doing speaking engagements that big companies love. Berger presents the most bogus studies as a way to say, “Do this, and you’ll 100x your sales and profits.” This new book focuses on language.
It’s just mind-blowing the studies he references because anyone with half a brain and is slightly skeptical will have their alarms going off. The entire book is just “We looked at X, and when they made this small change to their wording, they saw tremendous success!”. Unlike good books with research, he never challenges the findings and explains why they’re correct. He just throws a million studies at the reader to back his claims and present amazing results without ever mentioning sample sizes or anything relevant to the scientific method.
I may be completely wrong, but I don’t think I am. And I think time will prove me right, especially if someone who debunks this kind of stuff ever comes across Berger’s work.
What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim Urban
What an insanely annoying book and a colossal waste of time this was. I was unfamiliar with Tim Urban, but there was so much hype around this book. Hearing about him, he was presented as some genius with amazing opinions. I heard him on the Sam Harris podcast, and they discussed some anti-woke stuff, but I was like, “This book is really long. Surely, it’s not all about anti-wokeness.” Welp, I was wrong. The audio version of this book, which I listened to, was 15 hours of the same old stuff.
Urban isn’t even wrong about the stuff he argues in this book, but in the podcast, he talked about how he’s been trying to write this book for years and finally did it. Really, Tim? It took you years to write the same book that’s already been written 1,000 times even though you had nothing new to say?
I think the craziest part about the book is the way he baits it to seem like he’s equally going to discuss the left and the right. There’s one chapter on the right in this book where he plows through the history and then says, “January 6th was kinda bad,” and then the dude has the balls to write like 10 chapters on the woke left. It’s hilariously ridiculous.
This is a “self-help book for societies”, and the guy didn’t even have the time to mention the insane QAnon movement and how many people on the right have completely broken away from reality.
Again, I don’t necessarily disagree with what he says about the left, but I was severely disappointed that this was just the same book that’s been written a million times already about the woke left. Like, we get it. Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi aren’t cool. We didn’t need another entire book on it. But, I guess it’s different because the author does some illustrations?
Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work by Uri Gneezy
This was an absolutely amazing book, and I’m so glad I randomly came across it. Uri Gneezy researches incentives and what motivates people. There’s a ton of discussion of how companies and various cultures create incentives in the wrong way, and it also helps the reader see what motivates them and why. What I really loved about this book is how much it discusses status signaling and how we want to appear to others, but in addition to that, the author also discusses how we participate in behaviors to try and live up to how we perceive ourselves.
Aside from all of the awesome research and psychology discussed in this book, it ends with some phenomenal chapters on how Gneezy and others are trying to use this science to influence change around the world for the better. I loved this book so much and can’t wait to read it again in the future.
I'm So Effing Hungry: Why We Crave What We Crave - and What to Do About It by Amy Shah
I don’t have much to say about this book. I don’t know why I always get suckered into reading these books (probably because I’m fat lol) because they all turn out the same. They all start out with “this isn’t a diet book”, and then the entire book is telling you what to eat and what not to eat. This book discusses a lot of foods that help with gut bacteria and help reduce hunger throughout the day. Although the author is credentialed, there’s so much BS and pseudoscience out there, it’s hard to tell what’s real with these books.
The author’s first book was about being tired, so I’m curious about which realm she actually specializes in, and I don’t have the time to research it. Should you read it? Maybe. I can’t tell this book apart from any other book on the topic of weight loss.
Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop by Max H. Bazerman
This is a phenomenal book and a must-read. I read a book by Bazerman years ago, and then I saw he had a new one out, so I wanted to give it a read. I’m always blown away at how so many people are complicit when terrible things are going on, and Bazerman specializes in business ethics. The book discusses a ton of different situations where people are complicit while using famous stories we’re all familiar with like WeWork, Theranos, the BP oil spill, the Jim Jones cult and much more.
Bazerman also does a ton of self-reflection in this book. I had no clue he was part of the study that got Dan Ariely in trouble due to bad research. Bazerman also discusses how he was unknowingly complicit in racial biases in his field of work. This self-awareness has moved him toward change, which inspires the reader to do the same and to speak out so we aren’t complicit when something wrong is going on.
I loved this book and really hope a ton of people read it.
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