This week, we have three books by some amazing authors. First up, we have a book about investors who make billions when a crisis happens. Then, we have an awesome book about making better decisions to help our future selves, and we also have a great book that introduces people to Stoicism. 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).
Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson
This was a surprisingly good book. I’m a weirdo leftist who grabbed a copy of this book assuming it’d be a book crapping on the Wall Street stock traders who keep destroying the economy. Instead, this book by Scott Patterson primarily told the stories of Nassim Taleb and Mark Spitznagel. Taleb and Spitznagel made insane amounts of money on Wall Street from various crises in America, and it was really interesting to learn about their stories.
I’ve been a big finance nerd for the last couple of years after having no background in it, so there’s a ton of finance jargon I don’t understand. The stuff can get insanely complex, but Patterson did a terrific job explaining each concept throughout the book.
Not only did I learn a ton, but I was surprised at how neutral Patterson seemed throughout the book. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book like that before where the author did such a good job leaving their opinion out of it.
I don’t really have anything bad to say about the book. But as someone who despises the people on Wall Street making money while destroying the economy, I cringed every time the book talked about how Taleb and Spitznagel “felt bad” every time they made money off these huge crashes. That’s just a personal thing though, and as I said, I respect how well Patterson wrote this from a neutral place.
I’ve never read a Michael Lewis book, but I assume if you like Lewis’ books, you’ll enjoy this.
Lessons in Stoicism: What Ancient Philosophers Teach Us about How to Live by John Sellars
My son is 14 and just about to enter his first year of high school. I read this book earlier this year, and it’s a very short read and an excellent introduction to Stoicism, so I read it again with my son. He absolutely loved it and really understood the concepts as well as some of the misconceptions about Stoicism. I’m super glad I was able to read it with him, and I think this is a great book to introduce others to Stoic philosophy as well.
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today by Hal Hershfield
This is a really good book, and I’m so glad I came across it. For years, I’ve heard of research showing that there are ways we can form better habits by considering our future selves. Hal Hershield is one of the leaders in this research, and this book has a ton of awesome studies. The issue we run into is that we make bad decisions today (like eating unhealthy foods, recklessly spending, etc), which harms us in the future. This book explains the psychological reasons as to why that happens as well as proven ways we can develop a better relationship with our future selves so we can make better decisions today.
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Michael Lewis is excellent. I would highly recommend checking him out if you have the bandwidth--I think some of the best Wall Street books are his, and Moneyball is also very good.