I enjoyed some thought-provoking reads this year, including by going through the “back catalogs” of a couple of my favorite authors. Others such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb have written more eloquently than me about the virtues of reading the old in addition to (or even instead of) the new, and I’m a big believer in it, hence the mix of old and new in my annual lists. I hope 2022 brings you all some great reads, whether they be from this list or not.
Without further introduction, my top books from this year:
- The World Until Yesterday. Probably my most personally cited book this year. Jared Diamond always brings some interesting perspectives, and although this is one of his lesser-known works, in my estimation this book measures up to his bigger bestsellers. He seeks to explore the ways in which traditional societies differ from our current way of life and what we might learn about ourselves through the comparison of the two. By “traditional”, he means not just pre-modern, but really pre-agricultural, in other words the environment in which we spent the vast majority of our time as a species in, and only really emerged from very recently in evolutionary terms. It’s pretty eye-opening how different the practices and sensibilities are between different forms of human societies, and this probably means our default programming risks being mismatched with our modern way of life. Worth noting, neither the author or I advocate going back to actually living that way in the vast majority of cases. But awareness is half the battle, and there are plenty of win/win ways to integrate older wisdom into our modern lives.
- The Psychology of Money. Despite being a part of human civilization for a really long time, few things retain their ability to both captivate and bamboozle us like money does. The author does a good job of outlining wisdom both new and old for how to engage with money effectively, letting it work for you rather than the other way around. And he does it in an engaging way; the book is organized around 19 principles with entertaining vignettes illustrating each of them.
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. While I would characterize myself as being fairly aware of the science of climate change and potential mitigation approaches before reading this book, I was much better informed after reading it. It’s approachable (I read it over a few days) and practical while also entertaining and welcoming more creative ways to potentially address the issue. I’d recommend it as good “informed citizen” material.
- Washington. One of the remaining Ron Chernow tomes I had yet to complete. I don’t know if it was quite as inspiring to me as Hamilton (play is great, book is even better, both are inspirational), but it was still really interesting. I thought it did a good job of presenting him as a deeply imperfect person who we can nonetheless learn from. Chernow spends a lot of time exploring the deep well of dark emotions under Washington’s surface, but also how Washington managed to overcome these to be a steady hand in trying times. A man with some vanity about him who managed to cut the figure a young country needed. A slave owner who (at very long last) went a lot further toward equity than many of his peers but could have done a lot more. A man who could have easily been a king but chose not to be. A flawed human striving toward a better vision of what could be. A good parallel for the country itself which is probably why the two have been so intertwined for so long.
- Grant. Another in the Chernow bibliography. While Ulysses S. Grant was a known figure to me, I didn’t have a sense of the depth of the man or his impact on the country. The late 19th century bears a lot of similarities with our current time, and Grant was at the heart of most of the major events of that age. Highlights include his involvement in some problematic moments of imperialist expansion, his strategic insights for winning the Civil War for the Union, a detailed account of Reconstruction (this was really educational in its own right), making hard decisions without clear right answers, and making amends for mistakes. Grant is an underappreciated figure in our national history, and this book helped me to better recognize his role.
- Think Again. Confidence and consistency are values that we take so for granted in many fields that it’s almost too obvious to be noteworthy. But Adam Grant explores how much better off we are when we hold our ideas more loosely. This is not a rejection of truth, but rather the understanding that the pursuit of truth is greatly improved by remaining open to new ideas and sources of information. I know that I personally benefit from these reminders, and I suspect that the world would be a better place if we all heeded Adam Grant’s advice.
- Talking to Strangers. A great journey through the challenges in navigating interpersonal interactions, told with Malcolm Gladwell’s characteristically adept storytelling. The premise is, in short, that we depend on interacting with people we don’t know to live in modern society, but doing so is really challenging as our programming can get hijacked pretty easily. This is especially true when we interact in diverse environments. The result being that we can get things really wrong, even when we’re really confident we’re interpreting something correctly. He explores a few potential errors in our programming (transparency, default to truth, and coupling) and how they can interact to produce dysfunctional outcomes. Definitely got me thinking about how these could show up in both professional and personal contexts for me, and will hopefully make me more effective in avoiding them going forward.
- Steve Jobs. A Silicon Valley classic which I was late to the party on but was well worth it. In addition to some pretty entertaining stories (the guy was pretty out there), it’s really a very human drama. A comedy at times (driving without license plates apparently for a really long time?) and certainly a tragedy at the end when he arguably could have intercepted his cancer earlier had he not thought that he could will it away. Also a good object lesson in how success can compound over time, and despite some major setbacks along the way. Most of Jobs’s runaway successes – the iPhone and other products from the era of his return to Apple – were accomplishments from the last decade of his life. Said another way, if the first 10 years of his career were hypothetically deleted without impacting his later accomplishments, he would still be a remarkable figure within the Silicon Valley pantheon. If his last 10 years were removed, I’d argue he’d have a much smaller place in history. Thanks to Glen Elliott for giving this book to me upon moving to the Bay Area a few years ago, and glad that I belatedly got to reading it!
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve really enjoyed Michael Pollan’s storytelling across several of his books and found his framing of our relationship with what we put in our bodies (his main subject) to be enlightening. This is the book he’s most well known for so I was arguably really overdue to read it. In it, he takes a journey through four major archetypes of producing food, from industrial agriculture (fast food) to a meal he totally grows and forages, told through representative meals and the processes through which they were produced. It may change your relationship with food, but I would argue that’s probably for the best. Much of our modern lives revolve around separating us from the means by which our nourishment is produced, and that may not entirely be a good thing.
- Just Work. Kim Scott (known for Radical Candor – which I have yet to read but is now on my list) explores the topic of how we can make our workplaces more equitable and effective. She’s clear-eyed about how hard this is and the fact that we are unlikely to get it perfectly right at any given time. However, she lays out some good direction for how we can make progress. Some of this falls in the category of fairly evident but often inconsistent in execution, but there are also some ideas about how organizations might be adjusted to better promote effective and just outcomes. For example, by having a more independent role for HR, reporting into the Board as well as the CEO, similar to how the CFO role functions on the financial and reporting side of the organization.
Honorable mentions: