2017 in 109 Books

In 2016, I chose learning as my focus area. To that end, I set myself an aggressive reading target and spent the year working on the small hadron collider that is the human brain.

In 2017, I chose to focus on health, but didn’t want to leave behind my obsession with reading. So I set myself a slightly higher goal of reading 37 books. Four months later, I set it to 60, then 80, finally sticking with 100, which I recently surpassed.

2017 was a hell of a year, but I’ll remember it as the year I learned from W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin, the year that Max Tegmark opened my mind to the multiverse, and Robert Sapolsky helped me understand that mind better.

Here are 80ish of the books I read this year, just those that I gave four or five stars on Goodreads. Special thanks to Marc Bodnick’s book recommendation Facebook requests for inspiring many of these.

US History and Marginalized Groups

I began the year, like many city dwelling liberals attempting to understand the Trump phenomenon. This began with the exceptionally well-timed Hillbilly Elegy and the more technical White Trash.

Realizing the white story is a very narrow angle of history, I sought to balance out my understanding with the perspective of marginalized people. This lead further to generally trying to understand the experience of women and minorities in the world.

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Vance, J.D. — a little reductive and I don’t agree with his final conservative pronouncement of there being no way for government to address class issues, but a good primer on class issues in America.
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America Isenberg, Nancy
• Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 Du Bois, W.E.B. — a history of the south, and the role of black people in it, from mid-Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. From analysis of Lincoln and the various generals in dealing with a population that was suddenly freed from the plantation, to the relationship with the northern labor movement, to the relationship of black leaders and the Carpet Baggers (ever wonder why they’re so roundly trashed in histories?). All the while DuBois provides an unsparing overview of The Reconstruction, which he notes repeatedly was inherently undemocratic.
• Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi — how and why to be a feminist. My shortest read of the year, because treating people equally should be pretty straightforward.
• Democracy in America de Tocqueville, Alexis — this book is exactly what I needed in 2017: a love letter written to America by a frenchman in the time of Andrew Jackson. It’s easy to get swept up again in de Tocqueville’s enthusiasm and spot discrepancies between his idealized America and our current incarnation.

As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce in the world, they seek each other out; and when they have found each other, they unite. From then on, they are no longer isolated men, but a power one sees from afar, whose actions serve as an example; a power that speaks, and to which one listens.

• Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 Murray, Charles
• A People’s History of the United States Zinn, Howard
• A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America Takaki, Ronald — the two above follow a similar theme: American history as told outside the traditional anglo-saxon perspective. The alchemy of race is prevalent in these books. For example, the path of my Irish ancestors from test-bed-for-slavery to white.
• We Should All Be Feminists Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi — because of course we should.
• The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline Tepperman, Jonathan
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Douglass, Frederick — what’s most striking about Douglass’s story is the utter banality of atrocity. He describes his life in frank terms, but frequently discusses why that’s all his people knew.
• The Blood of Emmett Till Tyson, Timothy B. — the story of the tragedy that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.
• Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman West, Lindy — the experience of an outspoken feminist comedian in life and on the internet. In a word, horrifying. Thankfully, West manages to wrap this lesson in a funny package.
• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America Dyson, Michael Eric — Dyson writes, to form, like a preacher. At points I wanted to jump up and should “Amen!”
• The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois, W.E.B. — “The South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.”
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy Coates, Ta-Nehisi
• The Fire Next Time Baldwin, James — the first Baldwin I’ve read, as powerful as advertised.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

Politics and Money

I began the year with a book recommendation from the writings of Nassim Taleb, who featured prominently in this list last year. This put me on a study track around authoritarianism and how to combat it. I came back around to try to understand the ideological underpinnings of conservativism, to try and understand where we might one day find common ground.

This was also the year I got off the bench and got involved with cryptocurrencies. I spent some time learning about economics and investing, which also lead back to reading about libertarianism.

• The Open Society and Its Enemies — Volume One: The Spell of Plato Popper, Karl R. — Popper makes a solid argument for the flaws in worshipping history, Plato in particular. Plato, he argues, was an aspiring authoritarian writing books to try and get himself made emperor.
• The Economic Basis of Public Interest Tugwell, Rexford G. — the economist who most influenced FDR, here writing about why government should fight monopolies.
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty Acemoğlu, Daron
• The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt, Hannah — incredible book, detailing the history and structure of anti-semitism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World Ferguson, Niall — Ferguson maps the lurching growth of civilization to the evolution of finance. It’s a compelling narrative and one that hit me right as I was getting into crypto, a new revolution in finance.
• The Road to Serfdom Hayek, Friedrich — I didn’t hate Hayek, for reasons I discuss further on. To some extent, though, this is a book against a socialist strawman that doesn’t exist in the modern US.
• Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals Alinsky, Saul D. — a recommendation by Hustle CEO Roddy Lindsay on how to create an effective movement.
• The Federalist Papers Hamilton, Alexander — a collection of arguments for why a central government is more stable than a confederation of nation states.
• Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis Rickards, James
• Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right Mayer, Jane — the history and motivations of the Kochs, Mercers, and other major backers of the right.
• Two Treatises of Government Locke, John — important lessons on freedom, but a little challenging to get into as it derives its arguments from a literal interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve.
• Free to Choose: A Personal Statement Friedman, Milton — like Hayek, I find I disagree with a lot of Friedman’s foundational beliefs, but his conclusions are logical if you were to start in the same place. Heterodoxically, both Hayek and Friedman espouse a social safety for those who don’t win at capitalism. This, to me, is the basis of compromise between actual conservatives and liberals.
• Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation Humes, Edward

Ethics

I read a lot of books on ethics throughout the year, but few made the list for me. Most philosophy texts follow a similar formula and I personally find reading that structure to be a chore. That said, this was a year I started deeply considering the negative impacts of technology on the rest of the world.

• Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche, Friedrich — the pop explanation of this book is that morality doesn’t exist, there’s only the will to act. That’s in there, but there’s a more subtle point that “free will” is basically a way of imposing religious guilt. Much of the science I read on the mind this year also attacked the concept of free will and I found this an interesting dovetail.
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy O’Neil, Cathy — I found this one as I was preparing a presentation on AI Ethics and it hit almost every point I’d planned.
• World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech Foer, Franklin — still slightly histrionic, but this is the book I want The Four to be.

Science and Psychology

There’s not really a narrative around these science books, mostly Goodreads algorithms and personal interest. My 2017 area of focus was physical health, so I read a bit about food, but then moved on to a number of other topics.

• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us Moss, Michael
• The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor Schatzker, Mark — the two books above were good compliments in understanding why we crave what we crave and how to eat better.
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body Shubin, Neil
• The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust Coates, John — an overview and discussion of how decisionmaking is impacted by external stimuli.
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Sapolsky, Robert M. — I can’t recommend Behave enough. It is top two book of the year for me, a multi-disciplinary investigation of the mind. It pulled together many topics and sciences that I’ve studied independently and wove them into a fascinating read.

Someone does something lousy and selfish to you in a game, and the extent of insular and amygdaloid activation predicts how much outrage you feel and how much revenge you take.

• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Lewis, Michael — a must-read for fans of Thinking Fast and Slow (and I’m a massive fan of Thinking Fast and Slow).
• But What If We’re Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past Klosterman, Chuck
• Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging Sebastian Junger — a fascinating take on our perception of in-groups and out-groups. Could just as easily go into my study of race, but that my biggest takeaways were lessons about PTSD and society.
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life Yong, Ed
• The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive Christian, Brian — the title is just the central narrative on a wild tour through AI, chess, language processing, and other fascinating topics. The best book on AI I read this year.
• The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature Pinker, Steven
• Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality Tegmark, Max — a recommendation from Mark Selcow and tied for my favorite read of the year. Tegmark takes the reader on a tour of experimental physics that gets less experimental every year. It’s mind bending and strangely life affirming. I have a complicated relationship with faith, this book is as close as I’ve seen to a holy book produced by science.

Other big questions tackled by ancient cultures are at least as radical. What is real? Is there more to reality than meets the eye? Yes! was Plato’s answer over two millennia ago. In his famous cave analogy, he likened us to people who’d lived their entire lives shacked ina a cave, facing a blank wall, watching the shadows cast by things passing behind them, and eventually coming to mistakenly believe that these shadows were the full reality. Plato argued that what we humans call our everyday reality is similarly just a limited and distorted representation of the true reality, and that we must free ourselves from our mental shackles to comprehending it.

Bidness

When it comes to business books, I tend to read about leadership, innovation, and tactical parts of my job, like customer discovery.

• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World McChrystal, Stanley
• Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Marquet, David — entertaining and actionable plan for empowering your team to do their best work.
• Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy Alvarez, Cindy — I think I’m legally obligated to like this book because it has my picture in it. Cindy Alvarez takes Steve Blank’s work a step further in this book, with explicit instructions and worksheets.
• The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company Blank, Steven Gary
• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Johnson, Steven
• Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Christensen, Clayton M. — finally read this one this year. Tech culture has mostly absorbed the lessons, but it was good to hear it from the source.
• The Wright Brothers McCullough, David
• Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity Scott, Kim Malone

Other

• How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee Ehrman, Bart D. — I’m fascinated by the history of religion. This one, a study of when early Christians started referring to Jesus as God, didn’t disappoint.
• Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl, Viktor E. — Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, comes to terms with how he survived and how to find meaning even in the midst of unimaginable suffering.
• When Breath Becomes Air Kalanithi, Paul — hit the afterward, written by Kalanithi’s wife, and nearly ugly-cried on the train. A deeply moving rumination on the role of healthcare providers and coming to terms with death.
• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea Demick, Barbara
• Augustus: First Emperor of Rome Goldsworthy, Adrian — get yourself an Agrippa.
• The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Ross, Alex — the closest I’ve ever gotten to appreciating the broader world of classical music. A book about music from the perspective of innovation.
• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts Hammer, Joshua
• Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Al-Khalili, Jim
• Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill Millard, Candice — I’d read about the Boer War when studying race and wanted to learn more. What better way than through the immensely entertaining Churchill?

Fiction

When not reading non-fiction, I tend to read a lot of super escapist fantasy, sci-fi, and graphic novels. This year, I tried to balance with some genuine literature.

• Seven to Eternity, Vol. 1: The God of Whispers Remender, Rick
• Lazarus, Vol. 1: Family Rucka, Greg — coming soon as an Amazon series, a fresh take on a familiar trope of corporations taking over the world.
• Brighton Rock Greene, Graham — my english teacher Mom gave me a hard time about not reading enough classics last year. Hi Mom! This one was more fun than Ulysses.
• Don Quixote de Cervantes, Miguel — I have been trying to finish this book for ~10 years. I’m glad I finally did, so much pop culture is ripped right out of Don Quixote, losing much in translation. I’m sure you know the story, but does anyone still get that the book was a criticism of pop culture? Quixote reads so many trashy books on chivalry he loses his mind and thinks he’s a knight. A modern equivalent might be an aging reality TV star watching so much Fox News he thinks the president wasn’t born in the US and he’s really the right guy for the job.
• It Can’t Happen Here Lewis, Sinclair — could also go into the politics area, as it’s about the inherent contradictions in creeping authoritarianism. Suffice to say, a lot to learn here.
• Ready Player One Cline, Ernest — some dialog and the lack of female character development are cringeworthy, but it’s a fun book and I’m personally interested in the future of VR/AR.
• Norse Mythology Gaiman, Neil — just read everything this guy writes, you won’t be disappointed. I read this as I binge watched Vikings, a great combo.
• Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder, #1)
  The Mad Lancers: A Powder Mage Novella McClellan, Brian
  I love the characters in this series and McClellan delivers in spades with novels and novellas.
• Age of Myth (The Legends of the First Empire, #1)
  Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire, #2) Sullivan, Michael J.
  The Riyara Chronicles were pure fun and Sullivan picks up a new series in the same world with the same energy and humor.
• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
  The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)
  The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) Jemisin, N.K.
  I read these books on vacation and couldn’t put them down. They’re both exceptionally and educational. The books will teach you plainly about geology, while subtly teaching you about being the other.
• Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive #2.5) Sanderson, Brandon — I’m mid-Oathbringer, the third book in the series, but this was a good appetizer.
• Star Wars: Thrawn Zahn, Timothy — I’ve probably read six books in the Star Wars expanded universe, but Zahn’s books transcend genre. And Thrawn is a character for the ages, presented again in this book as a kind of Sherlock Holmes of war.