My 2021 Bibliography
All the books I’ve read in 2021
Maybe it was the pandemic but I seem to have read more books than usual this year. Some I listened to but most of them I read with my favorite method: ink-on-paper-inside-hard-covers. There were some excellent books, both fiction and non-fiction, in the mix. There were also quite a few women authors and a few non-white authors. Here are all of the titles I read this year in rough chronological order.
1. Rogue Heroes: The Authorized Wartime History, by Ben MacIntyre (2016)
War is an exceptional time, and exceptional people often find themselves in situations where they can perform heroic feats that would otherwise never find an outlet. Ben MacIntyre seems drawn to such people and their remarkable stories. In the early years of World War II, when England was jousting with Germany in North Africa, a small cadre of such exceptional men came together to form a guerrilla band of hit-and-run fighters, destined to eventually form the Special Air Services, or SAS, the elite British commando unit.This is their story.
2. Material: Making and the Art of Transformation, by Nick Kary (2020)
A gentle book that introduces us to some modern makers keeping alive the old ways of making. History, tools, materials, and interesting people.
3. Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia, by Greg Olear (2018)
As Sarah Kendzior says, the Trump administration was “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.” This slim volume gives you some of the facts that the conventional media couldn’t seem to learn, or that they were too partisan to report on.
4. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell (2013)
The author was the leading actor in a movie entitled The Room that is one of — if not the — worst motion pictures ever produced. In this book he tells the story of his involvement with the making of that movie. In particular, it’s a portrait of the enigmatic creator of the film, Tommy Wiseau. If you are as fascinated by filmmaking as I am, you will find this an amusing read.
5. Kopp Sisters on the March, by Amy Stewart (2019)
I found this little book in the remainder rack of Copperfields, a well-known, old-fashioned brick-and-mortar bookstore in Petaluma, California. Interested as I am in the military, and women, and women in the military, the cover image of uniformed female soldiers inspired me to fork over seven clams and buy the book.
Turns out this one is the fifth book in a series of seven, so there were references to earlier events that I did not fully understand. However, the story was interesting and well told, about three sisters preparing for deployment to France at a camp in New Jersey during the early years of World War I, when women were definitely not considered independently capable, let alone combat worthy. Much of the story centered on intrigues with a traveling troupe of performers and their unscrupulous manager. I couldn’t exactly say why, but the story seemed a little…off. It could be described as contrived, except that a contriving author would certainly have made different choices.
It wasn’t until I got to the end of book and discovered a fascinating postscript that cleared things up. The three eponymous Kopp sisters were real! Yes, the book was a novel, and the events were largely fabricated by the author, but every part of the book stood firmly on the historical record. Even the touring performance group and their slimy manager were real people. With that in mind, and knowing that truth is often stranger than fiction, the author’s a-little-off choices made perfect sense.
I was so taken that I bought the remaining six books.
6. Mycroft Holmes, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2015)
A few years ago I made an unfortunate and ill-informed sarcastic remark on Twitter (shocking, I know) questioning the capability of a basketball player to write. Somebody called me on it and said Abdul-Jabbar’s work was actually pretty good. Well, that stopped me in my tracks, and I bought this book to find out.
First, let me say that I apologize for doubting Kareem Adbul-Jabbar’s writing skills. The book is expertly written and quite readable. Secondly, the author taps into American racial politics in a way that Arthur Conan Doyle never did nor would have, and that’s a good thing.
The story itself stretches the reader’s credulity, but then, so did Doyle’s original Holmes stories. The protagonist is Sherlock Holme’s brother, Mycroft, but the story really focuses on his dear friend, the African Cyrus Douglas. Most of the action takes place on or around Trinidad, a Caribbean island smack in the hot center of British slave trafficking.
7. The Men Who United the States: America’s Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible, by Simon Winchester (2013)
I’m a huge fan of Simon Winchester and have read and enjoyed most of his books. This one, not so much.
There are two United States. There has always been two United States. There is the liberal democratic one and the racist autocratic one. The former is written into schoolbooks and into lore, describing a history that the average American can be proud of. At best, though, it is an incomplete story and, at worst, it is an outright lie. This book doesn’t lie, but it tells only the former story of winners, and not the latter story of bad American actors and their bad behavior. On the other hand, there’s lots of engrossing stuff to learn about and to be proud of.
8. Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, by Frances Dinkelspiel (2015)
I really enjoyed this book and learned quite a lot about the world of wine. At the core of the book is the startling story of a socially gifted, but unscrupulous, wine expert who violated the trust of everyone he knew and many he didn’t. Without an understanding of the world of wine, wine makers, wine merchants, and wine lovers, his crimes don’t mean much. So the author weaves a lot of wine history, wine tradition, wine lore, and wine mania throughout this very readable book to make clear the magnitude of the crimes he committed and the people he victimized.
9. The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths, by Mariana Mazzucato (2013)
I started my first company in 1976 in what would soon become known as Silicon Valley. One ever present sense was that I and other entrepreneurs were renegades, doing something that was outside the pale of officialdom. We knew that we were doing something that state actors could not do. The trouble with that knowledge was that it was a lie. We were definitely out on the cutting edge, but it wasn’t our money, our inventions, or our vision that put us there. It turns out that all that came mostly from the United States Federal Government.
Virtually every innovation that undergirded the explosive growth of Silicon Valley was funded and supported by government investment. Mazzucato clearly documents this rarely-told truth. One chapter is devoted solely to the “innovations” made by Apple Computer and how virtually all of their much lauded creations came not from Cupertino but from Washington D.C.
I have always been — and remain — a huge proponent of free enterprise, but today’s tech entrepreneurs, like telecom and energy business people before them, disingenuously take individual credit for the investment, guidance, and faith made collectively by American institutions.
10. How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, by Heather Cox Richardson (2020)
My wife turned me on to historian, educator, and author Heather Cox Richardson and I now enjoy her remarkably clear newsletter every day. Politically, she is too conservative for my taste, but the depth of her knowledge of American history is breathtaking and her views are often eye-opening. Her great gift is her ability to frame current events in a historical context, thus giving them far greater meaning.
In this book she tells how the former Confederate States of America, after having lost the Civil War militarily, resorted to other means to wage their war of classism, racism, and white supremacy. These non-military means have allowed them to make far better progress. If you are struggling to understand the rise of trumpist authoritarianism, this book will give you a solid historical foundation on which to comprehend America’s descent.
I’ll give you a hint: It’s false legends like the characters of John Wayne.
11. The Gods of Risk: An Expanse Novella, by James S. A. Corey (2014)
This is gunnery sergeant Bobbie Draper’s story. The appearance of the Rings makes the multi-generational project of terraforming Mars irrelevant. That immense project, however, was the beating heart of both Mars’ economy and its social identity. Its collapse is an existential threat. As the population of the planet reels with the dislocation, crime and chaos blossoms. As the authors like to say, “Things change, and they don’t change back.”
12. The Vital Abyss: An Expanse Novella, by James S. A. Corey (2015)
The backstory of Paolo Cortázar, the surgically-amoral scientist whose research into the protomolecule empowers the tyranny of Laconia.
13. Girl Waits With Gun, by Amy Stewart (2015)
This is simply a fun book to read. The story is human and compelling. The characters are round and complex. The humor and pathos of the plot is engaging. That the story is closely based on real people and real events is the icing on this merengue.
This is the first of seven books Stewart has written about the fascinating Kopp sisters in New Jersey a hundred years ago.
14. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein (2017)
There are two Americas, one black and one white. They don’t mix a lot. It turns out that this is not an accident, nor is it because of a “natural” desire of people to stay with those of their own color, although that is the often-told rationale.
The central fact that this book brings forth is how segregation was imposed on Americans of all colors by institutionalized racism, rather than by mere racial prejudice. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution mandate racial equality, a complex system populated by uncaring bureaucrats can easily defeat the intent of the Congress that wrote them.
It’s daunting to read this book and to learn of just how deeply metastasized segregation is in the United States, and how difficult it will be to root it out.
15. Lady Cop Makes Trouble, by Amy Stewart (2016)
Being book two in the Kopp Sisters series, this is more fact-based fiction about the first lady deputy policewoman in the United States. Very enjoyable reading.
16. Wahoo: The Patrols of America’s Most Famous World War II Submarine, by Richard O’Kane (1987)
In last year’s bibliography I explained why I was reading these dusty old tomes about submarine warfare during WWII. This is yet another in the series. Dick O’Kane was one of the most decorated sailors in American history, including a rare Congressional Medal of Honor. His writing isn’t the best, but the danger and drama of his work comes through loud and clear. Coincidentally, after the war O’Kane settled in what is my home town: Petaluma California. While his submarine was under construction at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard just a few miles up the road, he had ample opportunity to experience the delights of the area so he moved here after the war.
17. Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions, by Amy Stewart (2017)
The third book of stories about Constance Kopp, the lady cop. Her enlightened approach to criminal justice works well for everyone except male law enforcement officers and the politicians who use criminal behavior as political tools.
18. What’s the Matter with Kansas?, by Thomas Frank (2004)
I thought I had purchased Frank’s book of the same title as an audiobook, but as I listened I realized that I had actually purchased the audio of a lecture by the same name. All too brief, but still a fun listen. Frank is a real progressive firebrand. Rare these days of political right-shifting.
19. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, by Marcia Chatelain (2020)
This is a thorough telling of the relationship between black people, fast food, and America. It’s fascinating to learn how involved African-Americans are and have been with eating fast food and participating in the fast food business. This is not an exciting book to read but it does describe yet another bend in the river of race in the United States.
20. For Crew and Country: The Inspirational True Story of Bravery and Sacrifice Aboard the USS Samuel B. Roberts, by John Wukovits (2013)
I hate war. I love reading war stories. War is horrible, but war, more than anything else, exposes the raw reality of human nature. Whether one is a fool or a savant, a coward or a hero, in combat the truth will show.
In the Fall of 1944, in an infamous failure, aggressive American Admiral “Bull” Halsey was tricked by the Japanese to abandon his assigned position guarding a strategic passage between Pacific islands. Halsey vainly sailed his fleet off looking for a non-existent battle leaving behind only a tiny flotilla of destroyers and destroyer escorts — the smallest of the small — to guard the navy’s fragile troop transports and defenseless escort carriers. This book tells the story of one of the smallest of the warships, the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts.
The Japanese sailed through the unguarded strait and attacked this insignificant force with an awesomely powerful force of more than 20 capital ships including four battleships and six cruisers. One of the battleships was the Yamato, the largest and most powerful battleship ever built. A single direct hit from any one of the Yamato’s nine primary cannons could instantly sink the Roberts.
Upon sighting the massive enemy armada approaching, the carriers and transports hauled their anchors and raced south, away from the danger. Captain Robert Copeland, skipper of the Roberts, turned north instead, directly into the teeth of the enemy fleet. In the running battle that ensued, the Roberts was hit repeatedly, and ultimately sank from her wounds, but the brave assault caused the Japanese admiral to doubt his superiority, and to finally turn away from a certain victory.
Like so many war books, this one is guilty of some historical whitewashing with a smattering of jingoism, yet the story remains as one of the most heroic exploits of war.
21. The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin, by Julia Finley Mosca, illustrated by Daniel Rieley
Knowing my fondness for animal expert Professor Grandin, a friend gave me this illustrated children’s book about the life of the famous autistic scholar. Of course, it’s a quick read and a story I know well, but it’s nice to have the book around when my grand children come for a visit. Dr. Grandin is an inspiration to all designers, ranchers, and those misunderstood millions who have disabilities.
22. Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network, by Katherine Losse (2012)
This book is well worth reading. The author relates her experience as an early employee of Facebook (she was employee number 51). At it’s heart, her story is that of a cultist, being wooed into a seemingly innocent ground floor opportunity only to find herself riding a tiger into oblivion.
23. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, by Matthew B. Crawford (2015)
I read Crawford’s first book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, when it first came out over a decade ago. I was struck by his eloquence in perforating the big canard of the 1960s: the assertion that office work was more intellectually stimulating than physical work. Crawford had retreated from the world of business and opened his own motorcycle repair shop. The book reflects his observations comparing the two universes.
Since the success of that book, Crawford has blossomed into a full-blown academic. He’s a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He still wrenches on motorcycles, too.
So this book is different from his earlier work, being more rigorous, more scholarly, and more varied in its source material. It’s harder going than Shopcraft, but not difficult.
He explores how we relate to the things in our world in fascinating and unexpected ways. In particular, if you are a designer, you will find Crawford’s work very useful background for understanding how people relate to their tools and their workplace.
24. Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, by Christopher Wylie (2019)
Author Wylie was one of the main developers who created Cambridge Analytica software. With this software, the company was able to micro-target advertising to Facebook users. This technique essentially weaponizes otherwise innocent social media software. The Brexit campaign and Donald Trump’s presidential bid were two of the high profile users of this arguably-legal, but very ethically-questionable method. When the Federal government began to look into the problem, Wylie cooperated, but he ultimately became the company’s fall guy. In this book he tells the story from his point of view.
Some people think Wylie is a heroic whistleblower while others consider him an unscrupulous manipulator of people’s personal and private information, claiming that this book is a weak apology for his perfidy. I don’t know which it is…probably both, because it chronicles his journey from dewey-eyed programmer to rapacious data thief. Either way it’s a fascinating story about how those who can abuse social media can abuse pretty much everything in our world. I read it as a powerful plea for government regulation of social media companies.
25. Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, by Angus Buchanan (2002)
The industrial age gave rise to many larger than life personalities. History tends to glorify the ones who made a lot of money, the Henry Fords and Andrew Carnegies. I tend to glorify the ones who invented new stuff, the James Watts and the Ada Lovelaces. The oddly named nineteenth century inventor Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of the most prolific and creative engineers of his — or any — era. He designed and built bridges, tunnels, ships, railroads, and many of their auxiliary and supporting structures and systems. His work influenced entire industries and many of his creations still stand today.
This biography is old school, written in an old fashioned way. That is, it isn’t a narrative as you would find in a more contemporary biography. Instead it’s more academic, breaking down Brunel’s achievements into various categories. Because of this, I would recommend it only to die-hard Brunel freaks. I’m still looking for a page-turner biography of this remarkable man.
26. The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization, by Roland Ennos (2020)
This is a entrancing and digestible overview of how humans make stuff and why wood is the unsung hero of everything we make. The author makes the case that the “Bronze Age” and the “Stone Age” and the “Iron Age” have those monikers mainly because stone, bronze, and iron survive the centuries buried and forgotten while wood rots away and disappears. He further describes how all stone, bronze, and iron tools had wooden components and were used primarily to shape wooden materials. The Age of Wood spans all of the other ages.
There’s a lot of historical insight in this book and I recommend it.
27. Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology, by Duncan K. Foley (2006)
This book is well-written and interesting, but you have to be pretty far down the rabbit hole of economic theory to enjoy it. After a year, I’m still only about halfway through it. Many critics of economics poke holes in Adam Smith’s vision of the “economic man,” and this author does, too. But Foley is reluctant to come out swinging. Instead, he delves at length into the theoretical underpinnings of economic theory. This include long descriptions of the theories of Ricardo, Marx, Keynes and other prominent thinkers of the past couple of centuries.
(What I was looking for in this book I eventually found in Graeber’s Debt)
28. Carrier Pilot: One of the Greatest WWII Pilot’s Memoirs, by Norman Hanson (1979)
At 26, Hanson was older than most young men swept up into the war. He tried multiple times to enter the service before he was finally allowed to join. As a Brit, he served in wartime theaters unfamiliar to most Americans, including Egypt and the Far East. Not much is written about England’s aircraft carrier navy. Also very interesting is the time he spent in Pensacola Florida training with the United States Navy.
His memoir benefits from his keen observation and his literate writing style. I enjoyed his story very much.
29. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, by Annalee Newitz (2021)
The author describes the forms, social structures, economics, and fates of four cities around the world that no longer exist. The similarities and differences between those characteristics and parallel ones in our modern world are intriguing. The book is certainly worth reading if you are interested in anthropological insights, but the book lacks a direction.
30. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos (2014)
The book is a thinly-disguised collection of essays from the New Yorker. Mostly they are profiles of contemporary Chinese entrepreneurs. There are vignettes of gamblers, hucksters, and farmers swept up in the 21st century economic boom of this enormous country. I thought the writing was flabby and unfocused.
31. Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit, by Amy Stewart (2018)
Being the continuing saga of the lady policewoman in New Jersey in 1916, based on real people and real events. In this volume she’s under assault from the male dominated world. Not as good as the first book in the series, but still excellent.
32. The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis (2016)
As an interaction designer, I am of necessity familiar with the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman’s 2013 book, Thinking Fast and Slow, is a fine survey of their work. The two Israeli academics pretty much invented the field of behavioral economics.
When Michael Lewis wrote his bestseller Moneyball about the arrival of fact-based recruiting in professional sports, he stumbled upon the confounding paradoxes of how experts make decisions. As a reporter, he just told us what people did. But Kahneman and Tversky are scientists and wanted to know why. Their work won them a Nobel Prize and the continuing respect of just about everyone in the various fields affected by their research.
This book, while it tells us much about their work, is about the stormy relationship between the two scientists. Their contemporaries agreed that the two made an extremely unlikely pair, possessing vastly different approaches to life, work, and their disparate fields of study. That’s the main reason why this book is engrossing on multiple levels.
33. From Autrefois to Today, by Laure Reichek (2020)
Laure Reichek is my neighbor, three houses down. Out here in cow country, that means she lives about three miles away. She’s in an old farm house on a hillside overlooking cows grazing on beautiful pasture land. She lives alone except for a cat and two watch-donkeys. You do NOT want to mess with those donkeys, but after Laure explains to them that you are a friend, they will leave you alone. Laure is French, and with little or no prompting, she will tell you that all things French are Good, and all things Good are French.
Her late husband was an American artist and teacher at UC Berkeley. He passed away before I met Laure, leaving her an attic filled with enormous canvases. I met her several years ago when an aging oak tree on her property fell, taking out a fence, and then perching precariously on a hillside. I recruited some friends and equipment, and we removed the fallen wood before it hurt somebody.
Recently, I ran into Laure in town and she gave me a copy of her self-published book. It is a collection of personal stories and memories from her youth. While Laure is a fascinating character, she is not a writer, and there’s good reason why she had to publish this book herself. On the other hand, it’s very interesting to read her reminiscences of childhood in a tiny French village under German occupation in the 1940s. Well into her ninth decade today, her mind is still razor-sharp. Her photo on the book jacket proves that she was a beauty when young.
34. The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape, by James Rebanks (2015)
I adored reading this book. Indisputably, Rebanks is a skilled writer, but this book is his own personal story, and he tells it with his hair on fire. Set in the beautifully rugged and remote hills and pastures of the English Lake country, it begins with him in primary school hearing the teacher tell him that his only viable career path is to abandon his family’s historic vocation of sheep herding and leave his ancestral home. Young, as-yet-uneducated, and headstrong, he knows the teacher is full of shit, even if he does not yet know why.
After many years of hard labor and equally hard life, he has arrived at the point where he can finally articulate why his teacher was so wrong, and that’s what this book is.
This is one of those books that I liked so much I bought extra copies to give to my friends. Don’t let it get by you.
By the way, Rebanks has a new book out, and it’s sitting on my To-Be-Read shelf awaiting just the right moment to devour.
35. Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (2008)
Vaguely science fiction, but increasingly more true than fiction, this is a story of a young boy, just out for fun, getting radicalized by an over-zealous government surveillance program. Considering when it was written, it’s pretty prescient.
36. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, by Florence Williams (2017)
We all love the outdoors. We are all a little happier gazing at a mountain vista or breathing pine-scented air. The author set out to see if that was real or an illusion. It turns out that scientists all over the world have been researching this very question to discover the truth, and — sure enough — it is!
37. Shaker Oval Boxes, Volumes II, by John Wilson (2014)
38. Shaker Oval Boxes, Volume II, by John Wilson (2017)
39. Shaker Oval Boxes, Volume III, by John Wilson (2019)
Although they are largely forgotten today, the bentwood box was once a commonplace in households around the world. Before sheet metal, and well before plastic, if you wanted to store something around the house you used a bentwood box. The Shakers, a small religious order in New England, didn’t invent the form, but they certainly perfected both the oval box shape and its method of construction.
John Wilson is a woodworker and educator in Michigan. He teaches hand-tool woodworking, boat making, and since 1980, Shaker Oval boxes. He is the person most responsible for the renewed interest in these unique, hand made objects. Wilson was able to reconstruct the tools and methods the Shakers used to make their boxes and, now in his eighties, Wilson remains a driving force in the resurrection of this obscure artifact by teaching others his techniques and making and selling plans and parts needed to make them yourself.
As I started to learn to make these boxes I ordered some materials from John’s website. His books were on offer there too, so I decided to order Volumes I and II, figuring they were the most relevant to a budding oval box maker. John himself telephoned me to convince me that I should also buy Volume III. I didn’t feel that he was trying to make an extra buck by selling me something I didn’t want, but rather he made it clear that the third volume had information in it that I would find valuable. He offered me a discount, too. His innocence and candor were beguiling, and I said “Yes” immediately. To my pleasant surprise, I found the third volume to be the most alluring of the three, delving as it does into the background of the Shakers, their religion and philosophy, along with history of oval boxes themselves.
These books are self-published, and personal, but they offer a very high quality of writing, editing, research, artwork, photography, and binding. They are lovely books. If you buy them directly from The Home Shop (John Wilson’s company), he’ll autograph them for you.
40. The Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (2011)
A few years ago I thoroughly enjoyed Towles second book, A Gentleman in Moscow, so this year I read his first one, The Rules of Civility. It’s an interesting story of a young woman conquering the high society world of New York in the late 1930s. It’s a good novel, written before Gentleman, but nowhere near as good. That is, he’s getting better. His third novel is on my To-Be-Read shelf right now.
41. Those Who Fall: An Unforgettable Chronicle of War in the Air, by John Muirhead (1986)
War: hours of boredom interrupted by moments of pure terror. The air war in the European theatre of WWII was a very deadly place. The airmen flying the missions quickly came to understand just how terribly the odds were stacked against them. They were forced to confront their imminent and almost certain death in a fiery aerial holocaust. This skillfully written memoir offers a peek into the lives of these condemned men.
42. The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre (2018)
The author is simply the most capable teller of true spy stories writing today.
One of the ironies of the twentieth century is how thoroughly the British intelligence service dominated the Nazis in World War II, but after the war, the Soviet Union’s intelligence services utterly dominated the Brits. Infamously, the Soviets turned several high-ranking British intelligence officers into double-agents, who for years passed NATO secrets to Moscow. These failures caused much professional embarrassment and introspection for MI6, the British Secret Service. Finally, in 1973 they were able to redeem themselves by recruiting a high-ranking KGB agent, Oleg Gordievsky, to spy for the West.
Over a span of many years Gordievsky provided information to the British — and eventually to the Americans — that was of incalculable value. Possibly his greatest contribution was helping to bring the Cold War to an end by coaching Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on how to build trust with a rising young Soviet politician named Mikhail Gorbachev.
This book tells Gordievky’s story in detail, from how he was recruited in Denmark, to his regular secret briefings with MI6 agents, to his James-Bond-like hairbreadth escape from the vengeful Russians.
43. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
A couple of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates really impressed me with his views on how to mitigate racism in the United States. This book is a very personal counterpoint to those essays. It takes the form of a letter to his 15-year-old son, telling him what it means to be a black man in America today. Any book that talks frankly about racism in the USA is going to be “searing” and “damning” and “provocative,” and this one is too, but Ta-Nehisi Coates does it better than anyone else.
44. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander (2010)
The very nature of systemic racism is that each individual actor in the racist system can be a very nice person, completely egalitarian, and blind to skin color. And yet the system itself is boldly, blatantly, and horribly racist. In the United States of America over the last 40 years, we have constructed such a system. The primary tools of our racist system are the War on Drugs and a compromised criminal justice system.
I recommend this book.
45. Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer (2021)
In 1962, when I was in the fifth grade, our class studied “South America.” Each of the ten-year-olds in my class was assigned a country to write a report on. I was assigned Cuba, and from the encyclopedia I learned about Cuba’s flag, geography, and economy. I found it all very fascinating, but it seemed to me that there was something about Cuba that was…eluding me. It wasn’t much of a serious concern to a ten-year-old, but I’ve always wondered idly about Cuba, and when I saw an advance notice for Ada Ferrer’s upcoming book, I made a note to buy it.
After 60 years I have finally been able to learn what was eluding me about this strategically located Caribbean island. In so many ways, Cuba’s history parallels United States history. Also, like so many unfortunate elements of American history, our national hubris and greed has hurt us more than it has helped.
I gained enormous insight into the geopolitics of American and Caribbean relations, and a much deeper understanding of how we came to erect a wall of resentment against one of our nearest neighbors.
46. The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter (2021)
This delightful historical novel follows the canonical form: a rather neutral protagonist, witness to real people and actual events of significance, tells us what it looked and felt like to be there. But author Walter is simply really good at this form. His characters are rounded and compelling, the action is gripping, and the historical relevance is indisputable.
I’m now a big Walter fan and am looking forward to reading more of his work.
47. Debt: The First Five Thousand Years, by David Graeber (2011)
David Graeber is an anthropologist, not an economist, and while this book is primarily about human social history, most of the author’s conclusions have something to do with deconstructing and discrediting the orthodox practices and beliefs of economics.
Many of the founding assumptions of conventional economics are not true, based on ideas that sound plausible but have no actual basis in fact. Graeber, being a scientist, bases his arguments on the historical record rather than on his imagination, unlike so much of economics.
There’s a considerable amount of controversy and criticism of Graeber’s scholarship, but I doubt that it has much material effect on the points the author makes.
48. The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn (2017)
I think it was sheer coincidence that out of the last seven books I read in 2021, six of them rank as my favorites. This novel is the seventh. I’m not sure how it entered my purview, but I suspect that my interest in spies, and strong women, and strong women spies triggered some algorithm. But the book is really just a contrived bodice-ripper with some creepily-sadistic passages. No thanks.
49. Leviathan Falls (9), by James S. A. Corey
This is the ninth and final book in The Expanse series of science fiction novels that I binged on last year. Wrapping up a story of this magnitude is a tough challenge; many otherwise excellent authors fail at this task. George R. R. Martin comes to mind.
As usual, the characters are strong and complex, the action is nail-biting, and the scope of the story is galaxian. I’m a big fan of the Amazon Prime TV series, but I’m a far bigger fan of the series of novels.
Truth be told, this was not my favorite book in the series, but I don’t blame the authors. It’s tremendously difficult to bring an ever-escalating adventure story to a satisfying close without being trite (the final season of Game of Thrones proves my point). Still, the book does its job well, and the wrap-up is as convincing as it is unexpected.
You can read last year’s bibliography here.
I read lots of magazines, blogs, and newsletters, but long-form writing in books is qualitatively different from those other forms. Books can and do deliver more wisdom and insight than other media. It saddens me to see so many people substituting podcasts and short-form writing for the thoughtful work of full-length books. There is really no substitute.
