The 35 Books I Read in 2023
2023 saw me read nearly 3 books per month. I learned a lot and thought I would share some of what I learned in this post. Below I provide brief summaries or critiques of each of the books, organized by genre (in no particular order).
Two general ideas that I found interesting when looking back on the whole of my reading:
Tyler Cowen’s advice, “Read in clusters! Don’t obsess over titles. Obsess over questions,” really does work. When trying to learn something new, it is immensely helpful to see concepts repeated and reinforced from different angles.
Nearly every popular science book I read had in some way incorporated the antiracist rhetoric of Ibram X. Kendi and in some cases gratuitously so. I suppose this is because most of my reading in this genre was by Left-leaning academics who published in 2021–2022. Still, it is difficult to tell whether it was the author’s or editor’s idea. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.
Thomas Sowell division
1. Knowledge and Decisions. There are many possible economic systems (e.g. capitalism, socialism, or anything in between) but each has to allocate scarce resources in some way. “Unmonitored monitors” are key drivers in the success or failure of economic systems.1
2. Basic Economics. Put simply, economics is the study of allocating scarce resources that have alternative uses. Incremental substitution is why supply and demand curves have slope. Speculation is an important part of generating economic value, yet it is often derided as greed.
3. Social Justice Fallacies. This was a bit polemic, even for Sowell. A one sentence summary: “In short, most liberals don’t want to test their grand divisions against actual data. This would lead one to conclude that the visionaries care more about their worldview than they do about helping the poor or downtrodden.”
Fiction
4. Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews. This is part of the Innkeeper series and is a fun intergalactic take on The Bachelor that I read with my wife.
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. I hadn’t read this in quite some time but introduced it to my kids as we were driving to Universal Orlando Resort this summer. It’s still magical and it’s enjoyable to see someone else discover it for the first time.
6. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. This is frequently used in English classes. The main thing I noticed was the degree to which 1960s politically correct language differs from today’s standards, particularly in regard to disabled persons.
Pop Science (non-obesity, non-economics division)
7. The Genetic Lottery by Kathryn Paige Harden. Interesting discussion about how to statistically measure whether or to what extent genetic traits are heritable. It goes deep on the author’s expertise of twins studies and using twins to estimate the heritability levels of different traits. The last two chapters give policy prescriptions that are sometimes speculative, loosely argued, and contain bad economics. Still, this is an important book for understanding a future where genomic data is intimately woven into healthcare (see #29 below).2
8. Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer. Worrying is the brain’s way of dealing with anxiety because it occasionally works (in the same way that a slot machine occasionally pays out a jackpot). Uncertainty breeds anxiety. As someone who deals with flare-ups of anxiety (derived from stressful experiences in graduate school), I found the book helpful.
9. Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. True learning of material requires spaced repetition and frequent testing, including self-testing.
10. Eve by Cat Bohannon. Explains the evolution of sex differences in humans. There are lots of interesting nuggets interspersed throughout the book. For example, I learned that fat is an organ that, along with the liver and immune system, evolved from a common primordial organ. The book also discusses the fact that gynecology and kinship behaviors are uniquely human.
Pop Science (economics division)
11. Big Business by Tyler Cowen. Corporations have an incentive to be efficient. Governments don’t. Thus, politics has much more inertia. Big Business™ is underrated and unfairly criticized in the popular press.3
12. An Economist Goes to the Game by Paul Oyer. This was a fun book, not least because it cites one of my papers. It contains lots of good discussion about a variety of sports economics topics like the benefits of athletic participation, sports gambling, stadium subsidies, athletic scholarships, ticket scalping, and more.
13. Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross. This is a book devoted to strategies for successfully identifying exceptional talent. It is most applicable to company founders and All-Star scientists. The main takeaway I got was that job interviews should be positive experiences in the sense that they should promote cooperation between the candidate and the interviewer, as opposed to conflict that can easily dominate a job interview.4
14. Why Not Better and Cheaper? by James B. Rebitzer and Robert S. Rebitzer. Healthcare hasn’t gotten cheaper because it incentivizes the wrong kinds of innovation, has counterproductive social norms, and lacks competition.
15. Risky Business by Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Ray Fisman. A nice overview of how insurance markets work and why they fail in so many cases. “Where there is choice there are opportunities for selection” would be a nice one sentence summary of the book.
16. Campus Economics by Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson. This is essentially a miniature textbook on the economics of higher education. I learned a few things even though I’ve been teaching an economics of education course to undergraduates for years.
Memoirs
17. My Grandfather’s Son by Clarence Thomas. Covers his epic story of “rags to riches.” I was particularly drawn to two events that were repeated recently:
a. His confirmation hearing closely mirrored Brett Kavanaugh’s in terms of charges, content, and political foes. Joe Biden was Thomas’ primary questioner, while Kamala Harris questioned Kavanaugh (though not primarily).
b. During his time at the Court of Appeals, one of his opinion drafts got leaked a la Dobbs v. Jackson.
18. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. A timeless and inspiring story of the power that faith in Jesus Christ can provide in persevering through trials.
19. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. This is the memoir of a Christian pastor who lives in Portland, Oregon. He argues for the importance of keeping a Sabbath and generally living a minimalistic life. The book also includes some bad economic arguments against buying clothes manufactured in sweatshops.
20. Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. A fun recounting of how “Amazonian” leadership principles led to the rise of Amazon. These involve, not surprisingly, working backwards. I found it intriguing that Amazon Web Services (AWS) originated from a chance occurrence that evolved into a pivotal aspect of the business.
Advice
21. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Contains lots of good information about how to not be a jerk. At the same time, if implemented without sincerity, the advice comes across as highly manipulative.
22. How to Instantly Connect with Anyone by Leil Lowndes. This is more or less a redux of How to Win Friends.
23. The Road to Character by David Brooks. Provides a guide for how to develop the character traits that are celebrated at eulogies, as opposed to those that are celebrated in corporate America or popular culture.
24. Better Presentations by Jonathan Schwabish. Gives lots of practical advice for how to optimally structure an academic presentation. The main take away for me was that slides are meant to support an oral argument, not to present the argument (that’s what the paper is for!). This means that almost everyone’s slides should have much, much less content than they currently do.
Pop Science (obesity division)
25. The Hungry Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet. Argues that obesity is driven by a malfunctioning of the hypothalamus. Scott Alexander provided a much better review than I could ever do, so you should check that out as well. I’m surprised that the author didn’t mention fasting at all in his practical advice section.
26. Why Calories Don’t Count by Giles Yeo. Argues against pure calorie counting was a way of losing weight. I will cover this (as well as Burn) in more detail in a separate post.
27. Burn by Herman Pontzer. Discusses the evolutionary foundations of human metabolism. More or less presents the same message as Why Calories Don’t Count. I was surprised that neither book discussed fasting as a way to regulate metabolism.
28. Outlive by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford. Offers guidance on how to live right now so as to avoid chronic diseases which cause a long and slow decline in health before death. Along with the The Age of Scientific Wellness, I will cover this in more detail in a later post.
29. The Age of Scientific Wellness by Leroy Hood and Nathan Price. Details how we can use improved genomic and phenomic measurement, big data, and artificial intelligence to detect chronic diseases before they become entrenched in the body. This offers a path forward to “outliving” in the way described by Outlive.
Walter Isaacson biographies
30. Einstein. I hadn’t realized before reading this book just how big of a celebrity Einstein was. It was interesting to read about his views on God, the existence of a Supreme Being, how the universe is governed by natural laws, and his neuro-atypicality. I also found his standing up to the Red Scare/McCarthyism to be inspiring.
31. Elon Musk. It was a bit surreal to read a biography that is unfolding in real time. I hadn’t realized how focused Musk is on electric cars, self driving, and colonizing space. He doesn’t care about people’s feelings because the machines he’s building don’t, either. His work ethic is second to none and it inspired me to work a little harder and consider where my own inefficiencies are. I won’t be spending the night on the floor of my office anytime soon, but it is inspiring to see others do that.
Religious
32. The Book of Mormon (English). Conservatively counting, this and the next entry were my 13th and 14th times reading the book. I read it in 90 days and noticed that I was able to make a lot more connections with a wider “context window.”
33. The Book of Mormon (Japanese). Reading it in a foreign language reveals distinct nuances.
34. The New Testament (King James Version). I learned a lot more about the Pauline epistles this time through, especially in conjunction with the Bible Project YouTube channel.
35. Preach My Gospel. This is a handbook for missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The second edition contains more lucid explanations of doctrine as well as updates to reflect the changing technological environment and emphases of Church leadership. (The first edition was released right as I became a full-time missionary in late 2004.)
“Unmonitored monitors” refers to people or institutions that have the power to monitor and regulate the actions of others but are not subject to any monitoring or accountability themselves. Unmonitored monitors can create perverse incentives and distortions in the allocation of resources and the distribution of benefits and costs.
For example, a key question is “Should we make policies that are genetically compensatory or genetically complementary?”
On a personal note, I enjoyed the benefits of big business while traveling with my family this month. My children have very specific dietary preferences. Because we shop at Walmart, we were able to get the exact same foods delivered to our hotel room 1,500 miles away from home, all courtesy of Big Business™.
This is known as “sage mode” in Shirzad Shamine’s book Positive Intelligence.