The 50 Books I read in 2024
2024 has undoubtedly been the year I’ve read the most books. I read nearly 1 book per week, which was a 43% increase over the 35 books I read in 2023.1 Below I provide brief summaries, fascinating things I learned, and/or critiques of each of the books, organized by genre (in no particular order). Hopefully you’ll find something interesting from this list that could change your life for the better! If you have any recommendations for me, please drop them in the comments below or message me privately—I’d love to hear them!
Side note: Tyler Cowen’s advice to read in clusters continues to be useful.
Health, Nutrition, and Medicine
This was by far the most influential category for me, and I really upped my game compared to past years. I’m putting these in order of how influential they were to me.2 If you read my academic pre-print paper on seed oils, you’ll recognize the influence these books have had on my thinking.
1. Why We Get Sick. I read this in February and it really blew my mind. I had not really heard much about Linoleic Acid (LA; main component of all seed oils) until reading this book, but it pretty clearly explains how LA messes up your body in a variety of ways. It seems to play a role in cardiovascular disease, obesity, insulin resistance, dementia, and cancer. This book focuses on insulin resistance being a cause of (as well as caused by) several factors. I am not sure that insulin resistance is what we should be focusing on to solve America’s health problems, but this book opened my mind to the whole “seed oils are bad” debate before it went mainstream with RFK Jr. around election time.
2. Omega Balance. A very good complement to Why We Get Sick because it really gets into the cellular biology and biochemistry of dietary fats. I learned so much about cell membrane function, the role of each type of dietary fat in cellular function, and how the different fatty acids are named.
The book makes a case that “omega balance,” i.e. the percentage of total polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs; i.e. the sum of Omega-3 to Omega-6) that are Omega-3 is a driving force for a variety of maladies, and that omega balance should be maximized via a whole-of-diet approach. It’s a “microfounded” (i.e. “rooted in scientific fundamentals”) way of explaining that processed foods are bad for our health.
One thing I am still unsure about after reading the book is whether absolute total PUFA should be maximized or minimized, or if it’s entirely irrelevant. The book only talks about the balance.
3. Dark Calories. There was so much good stuff in this book, especially after having read the first two on this list. It is my “overall recommendation” for best book I read this year.
Some really important ideas in this book include:
Calories measure thermal energy, but the body uses ATP for cellular energy, so ingested calories are meaningless for predicting energy balance.
Gave a compelling theory for how a high-linoleic-acid diet can develop into obesity and diabetes: omega-6 PUFAs create inflammatory body fat that causes malfunctioning mitochondria, which forces the body to use sugar instead of fat for ATP production, which kicks off an “arms race” between the liver and pancreas, resulting in chronically elevated blood glucose. The body essentially says “I don’t want to use fat for energy because it causes problems, so I’m only going to use sugar.” This results in hypoglycemic symptoms even when glucose levels are high.
Clear explanation of what seed oils are, which oils are particularly unhealthy, how seed oils are made, why they became prominent in the “Western diet,” and the many ways they disrupt human metabolism.
There were also some overly speculative statements sprinkled throughout the book,3 which is why reading in clusters is so useful—the aberrant ideas aren’t as likely to be repeated across multiple books.
4. Good Energy. Contains a similar line of argument as Dark Calories, except is focused more on other food toxins (in addition to seed oils). Likewise covers the crucial role of mitochondria in cell metabolism.
There was an excellent discussion of food production and medical provider incentives in this book that formed the basis of my modeling of the food and health environment in my most recent academic working paper.
The main question I have after reading this book is that it’s still not clear how problematic food additives, sleep disruption, environmental toxins, etc. are relative to seed oils in bringing about the array of health problems that plague the US and other advanced countries.
5. The Big Fat Surprise. Excellent dive into how various scientific, industrial, and political forces shaped modern dietary guidelines around fats. It discusses how Ancel Keys’ selective data analysis promoting low-fat diets gained outsized influence despite contradicting evidence from studies like the Framingham Heart Study.
The rise of seed oils came about due to industry dynamics between soybean and palm oil producers, which led to increased trans fat usage through hydrogenated oils. Trans fat labeling has recently forced food companies to reformulate products to use even greater seed oils.
6. The Queen of Fats. This book focused on Omega-3 and basically argues that “processed food” is “bad” because hydrogenation of vegetable oils selectively destroys Omega-3’s. Some other interesting things I learned:
Wild animals shift their omega balance towards omega 6’s prior to hibernation so that they can fatten up. (Brad Marshall at Fire in a Bottle calls this “torpor.”)
Omega-3’s also are not useful in food processing because they oxidize more readily than Omega-6’s
Fat gives food their flavors because aroma molecules are fat soluble, not water soluble
7. Ultra-processed People. A critical examination of ultra-processed foods (UPF) and their impact on health and society. While there’s a lot of information here, there’s not any real policy-relevant findings. The definition of UPF itself is not particularly useful, as it obfuscates any underlying causal mechanism for obesity. I also laughed out loud when the author claimed that “by curing poverty, we can cut the rate of obesity in half.”
There was some good background information about how hydrogenated oils came to be, as well as details about recent food formulations (e.g. use of invert sugars, mono and diglycerides, lecithins, etc.)
8. Deep Nutrition. Lays out what the correct “food grouping” should be, based on “ancestral” populations: there are four key food groups (fresh foods, fermented/sprouted foods, bone-in meat, and organ meats). Also establishes that vegetable oils and sugars are bad.
I found this book fascinating in its argument that food quality affects genetic expression across generations through epigenetics. The author claims that oxidized fats (particularly from vegetable oils) can cause genetic mutations potentially linked to conditions like autism, and more generally how maternal nutrition affects development of offspring development. Several of these claims appear to be speculative, though.
9. Glucose Revolution. Argues that health relies on flattening glucose curves rather than just counting calories. Emphasizes that food order matters (vegetables first, then protein/fat, then carbs), and individual glucose responses can vary based on factors like insulin levels, muscle mass, and gut microbiome.
Makes several controversial claims, like glucose spikes (>30 mg/dL after eating) should be avoided, fructose can only be stored as fat, and various “hacks” like adding vinegar to meals or walking after eating can help manage blood sugar. Also argues that successful diets are those that effectively flatten glucose curves, and that weight loss is preceded by insulin decrease.
This book mentions nothing about seed oils and their role in insulin resistance. I was inspired to get a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) after reading this book, and was able to confirm some of its arguments (mostly that walking is a great way to [temporarily] reduce glucose levels, and that eating cream and sugar together is a great way to keep glucose levels elevated for a long time [cf. Randle cycle]).
10. Gut. An interesting introduction to the digestive system and microbiome’s role in human health. Some interesting things I learned include:
Diverticulitis and hemorrhoids are virtually unknown in countries where people squat while defecating
Urine is yellow and feces are brown because a significant portion of them are blood cells that have been taken out of commission and broken down by the body
Microbial initial conditions seem to matter a lot for later life health
Nothing influences our gut bacteria more than the food we eat
There was no mention of dietary omega balance as a factor for a healthy gut, but I suspect that it matters quite a bit.
Fantasy & Science Fiction
I have to say, I enjoyed going back to some of the fiction I read in my youth, and to generally read more fiction than I have in as long as I can remember. The Harry Potter books I read with my son, while the Narnia books were inspired by our family attending a theatrical production of The Magician’s Nephew. I had had the Ready Player series on my list for quite some time and finally got to them. Overall, I’d say these were very enjoyable.
11. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
12. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
13. The Magician’s Nephew. I had forgotten that the wardrobe came from the wood of the tree which grew from Digory’s seed of the silver apple that saved his mother. The tree was connected to Narnia somehow and that’s what made the wardrobe connected as well.
14. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
15. The Horse and His Boy. I had read this once before but had completely forgotten about it. I enjoyed it!
16. Prince Caspian.
17. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I had to laugh at the subtle shot at my coreligionists when the author described Eustace’s parents: “they were vegetarian, non-smokers, teetotalers and wore a special kind of underclothes.” (Of course, this could be other sects as well.)
18. The Silver Chair.
19. The Last Battle. I had completely forgotten about this book and especially hadn’t remembered that they all die in a train crash. The ending was pretty surreal.
20. Ready Player One. A fun read that felt prescient given that it was published in 2011 and the intervening years have seen much of this science “fiction” become a reality (particularly as it pertains to the Metaverse and the social ills that arise from the movement of society to the virtual world).
21. Ready Player Two. Not as good as the first installment, but still worth the read. Again, feels prescient given the recent developments in AI and Elon Musk’s goal to colonize Mars.
Biographies and Memoirs
22. The Man from the Future. This biography of John von Neumann (basically the world’s smartest man, ever) helped me appreciate his role in several scientific fields. (I know his work in economic game theory and knew he worked on the Manhattan Project, but didn’t know much else.) Some interesting tidbits:
At 17 he published a scholarly response to Russell’s paradox (mathematical set theory)
He had prodigious technical skills but also was very strong in managerial and social skills. This put him in a unique position to advance computing
The von Neumann architecture, which forms the basis of modern computers, was inspired by his attempt to model computer design after the human brain’s structure
In game theory, he coined the term “zero sum” and develop the minimax (maximin) theorem
He developed both artificial neural networks (ANNs) and cellular automata, with the latter leading to concepts of self-replicating robots and von Neumann probes
The Monte Carlo simulation method emerged from work on nuclear fission chain reactions, specifically when Stanislaw Ulam conceived of it while playing solitaire in the hospital
Von Neumann was remarkably prescient about environmental challenges, having predicted both geoengineering and climate warfare
23. A Personal Odyssey. Thomas Sowell’s autobiography was scintillating. I’ve read several of his books but didn’t have an appreciation for his path into (and out of) academia. Some morsels:
Sowell says he benefited from fortunate timing in his life trajectory—leaving the South before experiencing severe racism or poor education, arriving in NYC when schools were well-functioning, and establishing his career after the worst of racism had receded but before affirmative action policies could potentially stigmatize his achievements
His letter of resignation from Cornell included the following: “over the years I have learned the futility of trying to talk sense to people who don’t want to hear it.”
His work for government offices opened up his mind to the fact that agencies didn’t always want to know the truth. The example he gave was when he was working for the Department of Labor (DOL) and noticed that minimum wages in Puerto Rico were resulting in greater levels of unemployment. But the DOL didn’t want to get the data required to test his hypothesis. This converted Sowell from Marxism to capitalism.
He was extremely fortunate to have put down photography as a hobby when being drafted into the Marines. This helped him avoid going to Korea.
Overall, it was difficult to read about his family life interfering with his intellectual development. It made me realize how much talent the world is missing due to seemingly trivial issues in people’s lives.
24. Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell. This is Jason L. Riley’s biography of Sowell. There isn’t a ton to add after having read Sowell’s autobiography.
25. Late Admissions. Economist Glenn Loury’s autobiography that covers his upbringing in Chicago’s South Side, as well as his sexual escapades, cocaine addiction, and conversion to and falling away from Christianity. Major credit to his second wife, Linda Datcher Loury, who stood by his side through it all.
26. Jerusalem: The Biography. This is a 848-page deep dive into Jerusalem throughout known history. I got lost in the revolving door of occupants ranging from Mesopotamians to Persians to Egyptians to Romans to Byzantines to Arabs to Crusaders to Ottomans to Britons to Arabs again, with Jews only really controlling it for a small piece of that time. The stuff between 69 AD and the Crusades was especially opaque.
It’s fascinating to see how far-reaching Jerusalem’s influence was. The following historical figures are mentioned as aiming to visit Jerusalem (or conquer it):
Christopher Columbus
Napoleon
Joseph Smith
Winston Churchill
and of course many, many others
I did not know that Palestine was given to the Brits as part of the Treaty of Versailles, or that Jordan owned East Jerusalem during 1948-1967. It seems that the armistice of World War I will have been responsible for both World War II and World War III.
27. The Last Days of Roger Federer. Contrary to the title, this book is not actually about Roger Federer. It’s really more about Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, JMW Turner, DH Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. I finished this out of sheer will.
Social Commentary/Politics
28. San Fransicko. A polemic against progressive approaches to resolving homelessness. For a rebuttal, see Scott Alexander’s post.
Both sides agree that housing costs aren’t the whole story, that drug use and mental illness are major factors, that some form of involuntary treatment is necessary, and that the status quo is not working.
29. The End of Race Politics. Argues that the current race problem in the U.S. is actually continual missed opportunities to implement “color blindness” and that the means by which we ensure equality of outcomes is just as important as the equality itself. Also argues that racial diversity isn’t inherently good or bad (as there are many other forms of diversity) and that very few jobs require racial diversity (but that police officers are among those that should).
30. White Guilt. Makes an interesting argument that “white guilt” emerged after the civil rights movement as a loss of moral authority among whites on issues of race, equality, and social justice, and that this loss of authority transferred power to blacks as victims of historical racism. The book suggests that the solution requires whites to overcome their fear of being called racist, which would reduce the power of white guilt as a social dynamic.
31. The Vision of the Anointed. Thomas Sowell book from 30 years ago about how policies fail due to elite “anointed” thinkers promoting a self-justifying vision of top-down solutions while dismissing traditional wisdom and contradictory evidence, which ultimately leads to institutional damage. Very relevant for the Covid policy debates.
32. The Diversity Bonus. This book is about how diversity in teams can result in greater output or achievement. The primary example of a diversity bonus is in team forecasting problems: having a bigger forecasting team mechanically improves performance because prediction errors are negatively correlated.4
While the idea is interesting, the book does not mention anything about trade-offs in building diverse teams for more real-world tasks (i.e. not forecasting), nor does it mention that the idea is unfalsifiable in practice. It’s important to keep in mind that the prime areas for diversity bonuses are in nonroutine tasks with skill complementarities.
33. The Anxious Generation. Smartphones have been a disaster for teen mental health and are stunting kids’ development in a variety of ways. The main cost of smartphones is the opportunity cost of the alternative activities that they displace. We can fix the status quo by not giving smartphones to kids before age 16 and not letting kids use phones in school, among several other things.
Anthropology
34. Guns, Germs and Steel. This book aims to explain why some nations have become more economically developed than others, and specifically how Eurasia developed ahead of the Americas, Africa, and Australia. The key idea is that development disparities stemmed from environmental rather than genetic factors. In particular, having an east-west continental axis instead of a north-south axis is advantageous for technological diffusion. This is because of climate similarity.
35. The Secret of Our Success. Culture and genes have coevolved through human history, with cultural differences creating biological (but not genetic) differences between populations. Human development is primarily driven by imitation, teaching, and social connections rather than individual intelligence. A species can become “culturally smarter” through increased social connections without brain size changes, enabled by factors like terrestrial living (i.e. not living in trees) and pair bonding (i.e. monogamy, which induces kinship relations, which then engenders tiered information networks).
Religious
36. The Book of Mormon (Audio).
37. The Book of Mormon (Text). In my 15th (?) reading through the book, this year I picked up on a lot more details on intertextuality—the idea that phrases will get strategically reused and paraphrased to suit the goals of the author. This, to me, is compelling evidence that Joseph Smith didn’t author the book.5
38. Saints, Vol. 4. Covers history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1955-2020. It was fun to hear the background context for key events I’ve lived through, as well as to reflect on the growth of church membership over that time (1.3mil to 16.7mil).
39. Who Wrote the Bible? Fascinating book about the Documentary Hypothesis of the Hebrew Bible (and, specifically, the 5 Books of Moses or Pentateuch). According to this hypothesis, there are four main authors/sources of the Bible (labeled J, E, P, and D), with evidence suggesting J came from Judah’s royal court, E was a Levite from Shiloh (both writing around 850-720 BC), P was written between 722-650 BC by a priest during Hezekiah’s time, and Deuteronomy (D) was likely written by Jeremiah, who also authored six subsequent books.
The Pentateuch’s final compilation was done by a redactor (likely Ezra) during the Second Temple period, who combined these different sources despite their occasionally conflicting accounts.
The next time I read the Hebrew Bible (likely in 2026) I will definitely find a copy that has these different sources broken out.
40. You Are Not Your Own. Pairs well with The Anxious Generation as it ultimately is a critique that technological advancement has caused religious communities to withdraw and people to become more selfish. For example, when we aren’t forced to be vulnerable then sharing vulnerability becomes a choice and naturally tends to become performative, which undermines the value of the vulnerability in the first place.
I have certainly seen some of these dynamics at play in my church congregations through the years. I liked the author’s focusing on two groups of people: the resigned and the affirming. The resigned give up because salvation is unattainable, while the affirming think they can save themselves by using more “technique.” Both are incorrect.
Higher Education
41. Who Gets In and Why. This was an interesting look behind the curtain of college admissions. I did not know how the analytics-based applicant recruitment methods originated, nor that the birth rate decline after the baby boom led universities to intensify their recruitment efforts in order to maintain enrollment.
I imagine the author was restricted in what he was able to write about, which limits some of the usefulness of the book. For example, there are anecdotes in the book where the applicant’s race seemed to determine the admission decision, but race was omitted from the discussion.
The book tried to argue multiple times that admissions isn’t a zero-sum game. But this is incorrect: any selective admissions program must be zero-sum by definition.
42. Special Admission. An ethnography of an elite women’s rowing program and commentary on the role of NCAA sports. Contains some good history on college athletics and the impact of Title IX on the landscape. There is quite a bit of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural capital and power relations interwoven throughout the book that I didn’t much like.
Personal Development
43. Crucial Accountability. Lots of useful tips for resolving conflict. Helpful in parenting, management, and other facets of life.
44. From Strength to Strength. A guide to being happy after you’ve lost your proverbial fastball. Cognitively speaking, fluid intelligence degrades quickly, while crystallized intelligence doesn’t degrade until later (if ever). So if you want to stay happy, you should transition more of your task load to crystallized intelligence as you age.
The book also contains lots of general advice for being happy, including not tiring yourself out on the hedonic treadmill.
45. The Art of Impossible. This is a handbook for “how to achieve a flow state” which is important for accomplishing tasks that were previously thought to be impossible. Contains lots of good advice, including support for the idea that we perform at the level of our training, not at the level of our expectations.
46. The Good Life. Written by a couple of researchers who have headed the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Emphasizes that relationships—both friends and family—and social connections are fundamental to happiness. Argues that social fitness deserves as much emphasis as physical fitness and physical health.
47. Slow Productivity. Cal Newport’s latest book on career/life contains three main pieces of advice:
Do fewer things
Work at a natural pace
Obsess over quality
Economics & AI
48. GOAT. Goes through the greatest economists of all time (hence “GOAT”) and covers their work in a similar fashion as Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball. I learned the most about John Stuart Mill.
Author Tyler Cowen grades them as follows:
Milton Friedman: “The best economist of all the GOAT contenders.”
Adam Smith: “The most original and fundamental of all economists. The father of economics.”
John Stuart Mill: “The deepest and most comprehensive thinker of all economists.”
John Maynard Keynes: “The most influential policy economist.”
Friedrich A. Hayek: “Author of the best economics article ever.”
Thomas Robert Malthus: “The second most underrated GOAT contender, after Mill.”
49. The Two-Parent Privilege. Covers a very important topic, but I found it pretty difficult to get through, for reasons not entirely clear to me. The main idea is that a lot of America’s economic problems can be traced back to inequality in the home environment, which makes a ton of sense.
50. Cointelligence. I got some good ideas for how to better use AI myself, as well as how to better incorporate it in the classroom.
These 50 books comprised 17,791 pages. Though, of course, page numbers mean different things in different books.
Some of the influence is due to the order in which I encountered the ideas, so the degree of influence on you may be quite different.
For example, some of the claims about PUFA oxidation seemed to be extrapolated from lab experiments to in vivo human effects.
Note that this is different from portfolio diversification which is about minimizing risk by leveraging negative covariance in asset returns.
There are also many more pieces of strong evidence. See https://bookofmormoncentral.org/ for a plethora of resources if you’re interested.
Is the underwear thing true?