Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone
by Satya Nadella, with Greg Shaw and Jill Tracie Nichols, 2017

High-level think-piece by Microsoft’s CEO. Some portions were interesting for me as a tech-enthusiast and shareholder, but honestly, you can probably skip this one. I listened to the book on tape while running.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
by George Packer, 2013

I don’t know what to think about this book. It follows a series of actual people (a factory worker in Youngstown, a journalist in Tampa, a politician/lawyer in Washington, an alternative energy entrepreneur in North Carolina, etc.) through mostly the 1990’s to 2012, a few years after the Great Recession and bank bailouts. The stories are heartbreaking in places, though much of that is due to the perceived/actual helplessness of some of the lower class people profiled (I worked hard all my life; why can’t I get ahead?). The author seems to mostly be against the greed and indemnity of Wall Street, though he rarely explicitly states his opinions. I largely agree with this review from NYT when the book came out. An excerpt:

By “the unwinding,” Packer is really referring to three large transformations, which have each been the subject of an enormous amount of research and analysis. The first is the stagnation of middle-class wages and widening inequality. Depending on which analyst you read, this has to do with the changing nature of the information-age labor market, changing family structures, rising health care costs, the decline of unions or the failure of education levels to keep up with technology.

The second is the crushing recession that began in 2008. Depending on which analyst you read, this was caused by global capital imbalances, bad Federal Reserve policy, greed on Wall Street, faulty risk-assessment models or the insane belief that housing prices would go on rising forever.

The third transformation is the unraveling of the national fabric. Depending on which analyst you read, this is either a gigantic problem (marriage rates are collapsing; some measures of social connection are on the decline) or not a gigantic problem (crime rates are plummeting, some measures of social connection are improving).

Packer wants us to understand these transformations, but ultimately, narrative and anecdotes are not enough. They need to be complemented with evidence from these long-running debates and embedded in a theoretical framework and worldview.

Whatever message you take from it, you can probably agree that the narratives within are well-written.

While we are 7 years out from publication now, some interest in 2020 can come from the fact that still-relevant some political characters are painted in either a negative (Joe Biden) or positive (Elizabeth Warren) light. Peter Thiel also gets relatively positive coverage.