The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
by Alice Schroeder, 2008

Long read (~850 dense pages), but very rewarding. Very well written. Gives insights into Buffett’s thought processes. He was/is supremely focused on business issues, sometimes to the detriment of other aspects of his life. But his honesty, work ethic, and teaching mentality took him a long way in life, obviously. Strongly recommended.

The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust
by Kevin Werbach, 2018

I’ve incorporated some of the ideas of this book into my lecture on trust in supply chain networks in my Operations Strategy class. I introduce blockchain as a vehicle for trust and shared truth before discussing the potential for smart contracts to handle many simple business interactions. The book is well-researched and written. I found the first-half, focused on trust problems and blockchain capabilities, to be more interesting and relevant for me than the second-half, which mainly focused on legal and governance issues.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
by Scott Galloway, 2017

I’m a bit late to the game with this one, and I think that helps explain why I enjoy Scott’s blog more than I did this book. The blog is more timely, while the explanations in the book are a bit stale. Still, it helps explain the success and corruption of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Entertaining, but not always convincing. I think the conclusion about these tech titans creating immense wealth, but for only a few people, is timely and pairs well with other things I’ve read about the future economy and income inequality. Multiple data inconsistencies (numbers on one page not agreeing with those on the next page) annoyed me.

The Book of Dust (Vol 2): The Secret Commonwealth
by Philip Pullman, 2019

Some cool connections to the first volume in the Book of Dust, La Belle Savage (set 20 years earlier), and the original His Dark Materials trilogy (set ~10 years earlier). However, this book is really just setting up the third volume. The Secret Commonwealth ends with half a dozen story lines hanging uncompleted. Kind of frustrating. I would recommend waiting until the third volume is published before reading this one (which was published in Oct. 2019), so that you’re not left hanging after reading. Unfortunately, there is no current expected release date for the third volume.

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, 2008

I’m late to the party on this one, so I don’t need to say too much about it. Good description of why defaults matter and why data should be available in human understandable formats.

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
by Scott Young, 2019

Anecdotal, but somewhat helpful. Wish he had more examples/data to draw from. The goal is to teach you how to learn a lot of hard things in a short amount of time.

Principle 1 – Metalearning: First Draw a Map
Principle 2 – Focus: Sharpen Your Knife
Principle 3 – Directness: Go Straight Ahead
Principle 4 – Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point
Principle 5 – Retrieval: Test to Learn
Principle 6 – Feedback: Don’t Dodge the Punches
Principle 7 – Retention: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket
Principle 8 – Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up
Principle 9 – Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone