Highlights from 2018 reading.
For my business strategy blog, Discoveries in Health Policy, click here.
For earlier book lists, see 2015 here, 2016 here, 2017 here. This year, for the first time, I include a few unusual and outstanding movies or miniseries as well.
Discussed are:
Society and Politics
Dreamland. (opioids in America).Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller. (German pastor, 1930s).
Hitler's American Friends. (Pro-German politics in the US, 1930s).
The 2020 Commission. (Look back on the nuclear war of 2020).
God's Bankers. (Vatican finance, 1700s to 2000s).
Business, Medicine, Strategy
The Alchemy of Air. (Discovery of nitrogen fixation; impact on war and agriculture)The Tangled Field. (Scientific sociology centered around geneticist Barbara McClintock).
Never Split the Difference. (Negotiation from an FBI hostage expert).
Memoir and Fiction
Nothing to Be Afraid Of. (Memoir, Julian Barnes).Dear Los Angeles. (Diaries and Letters about LA, 1700s-2010).
Living With Monks. (Young business entrepreneur goes off the grid for a month)
Dear Committee Members. (Parody of academics).
Brief Mention
Farsighted (science author Steven Johnson).
The Judge Hunter (light novelist Christopher Buckley).
Avoid Boring People (James Watson).
The Square and the Tower. (Vertical vs flat organization and management in business and society).
Bad Blood (Theranos scandal).
Books are discussed in more detail below, after I touch on cinema and streaming.
Cinema
Instead of repeating descriptions of the big top ten films that are likely familiar (A Star Is Born, etc), I'll touch on a few that were memorable but off the beaten trail.
I really liked Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly in "Stan and Ollie," about Laurel and Hardy in the last phase of their career.
There were three wonderful documentaries about people in their 80's and 90's:
- Rose Marie, who had an amazing life story and was still around in her 90s when the documentary "Wait For Your Laugh" was made. (I often walk by her star on the Hollywood Blvd Walk of Fame).
- Wim Wenders, a German director I met briefly in college around 1980, made a film about Pope Francis, "A Man of His Word."
- And best known, the documentary "RBG" about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Television/Streaming
I enjoyed HBO's "The Young Pope," a somewhat fantastical miniseries starring Jude Law. YouTube clip here and here. HBO also gets two Honorable Mentions: Brexit (docudrama with Benedict Cumberbatch) and King in the Wilderness, MLK 1964-1968.
I lived in Oregon around 1985, in the Baghwan Shree Rajneesh period, and enjoyed Netflix' six-part documentary "Wild Wild Country."
In fiction, I loved the 1920s-era German TV series, on Netflix, "Babylon Berlin" (16 episodes). I wrote a detailed "fan blog" about it here. It's hard to watch a 12-hour series with subtitles when it's available dubbed in English, but I recommend trying 15 minutes in German with subtitles, because the original actors' voices are so perfect. Trailer here.
I also went head over heels for the Coen brothers movie "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs." Also Netflix. I wrote a detailed "fan blog" of Easter eggs and surprises in it, here. Youtube clips here followed by here (pair).
Deeper Dive:
Society and Politics
Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis. Matthew D. Hockenos. Martin Niemöller was a German pastor from a conservative, nationalist family, who said little about the Nazis early on. By the late 1930s, he couldn't stay quiet - and ended up in a series of prison camps, finally Dachau, which he survived. Niemöller wrote the famous poem, "They came for the communists - I was silent...They came for the Jews...I was silent...They came for me..and no one was left." (Here). I had no idea - that was ACTUALLY his life. The book is also notable for the social history of Germany from 1880 through the 1920s, which provides a setting for what follows. (For an online article about Niemöller, here.)
Hitler's American Friends. The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States. Bradley W. Hart. See also a sister book to Hitler's American Friends, which is set in the U.S., see also "Travelers in the Third Reich," Julia Boyd, what Americans and others made of the 1930s.
I have a collection of old books about the 1930s (many $5 on Amazon). There were a lot of people who hated Roosevelt. There were a lot of people who liked Fascism, especially given the global chaos of the Depression and the revolution in Russia. I have two vintage 1930s books that give the con and the pro perspectives from the contemporary pages. "Nazi Means War" by Leland Stowe, 1934, told about the jaw-dropping social changes in Germany. "The Wave of the Future," by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1940, talks about how Fascism in Spain and Germany has some drawbacks, but we'd best fly with it. For the 2017 book, "Hitler's American Model" - US law and Nazi race law - by Yale professor James Whitman - see my 2017 book list. For another angle on the 1930s in Berlin, how Germany viewed itself in the 1930s, from the perspective of German authors today, see here. I mention all these because the highly polarized 1930s provide some map for a highly polarized US and Europe today.
Which leads us to:
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. Jeffrey Lewis. Written in the form of a Warren Commission-type government report on how we stumbled ass-backwards into nuclear war in 2020.
God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power in the Vatican. Gerald Posner. This is a continuous history, but it's almost like two books, one from 1700s to 1950s, and another, half the book, focused on a complex scandal in the 1970s into the 1980s (including quite a few murders or very suspect suicides). I particularly liked the fast moving first 100 pages about the older history.
Business, Medicine, Strategy
The Tangled Field. Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control. Nathaniel Comfort. Back in early med school, I read "A Feeling for the Organism," about little-known and remarkable Cold Spring Harbor geneticist Barbara McClintock (1984). Here, Comfort, a Hopkins professor of history of science, takes a deep dive approach to McClintock's complex science, and the response to her ideas. There's a fair amount of the person and the biography, but it's not the main point. Tangled Field reminds us that at any time, there may be far more going on in biology (or biomedicine) that we want to suspect.
Never Split the Difference. Chris Voss. There are bookshelves of books on negotiating; this one is a new spin (from a hostage negotiator turned longtime business consultant) - nice airplane read.
Memoir and Fiction
Dear Los Angeles. The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542-2018. David Kipen. Several centuries of diary extracts, letters, and other sources from the unknown and the famous decorate the long life of my adopted hometown, Los Angeles, which have lived in the middle of since 2003.
Living With Monks. What Turning Off My Phone Taught Me About Happiness, Gratitude, and Focus. Jesse Itzler. Young successful business entrepreneur goes off the grid for a month. One of my early possible career choices was joining a Benedictine monastery (or alternately, joining the Jesuits and being a college professor). I stayed four times at the now-gone Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota, and I've stayed several times at St. Andrew's Abbey north of Los Angeles. Many good memories of these visits and I'm sure they'll be some more overnights at places like this. (A picture of the Blue Cloud abbey on the prairie has been my iPhone screen saver for several years).
Dear Committee Members. Julie Schumacher. Parody of academia in the form of windy recommendation letters from a perpetually disgruntled professor. See also the 1980s comic novel Small World by Brit author David Lodge.
Brief Mentions
Farsighted (science author Steven Johnson). One of my favorite books ever is the author's "How We Got to Now," which also became a wonderful PBS series. This book on decision-making science is good, but on my second tier.
The Judge Hunter (light novelist Christopher Buckley). I really loved his, "Relic Master" a year or two ago. This is another comic novel, now set in the 1700s not 1500s. A nice book on the second tier.
Avoid Boring People (James Watson). Watson must be on many people's bottom-ten lists (along with, say, Attilla the Hun and Louis CK) for his senile comments on race and genetics. This 2007 book was enjoyable and readable for me, covering his life including flyovers of matters he treated elsewhere (e.g. 1953 and the double helix). I wrote a short blog about this book, where I also discuss the absolutely wonderful movie with Jeff Goldblum about The Double Helix, which sadly is too hard to find. I read Avoid Boring People because a PBS documentary about Watson's life just aired in January 2019.
The Square and the Tower. Niall Ferguson. Vertical vs flat organization and management in business and society, from a viewpoint that spans several centuries. Nice reading; second tier.
Bad Blood. The story of the Theranos scandal by investigation journalist John Carreyou of the WSJ.
___
Extra Notes
Bill Gates' December 2018 book list is here.
Also good airplane reading on political polarization, Amy Chua's "Political Tribes." (Especially remarkable is the chapter on Chinese in Vietnam.) Sam Rosenfeld, a historian at Colgate, assesses how we shifted from overlapping parties in the 40's 50's 60's to the extreme polarization of today (The Polarizers). Sen. Ben Sasse, a PhD historian, gave us "Them" about fragmentation of social groups.
Another take on what can be learned from monasteries today: "Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks" by August Turak.
When do I read/watch this stuff? 120,000 actual flight miles / 500 mph = 240 in-air hours or 6 x 40 hour weeks...
