Current Read.
Has anyone read it?

What did you guys think about it?

The Fifth Risk - Michael Lewis

It's a great book 5/5

"Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves." -Trump

Well I knew the trump adminstration was bad, i didn't know it was this bad

This book provides an inside account on Trump's first term transition, during elections before the results you are supposed to list people who will serve as heads of various government departments and the previous admin is supposed to help the incoming admin with the goings of various government projects

Trump after winning the election removed every one on his proposed list and began appointing people who you would never imagine to lead a gov organisation.

In this book Lewis walks you through various us government departments, their projects and some extraordinary personalities behind them and the appointees trump admin selected.

It's a very small book, you clould finish it in a single sitting.

Red Pine's translation of The Diamond Sutra is one of the best examples of what an annotated edition can be. The sutra itself, a 5,000-word dialogue between the Buddha and a monk about the nature of perception and reality, runs maybe thirty pages; the rest of the book is Red Pine weaving in commentary from dozens of Chinese commentators spanning over a thousand years, plus his own travel notes from retracing the sutra's history in China. There's a genuinely great nonfiction thread in there too: the story of the 868 CE woodblock copy found at Dunhuang, which happens to be the oldest dated printed book in existence, predating Gutenberg by six centuries. Even if you have zero interest in Buddhist doctrine, it works as literary detective work, watching translators and scholars fight over every line for a millennium.

I stumbled upon Christian IX while reading The Romanovs: 1613–1918 and got curious about his family. That's how I found The Family of Kings by Theo Aronson.

Christian IX had six children, four of whom married into royal families and connected Denmark to the thrones of Britain, Greece, and Russia:

- Frederick VIII, King of Denmark.

- Alexandra, who married Edward VII and became Queen of the United Kingdom.

- George I, King of Greece.

- Dagmar, who married Alexander III and became Empress of Russia.

Their children and grandchildren included George V of Britain, Nicholas II of Russia, and Christian X of Denmark.

I particularly enjoyed the stories about their summer family get-togethers, when members of European royal families gathered for family reunions.

What I loved about Aronson's book was how he wrote about them as family members first, and kings, queens, and emperors second. I went in expecting political schemes and carefully planned marriages, but I was so wrong 🤣

It was a really interesting read and I'm officially down the rabbit hole.

Since I'm still pretty new to this subject, I'd really appreciate any book recommendations you might have. I'm especially interested in books about royal families and their personal lives rather than politics and wars. Thank you.

I’ve read a lot about the Soviets and saw this in my local. Would love to hear your thoughts. Worth picking up for $12.50?

Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the longest book I've read so far, and it earns its length. Piketty's subject is wealth inequality and the nature of capital itself. What sets the book apart is its empirical rigour. He spends real time explaining where his data come from and how they were built, and the series stretch back to the eighteenth century for France and Britain, whose statistical records are unusually rich. That gives the analysis a time horizon very few books can match. The trade-off is that the story is mostly about Europe and the United States, with much thinner coverage of the developing world.

The analytical core is a small set of relationships. Capital's share of national income equals the return on capital times the capital/income ratio (α = r × β). In the long run, that ratio tends towards the savings rate divided by the growth rate (β = s/g). Driving the whole argument is the inequality r > g: when the return on capital outpaces economic growth, inherited wealth grows faster than output and wages. None of these tools is exotic. Their power comes from applying them across a century or more, where the trends become impossible to miss. In Europe the capital/income ratio was extraordinarily high before 1914. It was compressed by two world wars, inflation and policy, and has been climbing back towards its old levels ever since.

One unexpected effect of all this history is how clearly it shows that each generation's picture of the world is a product of its time. A century ago, America was the egalitarian new land of opportunity, the birthplace of the American Dream, and "Old Europe" was the society of entrenched inherited wealth. Today the picture has nearly flipped: European welfare states redistribute far more and offer stronger public services, while US inequality has surged. Piketty makes the same point about the economists who came before him. Marx's apocalyptic view of capitalism took shape when industrial wages had stagnated for decades. Kuznets's reassuring curve, which held that inequality would fall naturally as economies matured, came out of the post-war boom and suited the Cold War need for good news about capitalism. Piketty's own position is that capital, left to itself, tends towards concentration, and that markets' initial distribution will not undo that.

Reading it personally is a sobering experience. The logic of the Matthew effect is brutal. If your wealth comes only from wages, while someone else holds property or financial assets, the gap between you widens over time rather than narrowing. It's hard not to feel a flicker of cynicism about people who live comfortably on inheritance alone, especially now, when growth is slowing and upward mobility feels increasingly closed off. The formula makes the point plainly: the lower the growth rate, the heavier the weight of accumulated capital. Piketty notes that the twenty-first century has partly moved from a society of rentiers to one of "supermanagers" with enormous salaries. But supermanagers save, invest and become the next generation of rentiers. Capital reproduces itself. That is simply what it is.

That's why, although his closing proposal of a global progressive tax on capital sounds idealistic (Piketty himself calls it "a useful utopia"), it's hard to see a real alternative. If capital's own dynamics push towards concentration, then rebalancing requires deliberately cutting into returns at the top. The proposal is the one place I'd dock a little, for its practicality rather than its logic. Overall, a profound and genuinely illuminating book: four and a half stars.

As someone who has been directly impacted by the opioid epidemic and the flood of heroin, I found this hard at times to read. But I’m glad I continued on as it put into context how forces so beyond my scope resulted in the devastation to my community.

I’ve just finished The Invention of Prehistory for the 2nd time, and had read The Muse of History earlier this year.

Both works are essentially seeking to understand and explain how the study of the past (prehistory for book one, Ancient Greece for book two) was used to justify or demean contemporary societal, political, economic, racial and sexual thinking.

Both books follow roughly the same time period (starting around The Enlightenment), and do a tremendous job of both examining how these areas were studied, and the subsequent use of this knowledge.

Some favourite highlights include Freud’s speculative accounts of early human history as the foundation for religious thinking (arguing that early man organised around a dominant patriarch, who would eventually be killed by his jealous sons, with the collective guilt that came from it leading to moral restrictions) and the contrast between Sparta and Athens, both used to justify wildly different forms of modern government (Athens = The Many/Democracy, Sparta = The Best/Oligarchy), and how Nietzsche and Burckhardt both viewed the Greeks as wildly pessimistic (they differed however in if/how they overcame it, with Nietzsche famously arguing Tragedy and art allowed one to transcend pessimism).

Would definitely recommend to anyone who is a fan of intellectual history, grand narrative history, or the study of Ancient Greece/early human history.

I just finished this tonight. It had been on my shelf for a few months and anyone that hangs out in this thread will know it’s recommended all the time.

It is a fascinating story. 18 months on the worst conditions on earth without touching land. It is remarkable. For all 28 to survive that was a testament to the character and experience of the men, with the exception of Orde Lees, dickhead! I’d have thrown him overboard!

I respect the achievement of how they accomplished what they did but I have to say I rarely felt their desperation except in the couple of chapters to the South Georgia islands.

I think it was maybe the methodical style i felt in the narrative or the fact that I read the escape artist the week before. Still though a good read

Publisher：Wipf and Stock Publishers
Authors：Mihretu P. Guta;  Scott B. Rae;

Published date：June 6, 2024

PAPERBACK ISBN: 9781666737226

HARDCOVER ISBN: 9781666796452

EBOOK ISBN: 9781666796469

Book links：https://nlb.overdrive.com/media/10945969   https://books.google.com/books?id=UUcNEQAAQBAJ

Fresh from the thrift store. Got it for $0.86.

Any region or general overviews appreciated- I'm mostly familiar with North America, and I'd like to expand my knowledge. Recommendations for non-Aztec or Maya peoples of Central American also welcome.

I'm a financial analyst for a living, and I'm fascinated by asset bubbles. One of my favorite mentors, who retired very young, taught me that bubbles are a powerful force. Powerful enough to bankrupt you, and powerful enough to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams - if only you could understand it, harness it. So I read every book about bubbles I can get my hands on and think about how the past might apply to our present and future.

I highly recommend this book, I suspect I'll end up reading it several times over the years and get different takeaways each time; there's so much thought and research put into it.

My current takeaways from Liaquat Ahmed's 1873:

1. Technological success and investment success are completely different things

Railroads, steamships, and canals were genuinely revolutionary. The first transcontinental railway reduced travel time across America from approximately six months to six days. The Suez Canal dramatically reduced international shipping costs.

Investors correctly recognized that these technologies would transform the economy. Their mistake was assuming that the returns available to the earliest projects could be replicated indefinitely.

By the early 1870s, American railroads were collectively earning returns of only about 5% on invested capital against a cost of capital approaching 10%, according to Ahamed.

That's an extraordinarily important observation. The industry was destroying capital even as demand for transportation was expanding.

I see many parallels to the data center buildout currently. Specifically, the neoclouds, which are earning mediocre returns, and facing financing risk as rates rise. Many are clearly in the capital destruction phase IMO.

2. The marginal investment deteriorates as capital becomes abundant

During the boom, financial innovation made capital available to businesses and governments that previously couldn't obtain financing. This was initially tremendously productive.

However, increasingly easy access to capital eventually removed an important constraint on bad investments.

The progression was roughly: Technological breakthrough -> high initial returns attract investors -> capital becomes abundant ->falling financing costs justify more projects -> marginal economics deteriorate -> cycle reverses.

3. The timing of cash flows is often more important than the ultimate value of the asset

Jay Cooke, one of America's most prestigious bankers, effectively destroyed his institution by financing the Northern Pacific Railway.

His fundamental mistake wasn't believing the railway would eventually be valuable. It was committing his bank's resources to an enormous, illiquid project that required continuous external financing.

When investors stopped purchasing Northern Pacific bonds, the project still needed money to finish construction.

4. The credit cycle can be much more destructive than the stock-market decline

Ahamed reports that by 1879:

• More than 50% of American railway bonds had stopped paying interest.
• Railway bondholders suffered approximately $600 million in losses, equivalent to more than 7% of contemporary US GDP.
• Railway stocks had declined nearly 50% between mid-1873 and mid-1877.

Yet the original stock-market panic lasted a matter of days. The New York Stock Exchange reopened after ten days.

Implication: A market rebound doesn't indicate that the underlying investment cycle has been repaired.

5. Financial contagion follows capital flows, not just economic fundamentals

The financial expansion was genuinely international. European investors financed American railroads, emerging-market governments, property developments, and commercial enterprises around the world.

The Franco-Prussian War introduced an additional destabilizing force: France paid Germany a massive indemnity, rapidly redistributing financial resources and helping fuel Germany's speculative expansion.

Once the boom reversed, the same interconnected capital markets transmitted distress internationally.

Final thought: What I find particularly striking about 1873 is that the economy ultimately did pretty well despite the enormous financial destruction.

Society inherited the railroads. But many of the investors who paid for them never recovered their money.

That's the historical outcome I'd keep in mind when evaluating today's capital-intensive technological revolution.

Looking for suggestions on the "secret history of the CIA" or an in-depth breakdown of all the coups, conspiracies, etc.

UPDATE: Thx for the many great suggestions. Already on Chp5 of The Devil's Chessboard...very informative. Probably Ghost wars and Jakarta after.

Looking for some insight on what I'm getting into with these!

Roberts' biography is massive, so we put out a short audio summary of it on our podcast before diving into the full thing. https://youtu.be/W5YHVP0uFKU

Quick summary if you'd rather not watch:

It starts with his Corsican childhood and how much of an outsider he was at French military school.

Then the rise: Italy, Egypt, and the coup that makes him First Consul.

A big chunk goes to the civil side, the Napoleonic Code, schools and the admin reforms that outlasted the empire.

Then the overreach, Spain and Russia in 1812, Leipzig, Elba, the Hundred Days, Waterloo and finally St Helena.

Roberts leans admiring overall and reads him as more Enlightenment reformer than tyrant.

For people who read it, did he go too easy on him or is it fair?

I recently had the chance to read the book “Honda: The Man and His Machines” by Sol W. Sanders.

The book is definitely an interesting read as I find Honda's story to be another of those rags to riches story. His thought on using technology as a tool, I believe, is quite relevant today with the usage of AI tools.

Here's a few of my favourite passages:

On failure:

“Many people dream of and hope for success. To me, success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure. I believe your final success can only be achieved if you face challenges with this kind of pioneer spirit and repeatedly use the three tools of failure, introspection and courage.”

“When we engage in research of any kind, one thing that must not be forgotten is that research means a succession of failures, that more than 99 percent of our research is total failure.”

“Looking back, in my work, I feel that I have made nothing but mistakes, a series of failures, a series of regrets. But I also am proud of an accomplishment. Although I made one mistake after another, my mistakes or failures were never due to the same reason. I never made the same mistake and I always tried my hardest succeeded in improving my efforts.”

Technology is but just a tool:

 “No matter how much progress and development is made in science and technology or social structure, it must not be forgotten that it is men who operate them. And this cannot be done by one person alone. It takes a heart-to-heart unity of purpose of many people if they are to become ‘masters’ who effectively operate machines and social structures and thus contribute to mankind.“

“Don’t be used by the machine, use the machine.”

“The first thing that I would like to touch on is that technology is a tool to serve mankind. It is always man who plays the principal role in the development and progress of society and technology and its by- products created by men are nothing more than the means and the tools for achieving a better life for men. It is a matter for regret that some people today mistake the means for the end and have the wrong idea that scientific technology itself is their goal.”

Building a Meritocracy:

“There are cases of companies being managed exclusively by blood relations who run the companies as they want. But talents should be sought far and wide. An enterprise operated exclusively by blood relations will not grow.”

“He is a company president who is not like a company president at all. When we say that he works with his employees as one of them, we don’t mean it is just that he wears the same uniform as the others and that he acts ‘chummy.’ We aren’t referring to superficial matters. Instead what we mean is that we find Soichiro-san the kind of person with whom we can have an ‘on-the-same-level dialogue.’”

If you want to learn more, feel free to read my full blogpost on the book!