In 2019, I read a total of 67 books, including 65 unique titles, 51 new, 14 re-reads from past years, and 2 re-reads within the year. Reflecting upon the collection, I discern several themes that I hope may also be of some interest to others: Stories, Science, Today’s World, Meaning, and Top New Ideas of the Year.
Warning: long post. I write this first for myself and also for a very few who I know read it. I am late this year due to some sickness and work busy-ness.
Stories, Doug Style, AKA Biography, Memoir, and History
I did not read a single work of fiction in 2019, but immersed myself in true stories: the life and times of several remarkable people by way of biography and memoir, plus some specialized and survey histories.
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela tells the life story of one the most magnanimous figures in all of history. It covers his life up to 1995 after his inauguration as President of South Africa, including his critical role in the resistance to the apartheid regime and 27-year imprisonment that ended in 1990. While he was in prison, I understood him to be a communist terrorist. However, when he was freed, it became obvious that the greatest reconciling leader of modern times had emerged and taken the world stage. Long Walk makes it clear that, as reprehensible as the apartheid regime was, it was strictly amateur in its methods of oppression as compared to the communist and fascist regimes of the 20th century. That in no way detracts from Mandela’s goodness and greatness. The contrast Mandela offers vs. our current climate could not be starker and one can only hope and pray that it be emulated. Mandela died in 2013 and I am very much looking forward to a biography that takes the full measure of the man and his place in history.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight is acclaimed as the best biography to date of a critical figure in the second founding of our country, and one of the great public intellectuals in American history. Douglass’ life spanned the pre-Civil War slave and abolition era, the war itself, reconstruction, and Jim Crow. Blight makes clear that he was a leading and vigorous advocate for the true inner principles of our country for 50 years under conditions that were continually changing and difficult far beyond the experience of 21st century Americans. Like all lives, his had its flaws, but without any doubt, Douglass is one of the great men of American history, and this is a biography worthy of the man.
George Marshall: Defender of the Republic, by David L. Roll is a major new life of the indispensable quiet leader and “organizer of victory” (Churchill) of World War II. Chief of Staff under Roosevelt, and Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman, Marshall was a paragon of character, leadership, and sound judgement across two World Wars and their aftermath.
Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, by Jim Mattis is near the top of the class of the genre of military memoir/leadership books. Mattis was a 4-star Marine General and served as Donald Trump’s first Secretary of Defense. He describes the call to serve as SecDef, but passes over his tenure—in stark contrast to the rest of his career, which is vividly presented with Middle East conflicts back to the First Gulf War, including toppling the Saddam statue in 2003. He has been described as a “warrior monk” and is a great reader of books as indispensable for building the knowledge and perspective required for sound leadership.
Benedict XVI: His Life and Thought, by Elio Guerriero with Foreword by Pope Francis. A major biography one of the most brilliant thinkers, theologians, and spiritual leaders of our time and the history of the Church. Born in Germany, he lived through Nazism, war, and Communism. He was a key player in Vatican II, St. John Paul II’s closest collaborator through nearly all of his pontificate, and then Pope himself. His thoughts and writings are a luminous treasure.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann is a well told true-crime drama set in Northeast Oklahoma in the 1920s. One vignette that caught my interest was the portrayal of loss of way of life and meaning by the Osage Indians as they transitioned from their traditional hunter-gatherer ways to a modern lifestyle. That loss was then compounded by (no spoiler here). Their traditional way had its hardships, but embodied a deep-rooted community and required large and varied spheres of competence from all. I found it a fascinating micro-portrait of the losses incurred by people and communities as the need for and viability of their way of life disappears, with its associated web of relationships, skills, competences, and complementarities. We tend to assume that our modern affluent ways are best—and they are in many ways—but we should not gainsay the deep losses associated with relentless change and dislocation that continue to be played out in our fast-changing modern world.
Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story, by John Bloom. A wild and well told globe-spanning story of a massive technological and business mis-adventure that helped destroy one of our great businesses (Motorola) but also yielded a technically unique and valuable system. Bloom’s tale brings together a rich cast of characters developing amazing technology and terrible marketing, and shows the myriad uncertainties and difficulties of doing something new, especially on a large scale. Truth is stranger than fiction.
These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore. An acclaimed one volume history of the United States. Bill Gates put it on his top five list this year. I dissent. The whole thing made me feel dirty. As if the whole American project is illegitimate and unjust and hopelessly tainted by its flaws. It is not that Lepore’s history is false—it is not. It is that it is relentlessly one-sided. It is untouched by empathy for the struggles and limitations of the past, or recognition of or gratitude for its difficult achievements. The United States is not heaven on earth, and never was. Nor is any other place. Feed a generation a diet of only this perspective, and our country is over, because our people will feel it is detestable and unworthy of love. Yes, we have ugly things in our past. So does every other nation, and every person. That is the human condition. Can’t we recognize not just the imperfection but also the good?
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, by David McCullough. A useful counter-weight to Lepore. Not as triumphal as the title, The Pioneers documents the settling of an Ohio town on the north bank of the Ohio River. The struggles and hardships and depredations of the time are all accurately portrayed. The state of my birth was intentionally on the right side of the slavery issue from the start, before the constitution was formed. The tragedy of the encounter of the Indians with the settlers is portrayed, as are Indian massacres of settlers. This is history in full, with all of the difficulty, ambiguity, suffering, and victory.
Fate is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir, by Earnest K. Gann comprises episodic tales of a pioneer of commercial aviation who was then swept into World War II and beyond as a pilot. A Southwest Airlines pilot told me that this is the greatest book on aviation ever written. Each chapter is vividly related in a highly suspenseful manner as he cheats death again and again and again. Dedicated to approximately 400 of his colleagues who were not so favored by fate and who perished in aviation accidents, Gann’s story is a reminder that the conditions of modern life that we take for granted were often very hard won.
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, by Walter Scheidel. Relentlessly cautionary and depressing global history demonstrating that inequality increases with peace and stability as the competent (and lucky or connected) concentrate production and gains, and is decreased only by catastrophe, i.e. mass mobilization warfare, destructive (esp. communist) revolution, state/system collapse, and pandemic disease. It does not matter what system is established—capitalist, communist, etc.—the same magnitude of inequality emerges according to the technical measures. A synthesis of a massive amount of technical scholarship spanning the globe and history, its basic finding seems to me irrefutable and perilous to disregard. What to do with that finding is a complex discussion well beyond the scope of this simple essay.
Science, Biology, and Health
We are truly in a golden age of biology; that is where the action is in science, and my year’s reading reflects that fact.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker is a major contribution to our understanding the significance of one-third of our lives by a leading neuro-scientist and sleep researcher. In fascinating detail, it makes a comprehensive and overwhelmingly convincing case that sleep is the foundation of well-being. I have long believed that within limits (he says writing this while ill!), for most of us, most of the time, our lifestyle choices have great power over our health. Why We Sleep is now IMO the most important popular scientific title on the small bookshelf explaining why, and provides necessary foundation for my previous incumbent in that spot: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Diet, exercise, sleep: Walker is convincing that sleep is the most basic.
Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World, by David Owen is a fascinating exploration of our sense of hearing, how it works, its significance in our lives, and technologies for correcting its loss or absence. In regard to the old dilemma, which would you rather lose, sight or hearing, Owen makes a strong case that hearing is the one to keep. But the mechanisms by which we hear are fragile—much more so than is commonly appreciated—and resist or defy correction. If your hearing or that of someone you love is compromised, you need to know this material. If your hearing is good, you also need to know, so you will take sufficient care of it. Our modern world is truly deafening.
Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, by Alex Berenson offers much needed resistance to the strong trend towards trivialization of marijuana’s effects and its widespread legalization. Berenson focuses on psychosis and violence. At the frontiers of science and psychiatry the emerging evidence is powerful: marijuana usage causes these things in a meaningful fraction of the population. Against the push towards legalization, and the alliance of business, government, and advocacy interests driving it, Tell Your Children is a much-needed counter. I am reminded of a conversation about tobacco smoking that I had with my mother when I was young. Smoking was pervasive and obviously ravaging. She told me that before the Surgeon General report in 1964, people knew that it was bad “for some people”. Now we know it is universally bad. I am sure we are going to find the same thing about marijuana (BTW today’s varieties have a MUCH higher concentration of the psycho-active compounds than those around when I was young). I was disappointed that Berenson made only a passing reference to marijuana’s effects on motivation and drive, and that he did not explore its long-term mental impact. But he clearly chose to focus on psychosis, and the case he presents is strong. I, for one, care too much about my own mind (and lungs) to ever subject them to its effects.
The Haywire Heart: How Too Much Exercise Can Kill You, and What You Can Do to Protect Your Heart, by Chris Case and John Mandrola. I was prompted to read this by the experience of a very fit colleague who is about a decade older than I am, a tri-athlete, and had developed exercised-induced heart arrhythmia. I was curious: what is it, and am I susceptible? My basic answer: very unlikely. The ultra and tri-athlete crowd suffers the syndrome. My personal running distance limit of half-marathon and my cross-training methods appear to place me solidly in the moderate exercise zone. But if my estimation is wrong, now I know the symptoms.
Fast After 50: How to Race Strong for the Rest of Your Life, by Joe Friel. My middle-aged athletic success is every bit as much a mind-game as a physical one. This year’s contribution to my mental toolbox.
Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To, by David Sinclair. A fascinating exploration of scientific research into the mechanisms of aging. Substantial discovery is occurring in this field, and the consequences are not clear. I am not inspired by the author’s quest to use these discoveries to radically extend our lifespans. It seems to me we have our time, we live our purpose, and the time to meet our maker comes. I have no interest in living to 150.
Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution, by Michael Behe. Behe is surely the most despised serious biological scientist in the world. Since 1996, every 10 years or so, he comes out with a book looking at the fundamental mechanisms of life and pointing out some very uncomfortable and inconvenient biochemical facts to the radical materialist consensus. His earlier titles (Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996) (irreducible complexity) and The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Evolution (2007) (survival, yes; arrival, beyond some limit, no)) are still valid and frame his latest. With the advances in genetic science, vast new fields of exploration have opened up. Darwin Devolves looks at genetic mechanisms underlying observed adaptations. It is a relentless picture of corruption and breakage—in a word devolution—and not a hint of creation, or the possibility of creation—of the marvelous mechanisms of life. It has become clear that the fundamental biochemical mechanisms of life are unimaginably intricate and common across known lifeforms. They are also incredibly ancient—at least hundreds of millions if not billions of years. The presumption of biochemical (and evolutionary) continuity between humans and the rest of life is very well established and is now the default position. But the insistence of mainstream science that a creator/designer cannot be considered in any way mystifies me. The radical implausibility of what is—even given the vastness and age of the universe—makes such an act of creation/design, somewhere in time, the high percentage bet, IMO. Life, and its biochemical base, are the most astonishing reality of all. Attempts to discern an underlying order generative of these mechanisms are truly fascinating, such as a title from a few years ago: Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution’s Greatest Puzzle (considered in Darwin Devolves). Ultimately, Occam’s razor takes me to a wondrously sophisticated creator/designer. The spark of the biochemical origin of life would appear one of the two most critical moments, right after the creation of the universe itself. Perhaps the universe’s created order was such that the emergence of biochemical-based life was implicit. That would be even more amazing, and Arrival of the Fittest explores part of that field. By contrast, I find the “just-so stories” of the creation of stunningly complex mechanisms that crudely populate most works in biological science, e.g. Why We Sleep, deeply unsatisfying. I believe that a creator/designer remains the best explanation for what is, although exactly when and how remain the subject of fascinating exploration.
Making Sense of Today’s World
The divisions in our country and communities are alarming, as is the sense of meaninglessness and anxiety. I am interested in the deep underlying societal trends, their nature and components, and possible ways forward. I find the day to day noise of the public conversation very shallow and ignore it as best I can. Books instead of news feeds is a great way to do this!
More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next, by Andrew McAfee. A new book by an MIT professor that gets an astonishing array of things right about economics, environment, concentration, disconnection, and our collective challenges. What works and what doesn’t. What must be dealt with going forward. Deeply concerned with global warming. Paradigm setting in the best way, “More from Less” immediately leaps to the head of the list of important titles in its fields, and should be read upstream of more specialized titles. This is what social and techno-optimism looks like today.
Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, by Mary Eberstadt. This is a sophisticated global analysis of the fallout of the transition from large family/kinship-based societies to small/broken families and chosen relationships. This transition basically happened yesterday, vs. countless millennia in the prior state. I think Eberstadt’s thesis has greater explanatory power than any other that I have encountered for the current cultural situation, and the pervasive sense across the spectrum that something is wrong and we are deeply unhappy. It closes with a mini-symposium of commentaries by three other writers offering divergent perspectives on the book’s argument. This is pure description, no prescription or hand-wringing. Like somebody said, half of getting the problem right is getting the right problem…
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, by Darrell Bricker and Ibbitson. This is a bad book that gets a major trend right. It surveys the world examining population trends and concludes that global population is going to peak much sooner and much lower (~9 billion around 2050) and then fall much more rapidly than is conventionally assumed. The inevitability of that trend, if not the exact quantification, should be apparent to anyone with even the most passing awareness birth rate trends around the world, the effects of urbanization and education on fertility, the collapse of religiosity, etc. Aging/collapsing population will be the major global trend in the second half of this century. This book is very sanguine about it all; I am not—failure to have children at the current scale reflects the deepest form of despair and lack of hope about life and its meaning. The often fascinating and always voluminous non-fiction book reviewer Charles, who is a distinctive conservative voice and was an Amazon top-100 reviewer until they banished him from the platform, has a particularly cogent critique here that is worth reading instead of the book, if you are interested in this topic.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff. I really wanted to like this. It has a great title; a phrase we need to capture a problem we have. I even gave it a second listen after I had absorbed all of her weird jargon and frameworks to see if I could get it more fully. Alas, it was worse the second time around. Use the title; don’t waste your time on the book.
Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream, by Jonathan Gruber, Simon Johnson. This offers a creative approach to using public policy to develop place-based counters to the current excesses of concentration and disconnection (i.e. big rich coastal cities win, others lose). Its history is instructive and I can attest to its veracity, as much of it involves my professional field as well as my personal interests.
The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for Renewal of Work in America, by Oren Cass. This is based on the thesis that meaningful work is central and crucial for flourishing communities and explores possibilities for an economics that provides greater emphasis on the welfare of the worker vs. the consumer.
The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, by Ben Shapiro. This is sharp, brisk, and accurate primer covering what used to be the core content of a liberal education, before “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Culture’s Got to Go” and related forces eliminated it. It basically takes “Jerusalem and Athens” as the foundation point and walks through the history of the intellectual and moral development in the West. Admirably concise and complete, it is well worth reading, and a useful antidote to pervasive mis-education about our history and tradition.
The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform, by George Weigel.A fresh synthesis of how the Catholic Church encountered the modern world over the past three centuries and adapted its teaching to the radical changes in the human condition that developed. This is a story of continual and uneven struggle and adaptation that ultimately produced the greatest body of thought and principles on how humans and societies should live in all of history. It will give you the gist of the process and content, and a multitude of references for going deeper. Ends on a mournful note as these riches are tainted and hidden by the sex abuse scandal. A revelatory work of revisionist history.
Finding Meaning in Life
Interior Freedom, by Jacques Phillipe. A short modern spiritual masterpiece on true, deep freedom, in the face of the realities of life, suffering, limitation, and God. A favorite meditation of mine especially when I am on retreat at the White House and have the time and setting to go deep.
Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times—A Conversation with Peter Seewald and Last Testament: In His Own Words, by Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald. After reading the Benedict XVI biography mentioned above, I wanted more. The most accessible, wide ranging, and engaging approach to Benedict that I know of is his interview books. There are four in the past 30+ years; Peter Seewald is his interlocuter in three of the four, including these two. Light of the World was published in the middle of his papacy, and Last Testament well into his retirement. These conversations are, like all of Benedict’s thoughts and writing—wonderfully lucid, luminous, and penetrating.
Digital Minimalism: Chosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, by Cal Newport. A useful book about intentionally employing digital tools to enhance our lives, rather than letting them become a subversive cancer. These tools aren’t going away; we must assert control over them if they are to be a net good individually and collectively.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, by Jordan Peterson. Mid-year, during a time when work was especially complex and intense, I went back to these familiar titles, as I lacked the energy for new books. Did they stand up to my initial assessment? Yes! I see Peterson as a sort of secular prophet for our time. Or, like I said last year, the dad that everybody needs telling the real and hard truths about life, the world, and meaning. He is a psychologist and fundamentally oriented to the individual, and how the individual best flourishes, i.e. how to live a good life. I take this to be an ultimately religious question. Peterson’s own belief in God is ambiguous, and I think on the side of non-belief. But he nonetheless is a bridge to religious perspectives for those who can’t believe, because his multi-disciplinary, fundamentally scientific approach includes taking evil and the religious stories of civilization seriously. 2018 was a triumph for Peterson as his life’s work reached a hungry global audience; 2019 was a trial as his wife suffered near-fatal cancer and surgery, and he fell into depression. I also followed his podcast through the year for easy listening vs. books. Most of the episodes were recordings of lectures from his “12 Rules for Life Tour” of 2018 and early 2019 where he spoke to ~300,000 people in nearly 150 cities around the world. Each is a unique extemporaneous development of his thought, and most are brilliant. I predict he will eventually convert to Catholicism.
Standout New Ideas of the Year
More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next, by Andrew McAfee. The single best book I know of in the fields of economics, environment, and the macro material challenges global civilization faces. Realistic and optimistic.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker. Fascinating new popular science explaining the nature and value of the hidden 1/3 of our lives that is essential for well-being. You owe it to yourself to know and appreciate this material.
Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World, by David Owen. A whole volume of fresh and fascinating perspective on a sense that is central to life, that we take for granted until we can’t. You also owe it to yourself to know this so you can take care of your own hearing and those you love whose hearing is compromised.
Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, by Alex Berenson. Necessary sense and facts speaking against a powerful trend. Our neighboring state, Illinois, just joined the legalization bandwagon. The facts will eventually force us to confront the delusions of this movement.
Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, by Mary Eberstadt. Why are so many today unhappy, anxious, depressed, nihilistic, and feeling meaningless? Perhaps the most powerful explanatory thesis I have found.
The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform, by George Weigel. Best for last. If I could do a PhD on the meaning of life and how to people and societies can best live well in the circumstances that have developed, I would use this as the basic map and have more avenues for going deep than I could possibly explore.