• Author: Michael Connelly 
• Fiction      Crime

Larson is a reliable read when you have an appetite for a new look at history, grounded in fact but with a depth of insight that blurs the line between research and re-imagining. The Splendid and the Vile is an interesting intersection in time between when Churchill became Prime Minister and when the US officially joined the war against Germany. Churchill is a portrayed as quite decadent while still having a good understanding of the stakes and the experience of his countrymen. A good read and a reminder that historical events often rested on a knife's edge, although they appear predictable in retrospect.

• Author: Erik Larson
• Nonfiction      History

One of Ezra Klein’s best of 2023 list (and many others). It provides a great history of the progress in building semi-conductors and up to the current environment. It’s really striking to understand the position of TSMC as well as how critical chips are to global security. The US military superiority is underwritten by chips and if US loses it’s lead, it will invite others to disrupt the world order.

• Author: Chris Miller
• Nonfiction      Business

Recommended by Austin covering a topic close to my heart. As I don’t drive myself, I can be overly critical of cars but I have to point out that while not everyone can choose to live a walkable life as I do, the USA clearly has provided some terrible incentives that pushed us into cars. The impact of cars on our costs (both personal and government), our health, our environment and even the houses we can build are striking. This book focuses on these choices and provides stories of people who are working to fight them to build a more reasonable future, not necessarily with less cars, but by better utilizing space so that we consider the impact of our parking laws and make them more responsive to actual demand for parking.

• Author: Henry Grabar
• Nonfiction      Politics

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

Book gifted by Dad. Interesting profile of a legend, who, like all legends, was a human with his own complicated history. I enjoyed learning about the time period and hearing about the great players of the age and their places in baseball history. In regards to Mantle, I took away that he was a gifted athlete, and the type of character that can’t help but give 110% when committed, although it is impossible to stay committed at that level. I loved the analysis of his swing and how there was such a violence in its execution, using his whole body and to extent wrecking his knee through the full body force. Recommended.

• Author: Jane Leavy
• Nonfiction      Culture

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

I can’t recall which book on corruption recommended this book to me, but it was on my list and I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I found this a frustrating read as the book was more about the author becoming a whistleblower rather than the intricacies of Swiss Banking (in short, every numbered account was pared with a disclosed account and access to the information to link the numbered accounts to actual people was highly safeguarded). I found it very difficult to like the author, who shows himself to be incredibly arrogant as well as an unreliable narrator of events. If anything, it’s a reminder why whistleblower awards are controversial- they are effective but also compensate sources that were culpable in the crime. Despite having uncensored in the title, he mentions that he personally provided a list of 19,000 names of Americans with numbered Swiss Accounts to the DOJ and that only 4500 were ever made public because political machinations. However, he also goes out of his way to name drop a few with tenuous connections to Democrats, even with a strange aside about Hunter Biden. In the end, Birkenfeld was integral as a whistleblower and there is likely an interesting story to be told about it, however it appears like the subject is too unreliable to do it himself.

• Author: Bradley C. Birkenfeld
• Nonfiction      True Crime

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

One of Theroux’s earlier travelogues, taking place in 1978 as he hops a train from Boston to connect all the way down to the Patagonia. I enjoy these books, both for the escapism of traveling to new and exotic locales, as well as a time portal at seeing how life was like nearly 50 years ago.

• Author: Paul Theroux
• Nonfiction      Travel

• Author: Lee Child
• Fiction      Crime

• Author: Lee Child
• Fiction      Crime

Recommended in the Economist, the author compares the brief meeting between two of the most influential philosophers of their time, Leibniz and Spinoza. Although living very different lives, with Leibniz seeking riches among kings and Spinoza living modestly grinding lenses in his Amsterdam flat, both saw through the religious dogma in the era, transforming man’s relationship with God. A good profile of two important historical figures, their philosophies and the late 17th century.

• Author: Matthew Stewart
• Nonfiction      Philosophy

I learned about this book from the Odd Lots Podcast and found the author’s views interesting. With a background in civil engineering, Marohn explains how American city planning is centered around cars to the detriment of other transportation, the community and even the drivers of cars themselves. One brief insight was the idea that there are roads and streets, with streets being a place for the community and businesses, and roads being the method to get there. Think “Main Street” and “Rail Roads”. This was the traditional way of building prior to the 1930s until we started embracing “Stroads” which are not fit to build a community around nor a good way to get where you needed to go. Recommended.

• Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
• Nonfiction      Politics

The precursor to “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer”, the author focuses on how successful cities have been built iteratively and effectively through human history up until the advent of cars, after which we decided to throw out all that wisdom. Increasingly, city planners are constrained by rules where the goal is to take every building, every street to an end, finished state rather than start by building small, seeing what works and expanding. If you every deployed LEAN in project management, similar to that.

• Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
• Nonfiction      Politics

Part of a beer package sent by Cliff. Cells was an important brewer in Hoegaarden and then brought the beloved Belgian Witbeer from his hometown to Austin, Texas in the early 90s and was an important part of the nascent craft beer scene. It’s a good, short history, showing how one can make a large impact in a small world with a bit of passion in your craft.

• Author: Jeremy Banas
• Nonfiction      Food and Drink

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

• Author: Michael Connelly
• Fiction      Crime

I’ve read other Sanderson Books (Mistborn, Wax & Wayne) and my friend has been recommending this series for years. However, Gonzalo’s 2023 reading list was the final push to get me started. Longer fantasy stories generally have longer windups and as this series is nearly 6000 pages this meant that it took about 600 pages until you started to really feel part of the world. Just life on a barren plateau, launching random battles against a mysterious foe over and over again. While clearly well written, it takes some effort to stick with it until the momentum builds and the main storylines present themselves, after which you end the book wanting more and going out and buying the next book.

• Author: Brandon Sanderson
• Fiction      Fantasy

I was familiar with Urban’s writing style and find it both original and entertaining. The beginning of the book was unrecognizably his style, although the first two chapters where he laid out his framework were a bit plodding, like it was for teenagers. It picked up a bit of steam as he applied to his framework to the current discourse, both on the right and left. If the book stopped there, I would’ve been more complimentary. For some reason, his editor was unable to control him and he spent the next 200 pages going example over example over his bete’ noire, Social Justice Fundamentalism (SJF), trying to display it’s pervasiveness in society and it’s dangers. Being familiar with some of the examples, it was clear he was shoe-horning far too many examples into this theory, losing the playfulness and open-mindedness usually apparent in his writing. While the previous chapters did encourage me to look deeper into SJF and its dangers to our discourse, the last chapter almost undone his previous argument as I left no longer trusting the author.

• Author: Tim Urban
• Nonfiction      Politics

Subtitled “When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It” I heard about this book on a podcast and it called out to me as I sometimes feel like I am never doing well enough. While I don’t have material wants, I feel like a higher degree of success is expected, perhaps driven by on the current emphasis on hustle culture. While this book covers some of those topics, the book is less about how I was raised as a millennial, but more about how Gen Z was raised and how we can be better for our children. As such, more a parenting book than a self-help book. There are lots of good recommendations, but three that really stuck with me is 1) Give praise for who your kid is (i.e. values, relationships), not their achievements, 2) seek strong adult role models for you children (i.e. community) 3) show excitement to seeing your child

• Author: Jennifer Wallace
• Nonfiction      Science

Since having my son, I’ve taken to embracing some of my childhood hobbies, such as comics. This is a good book I found at a used bookstore that profiles the comic industry from the mid 1930s through the early 1960s, which is often regarded as the Golden Age of Superheroes. While present in other countries, the USA really embraced the format and these larger than life figures, arising out of mythology and perhaps a reflection of the culture of the time coming out of the Great Depression and into WWII.

• Author: Nicky Wright
• Nonfiction      Culture

Another 1100 pages, mostly still on the Plateaus however Sanderson continues to build the world and bring excitement.

• Author: Brandon Sanderson
• Fiction      Fantasy

In 2023, the book Red Shirts was one of my favorite books of the years so I tried another from the author. It is very much the same writing style and similar to Red Shirts, includes an awareness of Sci-Fi popular culture. As opposed to Sanderson who builds worlds, Scalzi is taking our world with just a subtle twist and makes an adventure out of it in 200 pages. I enjoyed this one about accessing an alternative earth where Kaiju (i.e. Godzilla-like) roam free but require some zookeeping to avoid that they are able to cross over to our earth.

• Author: John Scalzi
• Fiction      Sci-Fi

A suggestion from the NYTimes best books of 2023, this is about the origins of 9/11. The author explains the key plotters, their backgrounds and influences as well as how close the CIA and FBI were to uncovering the plot, if not impeded by inter-agency territoriality. While not apologizing for the plotters, the author tries to explain their motivations, mainly being from repressive places with a feeling of humiliation (for their station, for the Arab people, etc). They justify their actions via the Quran, but the author points out that murder is a major sin in Islam in all cases, particularly against another believer. The terrorists twist this by focusing on the believer part and then justifying that anybody that doesn’t follow their specific version of Islam is not a true believer. It proves that no matter how clear a direction may be, there will be always be evil, there are cynical bastards that will control the ignorant into believing the exact opposite.

• Author: Lawrence Wright
• Nonfiction      Geopolitics

Off the plateaus! Sorry, I won’t spoil any more of the story. We spend a lot more time in the larger world that Sanderson has referenced in the prior books in the series while the mysteries of the plot and the characters start to further take shape.

• Author: Brandon Sanderson
• Fiction      Fantasy

Subtitled "Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?", Light-hearted look at the movement and difficulties to creating a settlement on Mars. The authors write in a style where they are a character in their own story, themselves learning about the movement and trying to understand the different arguments for such a vision as well as how to organize such a mission. They also walk through all the challenges that such a settlement would present, starting with the fact that it’s unclear whether humans can even survive, nonetheless thrive off of earth for any period of time. Enjoyable book and learned a lot.

• Author: Kelly Weinersmith
• Nonfiction      Science

Another 1200 pages and one book closer to the end of the (part 1) of this epic series. I am still impressed by this monstrous undertaking and each book has its own core storyline which is resolved by the final page while also weaving together related mysteries of the world and its characters. Part of it is scale, with each book taking a wider view of the world, but I like how each story dovetails back to the unanswered questions from prior stories. I’ll be interested in book 5 whether Sanderson can really pull it altogether, or if there will be some storylines left hanging.

• Author: Brandon Sanderson
• Fiction      Fantasy

Dropped off Gonzalo. A good, quick read. While parts of it are formulaic, there are some good twists and turns that almost resets your understanding of the story and where it’s going. It falls into the “multiverse” genre, so also be prepared for a lot of unanswered questions as well as logical inconsistencies.

• Author: Blake Crouch
• Fiction      Sci-Fi

I am really happy I read this. Epic in scope, the author really wants you to understand all the discoveries, figures and historical background that led to the invention of the atomic bomb. As such, the beginning starts with a lot of physics as well as biographies of scientists which may read a bit slow but which really sets up the later story as World War II heats up and there is a race to complete the bomb before the adversaries and the end of the war. It is really fascinating the leaps and bounds in understanding of the atom that came about in the first half of the twentieth century, with great minds building upon each other in true international collaboration. Only after the war began, all these relationships were split, with each nation’s scientists in their own race for their country. A common understanding was that the knowledge was already out there, so a bomb was inevitable, it was only a question of when it would be ready and who wield. It. The end wraps up with a background of the considerations over dropping the two bombs on Japan with some interesting discussion on whether such a choice could have been avoided.

• Author: Richard Rhodes
• Nonfiction      Science

Enjoyable and digestible read on one of history’s most impactful historical figures. The author is clearly dedicated to the topic, thirsty to learn more about Genghis and his historical environment which we learn was either forgotten or kept secret by political actors. I enjoyed reading about the time period and tactics of the Great Khan, although there was an imbalance, with more time spent on early power struggles and less time spent on later conquests.I also struggled that the author felt the need to be an apologist for the destruction the Mongols unleashed. Perhaps he was trying to fight what he felt were overly critical views of barbarity, however it appeared at times that he was explaining how Genghis was both honorable and benevolent while also being merciless, willing to win by any means necessary. One insight I took away was the contribution of the Black Death to the Mongol empire - I was aware of the political upheaval it caused in Europe but did not appreciate the worldwide change it created.

• Author: Jack Weatherford
• Nonfiction      History

Number 62 on the Guardian’s best 100 books of the 20th century. Written in 1939, this was Chandler’s first novel, a very raw detective noir story. The main character is a private investigator, with a dry wit and “tough as nails” persona. He verbally spars with femme fatals and members of the LA underworld as he finds out who is blackmailing his client and stumbles into a murder investigation. A really great book and likely reverberates in many of the detective novels and movies we are so familiar with today.

• Author: Raymond Chandler
• Fiction      Crime

There is a complaint I’ve heard that the many tech billionaires can ignore the negative impacts of their companies as they can use their wealth to isolate themselves from these harms. Whether it is creating social unrest or damaging the environment, they have their bunkers built so that they can escape if society really does fall apart. In “The Future”, the author explores such a reality. The book’s tone echos Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, creating tech leaders and platforms that are futuristic while also immediately recognizable as a satire on our current tech leaders. I enjoyed some of the twists and turns in the book, although the social commentary is hitting a bit close to home at the moment just after Trump’s 2024 victory.

• Author: Naomi Alderman
• Fiction      Apocalyptic