Previous years
COMPLETED (short summaries below)
“John Tyler” By Gary May
rating: N/A
“Origin Story” By David Christian
rating: 3 stars
“The Radical King” words of Martin Luther King Jr., organized and edited by Cornel West
rating: 3 stars
“Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963” by Martin Luther King Jr.
rating: 3 stars
“Artemis” by Andy Weir
rating: N/A
“Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah
rating: 3 stars
“Everybody Lies” By Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
rating: 1 star
Overview and next year goal
I read six books this year, which is far short of the ten I read in 2017 and the 24-book goal I set in the beginning of the year, but it’s ok. I read multiple three star books this year, according to my scale below.
I hope to pick up the pace in 2019. I’m not going to set a number like I did last year, but I will hope to read more in general.
IN PROGRESS
“Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America” By Walter R. Borneman
“Leonardo Da Vinci” By Walter Isaacson
SHORT SUMMARIES
John Tyler – By Gary May
Rating: N/A
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
John Tyler was not a good President. His time in office was filled with many firsts, derived mostly from happenstance. The first president to: ascend to the Office upon the death of a President, be excommunicated by his own party, have a wife die in office, (re)marry in office, have a congressional override of a veto, avoid seeking a second term, and the most distinct honor of all, the first (and only) US President to support and serve for the Confederate States of America. If those are the highlights for a President’s term, you know you’re dealing with a bad one.
Tyler’s biggest presidential accomplishment was the annexation of Texas. His predecessors weighed on this issue hesitantly; Tyler pulled the trigger. Tyler thought his legacy would be cemented with annexation. Instead, it added more kindling for the fire and the fractious drumbeat for Civil War. And later in life, when it came to his stance on that terrible war, he initially advocated for compromise between north and south, but ultimately supported Virginia secession and was elected to the Confederacy’s provisional Congress. Take that in for a second, a former US president supporting and serving the Confederacy.
What else did he do? Let’s see–piss off his own party by his stance on a national bank, issue a bunch of vetoes in Jacksonian style, sign an anti-impressment treaty with Great Britain, establish the Tyler Doctrine to expand American influence in the Pacific.
But none of this, Texas aside, was historically noteworthy, and even with Texas, Tyler wasn’t around to deal with the hard consequences of annexation.
That’s basically it. Boring dude. Bad president.
Origin Story – By David Christian
Rating: 3 stars
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
On the surface, this book attempts a big task: to tell the story of the Universe, and ultimately the biological and social evolution of humans. A story from the Big Bang to the end of the Universe. Of course, the book is more nuanced than that. The real idea is to build a unified view, rooted in science, of how everything, including us, originated. Hopefully, that common understanding will establish a starting platform from which science-based decisions and polices can be made. Thus, the name for the book and also the underlying Big History Project.
The themes of Origin Story are important. From the human perspective, if we don’t understand our origin, based on science and facts, then the ignorance that creeps in could ultimately distract and destroy our ability to sustain as a species. In a larger sense, the origin story told here is humbling too–it give us a very real understanding that our mere existence in space and time is fleeting.
And yet, whether we know this or not, we go through our lives with a remarkable ability to understand our place in all of it. This is incredibly profound. And we have developed cognitive tricks (like language, knowledge sharing, culture, social customs) to change our evolutionary trajectory faster than our biology ever would allow.
My take away from this book, and others read recently, is that culture matters. And a culture rooted in science and scientific inquiry may be the only path forward for our sustained existence.
I’ll stop short of saying that this is a must read; however the information contained within it is a must know.
The Radical King – Words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Organized and Edited by Cornel West
Rating: 3 stars
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
What can I really say in 272 words? Read this book. It will change your perspective.
It’s an impossible task to summarize Dr. King’s words. So instead of doing that, just some random thoughts:
-Cornel West has a theory that King has been mythologized and “Santa Claus-ified.” To the point where his own words today have been scrubbed so clean that they have separated from the underlying message and can be used even by those, ignorantly or deliberately, who entirely ignore King’s larger points. I have been guilty of that, quoting MLK because the words sound nice. But this is the first time that I have truly listened to what he had to say.
-West’s thesis in putting together this collection is to demonstrate King’s “Gandhian” view of radical love–direct action to unconditionally oppose injustice while maintaining unconditional love for the active and passive oppressors instituting these injustices.
-King’s evolution on radical love ebbed and flowed with human feelings of victory and defeat. His optimism is clear in many speeches, and his resignations also become clear too, particularly toward the end of his life.
-I’m now not surprised at how controversial King was during the Civil Rights Era. He posed a threat to the status quo. He lost his life because of that. His movement represented a tangible mechanism to awaken the country’s collective soul, at a time in American History when society was most susceptible to awakening. His message of economic and social transformation started with the struggle of African Americans, but if fully implemented, would have likely spoken for all Americans who had been subjugated or marginalized.
-Read this book.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963 – By Martin Luther King Jr.
Rating: 3 stars
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
In a newspaper, smuggled into Dr. King’s jail cell, eight clergymen wrote a statement against his protests in Birmingham. King responded, writing in the newspaper margins, with his open letter. The result is one of the most important documents of the Civil Rights Movement.
In this letter, King defines and defends direct action. The most impactful lesson, for me, is how King ties broad philosophical themes together and places the social and economic justice movement as the next step of a global, biblical, historical, and uniquely American journey towards freedom. His philosophy of direct action is simple enough to allow people to participate immediately. His thoughts aren’t lost in the theoretical; they apply in the real world.
Dr. King promotes an assertive case for a movement too often seen as being only passivist in character. His movement was nonviolent and passivist, but it was not passive. It was active civil disobedience. Dr. King defends the urgency of his words, casting his crusade for justice as applicable for oppressors and oppressed alike. King’s belief is that direct action elicits a tension in the collective social mind and soul, and through this tension, justice wins in the long run. But, I don’t believe Dr. King sees his movement’s success as inevitable or guaranteed. Instead, he believes that the immediacy of civil disobedience can lead to this inevitability. In other words, Dr. King’s words stand on the pedestal of his long moral arc, but they are meant as a call to action in the here and in the now against injustice. I think that aspect of Dr. King’s legacy was lost on me until now.
Artemis – By Andy Weir
Rating: N/A
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
This is the first fiction book I have reviewed.
I really enjoyed The Martian, probably one of my favorite books in recent memory. Artemis was entertaining, but I couldn’t pull many broad themes from it. Maybe everything doesn’t need to have a bigger theme, though, and when I keep that perspective in mind, the book was enjoyable. It tells the story of life on a Moon colony through the eyes of a blue collar worker wrapped in a get rich quick scheme. The main takeaway I had from this is how visions of a not so distant future still will have elements that make humans humans: power, corruption, economics, race, culture, religion, etc.
It was interesting to think that a future society on a moon colony will still have the hallmarks and deficiencies of life on earth.
Not quite The Martian, not really enough for a “star” on my scale, but I’m glad I read it for what it was.
Born a Crime – By Trevor Noah
Rating: 3 stars
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
I was surprised to give three stars to this book. Not to indict Noah’s relevancy or importance. Instead, I saw this biography as an opportunity to understand a life perspective told with an interesting voice.
But this book resonated deeply. Trevor Noah speaks with a level of sincerity about his upbringing in South Africa–not to cast his story as a rags to riches rise, but rather to provide an honest window into a life raised post-Apartheid. His story is an allegory, of the absurd racial constructs that make his legal race unclassifiable, to the confines and pleasures of life in South Africa, to the stories of childhood that are simultaneously universally relatable, culturally specific, and uniquely individual. He tells his story in a way to ask both the big questions and small questions at the same time.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot of what stories my young daughter will have from her childhood—and how to make her experiences real and relevant for the world in front of her. My lesson from this book: there are joys, sorrows, wins and losses, in every life lived, and it’s the background culture and society that makes those stories interesting and expansive. Take the lessons from your own life, and apply it to your personal philosophy, but understand that the narrative for your children is mostly out of your control. Noah speaks poetically of his mother, whose life knew struggles different than his own, but who’s influence undoubtedly impacted his own quest to find himself. Perhaps this is a three star because it echoes some stories told within my own family.
Everybody Lies – By Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Rating: 1 star
SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less):
This book focuses on big data analysis. How large data sets enable a more honest view into human trends. The author theorizes four virtues of big data: (1) size; (2) honesty; (3) unique segmentation opportunities; and (4) untapped data sources. As a main example, the author’s theory is that people type into Google things they otherwise would not reveal in public, and the database size allows us to learn more revealing tendencies in population segments.
I think this is an important book. The underlying theories are interesting, and big data analysis already impacts most aspects of our lives. For example, A/B testing keeps you on that app or website just a little longer than you otherwise would stay. It’s important to understand these assumptions.
The book seems to follow two threads. One is the specific trends that are observed from big data analysis. You can read about them below, the most interesting to me was the doppelgänger analysis. The second involves the virtues of big data analysis itself. It’s here where I have some comments, not doubts, on the assumptions. Can the analysis become self fulfilling? After reading this, I see big data sets as a land rush that’s soon ending. As data companies consolidate into larger data sets, is there room for other sets come into existence? Or, are we starting from a limited number of sources to determine trends, theories, etc., and then perpetuating those prophecies. In other words, if Google is a starting point, is there room for another Google-like data source, years down the line, to update the resulting conclusions? Do we stop buying strawberry pop tarts?
Book Summaries. Less than 272 words. 
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