By Nicholas Haberling

The problem with reading a bunch of books is that sometimes people ask what’s my favorite book of the year. When you read or listen to 39 books in a year it’s difficult to mentally shuffle through all of them at the spur of the moment. Especially if you are like me and have a scattershot of interests. Which is really why I put together this 3,000 word review of all the books I read this year. These reviews are not in depth. Though I’ll include a traditional 1-5 star review I only provide a flavor of the book and maybe some commentary. And since I write primarily for my own enjoyment it’s just enough to fire up my neurons when reflecting on 2021 and maybe enough to inspire someone to read one of the below titles.

Biographies/History

Looking at this list I am left with the impression that On Writing by Stephen King is out of place. It’s a decent read about King’s history and philosophy on writing but doesn’t feel at home in any of the categories I split my reading list into. It’s well written and motivating, but you could summarize the main lesson as, “the only way to get better at writing is to write.”

 The House of Morgan is an extensive history of the various JP Morgan companies from the early 19th century to 1990 or so. A common occurrence when reading history books, especially those about a specific subject, is they often intersect with world events or figures in ways you hadn’t thought of. I didn’t realize British capital still sought investment in the United States just decades after the Revolutionary War until I read this book. Plus there is countless fun with banking crises, economic development, political intrigue, and the expanding involvement of the federal government in the banking system.

The British Empire made the list twice this year with The Splendid and the Vile and Empire. The Splendid and the Vile was recommended to me by multiple people this year. It’s a fast-paced overview of Winston Churchill’s leadership and experience during the Battle of Britain. Though the focus is on Churchill, we also follow his close associates and the British people under siege. Empire was a game changer. I suspect when most Americans think of the British Empire we think of the Revolutionary War, maybe the War of 1812, then the British did something in Africa, and then we join up in two World Wars. It’s a very US centric view filled with decades long gaps. After reading Empire I think the British cared more about India than they ever did about the US. At least until World War II.

Like many people the past couple of years I found myself wanting to read more African American history. But “in the moment” history instead of modern commentary. I don’t think I could have picked more different autobiographies in tone. Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery was inspiring in his sense of optimism and industriousness. That said, I was surprised that Washington’s didn’t challenge the South more in his writing or speeches. Malcolm X on the other hand had no problem challenging anyone and anything. Looking back, I find myself conflicted when thinking about Malcolm X and his book. I imagine that’s because he fits within the prophet archetype: was an objectively immoral person in his youth (Malcolm X said this many times) who then found redemption before telling unpopular truths to society. You can disagree with Malcolm X’s suggestions on how to move society forward but I don’t think you can argue with his depiction of American society at the time.

Last of the biographies and histories is George Marshall. Dan Carlin of Hardcore History once said he imagines geopolitics as a giant chess board where leaders get to make a couple moves, are escorted off stage by time or elections, and then the next set of leaders have to join mid-game. George Marshall is a huge player in why modern America is well positioned mid-game on the chess board. I’m not sure modern bureaucracies or politics would allow someone like Marshall to lead today, but America owes him a lot.

Business/Work/Finance and Economics

This category is a little muddled because I include books that pertain to my work in mergers and acquisitions for a regional trust company. Part of that includes studying for the Chartered Financial Analyst Level 2 exam. I count these five books and the Standards and Ethics since there is a lot of reading and with the example problems it takes much longer to go through them than a typical book. Building a Story Brand is a good book for digital lead to client conversion. Ask is a sales book on how to interact with prospects once a conversation is started. If I had to boil it down, I’d say ask questions, listen more, and talk less. The Financial Advisor M&A Guidebook is focused on the operations side of integrating two companies. The last of the business books was Zero to One which is a compilation of lectures given at Stanford by Peter Thiel. There is a lot of good information in this book especially if you want to join start-up world. Since I work at a closely held private company in banking and wealth management I’d say the lessons I took away were to stay creative, competition is overrated, and always be on the lookout for where you can have outsized profits for the longest amount of time possible.

One of the benefits of borrowing books is you sometimes get a glimpse into the past or the owner’s way of thinking. In this case I found an Amazon receipt from October 2001 within my father’s copy of Myths of Rich and Poor. What a time to reflect on! Just a month after 9/11, the tech bubble not too far in the rearview mirror, and Amazon being a simple internet book retailer. Things have changed. What has not changed? Our concerns about inequality. The general argument of the authors against those overly concerned about inequality is that we are all better off as of the late 90s/early 2000s even if income and wealth disparity has widened. It looks like people were talking about the same things 20 years ago that are discussed on Twitter and YouTube today. I’m sure many of the facts and figures have changed between now and when Myths of Rich and Poor was written but sometimes it’s a good reminder that our current woes and conversations aren’t that original.

And that may be the theme of these next couple of books. Both The Money Game and The Psychology of Money deal with the mental aspect of building wealth primarily in public markets. The Money Game was a fun read with its sarcasm, hilarity, anecdotal stories from the 1960s, and still accessible English. In a sense it was retreading familiar territory in a way that was just different enough to make it a treat. The Psychology of Money was widely celebrated in the financial planning community and rightfully so. But it just wasn’t for me. I felt the same way about Jordan Petersen’s 12 Rules for Life. If you have had little exposure to financial planning or didn’t grow up in a disciplined household, I imagine both books are revolutionary. I’d still give them as gifts and have recommended them to people! It’s just dependent on where someone is in their journey (I guess all gifts and recommendations should be like that).

The last book for this section is Raised Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. Written by an employee at a multi-family office (families with $20 million+ in wealth) it provides case studies on how these families raised children who can persevere and succeed without relying on their family’s money. The philosophy is not revolutionary but I imagine the tactics are important especially when I reflect on becoming a dad in 2022. How do you tell someone you love “no” and watch them struggle through their challenges in a world of abundance or when you could solve the problem for them? I think the Bible said something about not sparing the rod when it comes to raising kids. Giving people the luxury to shirk their way through life’s problems might fall under that category.

When I started writing this section I didn’t intend for it to become a reflection on how there are very few new ideas and plenty of re-stylized ones, but speaking of recycled ideas I found this on Twitter today. I haven’t read Cicero’s work so no claims on the accuracy but does this sound like a more eloquent and measured version of conservative policy?

Make Rome Great Again? The Mussolini version of that project failed but I think it’s striking that Cicero and presumably other Romans wouldn’t be too foreign to our modern way of thinking.

Current Events/Religion/Science/Philosophy

Out of the four science books I read this year it’s a toss-up between Project Orion and The Lion in the Living Room for my favorite. Nuclear explosion propelled space craft or the common housecat? Both are awe inspiring. For those not in the know, Orion was a project in the 1950s and 60s to explore the feasibility of designing a spacecraft that would travel the stars via nuclear explosions. The conventional explosive tests demonstrated the idea was possible but it never moved on from the lab testing phase. Who knows if it would have worked since there were (and still are) incredible engineering challenges for this project, but one can imagine an alternate universe where we are already zooming around the solar system instead of waiting patiently for SpaceX’s Starship. The Lion in the Living Room provides an overview of the biology and history of housecats. I think it’s only when you live with cats that you appreciate just how interesting and different they are. I can’t put my finger on why though. Maybe it’s because they look like mini versions of apex predators and we intrinsically know their funny behavior would be terrifying if they were tiger-sized? Perhaps because when I look in my dog’s eyes I see love and when I look in my cat’s eyes I see a mutually beneficial relationship? Regardless, I think housecats read Zero to One since they’ve had outstanding success cooperating with us. House cats will inhabit every environment we do in contrast to their larger peers who have been knocked down several pegs in their competition with humans.

Radical Uncertainty and Leave It As it Is were probably the disappointments of the year. The message of Radical Uncertainty was good! We shouldn’t have an overreliance on value at risk and other probabilistic models since they don’t do a good job at preparing us for outlier events. I just don’t think it was a lesson that needed 300+ pages to hammer home and at the time I had already listened to enough podcasts on this topic.  Leave It As it Is was informative in its review of national park history but weak in its modern commentary. I think the commentary shocked me because I was looking for a book on Teddy Roosevelt and national park history, but not opinions on present government policy. But since it wanted to go there we can go there. The commentary had a moralizing environmentalism bent with no real solutions other than progress stops at the wilderness. I didn’t see much of an attempt at juggling tradeoffs much less pointing out their existence. I guess I’m at a stage where I think protesting pipelines is cute but building nuclear reactors is world-saving.

We return to great reads with A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. Sowell distills differences between the political left and right between adherents of an unconstrained vs constrained vision of humanity. The unconstrained vison believes people are like clay that can be molded into whatever ideal society has determined. The constrained vision believes we have a lot of pre-packaged natural instincts (distributed on a spectrum) that need to be cultivated or have guard rails placed around. I definitely find myself on the constrained side of the argument. Following the constrained vision we have The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism. This is a difficult to read/listen to classic book, but I imagine the idea may find new adherents in the coming decades. I think religion and belief in a higher purpose translates into a more stable yet vibrant society so no surprise that I recommend this book. You may have noticed I incorrectly added the word “Work” to the book’s title in the list above. Probably a Freudian slip that I don’t care to edit.

Under current events we have The Storm Before the Calm, The Four-Hour Work Week, and Talking to Strangers.  All three were underwhelming and violated my selection rules: no life hack or US current event books. I don’t like to be negative but I’m being honest about the most recent books. The Storm Before the Calm says the 2020s will be turbulent, but afterwards the US will have a new equilibrium of greatness based off the authors assessment of turbulent cycles in US history. That’s nice but similar to our news cycle I think there is an over-emphasis on domestic issues with the exception of the opioid crisis which doesn’t get enough consistent attention. It’d be nice if foreign adversaries sat on their hands while we dealt with internal issues but I find that unlikely. Like most Malcolm Gladwell books Talking to Strangers is what I call a “NPR Book.” Meaning mainstream educated society will likely read it, it makes plausible and counterintuitive but not revolutionary points, and you nod your head in polite agreement. In regards to The Four-Hour Work Week I think I’ve become anti-life hack. I’ve come to the conclusion that Nike’s slogan is the only life-hack you need: Just do it.

The last two books in this section are The Crisis of Islam and Mere Christianity. My concern about The Crisis of Islam is that it fed my desire for more information on Islam but reinforced the cultural narrative of their being a tug of war between modernizing and fundamentalist forces. Maybe that’s true or the only way to summarize things from a 30,000 foot view! But I’d be interested in examining the history of the East Asian, Arabian, North African, Turkish, and Iranian Muslims and how they interact. With Mere Christianity you have the best book to read if you are a Christian with theological questions. This was a true treat. One of the shortest books I read but one of the longest to get through since I had to wrestle with the concepts while reading. Highly recommend if you’re already a stakeholder in Christianity. Well I guess I highly recommend even if you’re not Christian. Just some of the concepts might be foreign.

Fiction

After reading Meditations a few years ago I thought another (albeit fictional) Roman emperor memoir would be a good read. I was wrong. I give Memoirs of Hadrian points for historical plausibility. It’s masterful in its ability to read like the diary and thoughts of a Roman emperor. It was just too long and boring.

Luckily the rest on this list were treats. Grand Admiral Thrawn is one of my favorite Star Wars characters so I have devoured each one of his new books. I don’t read all the new Star Wars books like I used to but if you’re just a casual Star Wars reader then Thrawn: Greater Good is a solid choice. You also can’t go wrong with Shakespeare! The older I get the more I appreciate Shakespeare which is surprising since I didn’t enjoy Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet when I was in high school. Do read Julius Caesar though! It’s a crisp 90 pages and the dialogue and conflict is phenomenal especially if you enjoy the late Roman Republic period.

Alien 3 (William Gibson script) is best experienced on Audible. It probably falls under audio drama but I’m keeping it on the list. This is what Alien 3 should have been. Its superiority is evident in how some of its ideas were adopted for Prometheus/Alien Covenant and other Alien media. 2034 is a border-line horror story about a conflict between the US and China. Definitely a warning to not be complacent in our military preparedness and foreign policy.

I have an interesting history with Dune. I first came across the book in middle school and was told I should read it and that it was a classic of the science-fiction genre. But I was a Star Wars supremacist so I felt the book was beneath me (the hubris of youth). As I got older I justified not reading Dune by saying it was too mainstream. Then I saw the world of Dune depicted in all its majesty in the new movie’s trailers. It was grand sci-fi and I knew I had to read it. I can definitively say that Dune is worth the hype. It reads like Game of Thrones with a hero’s journey thrown in for good measure. That said, Dune is one of those books that has sequels I will not read. I don’t think I need to. Its ending is already perfect and I think adding to the story would just diminish it in my eyes.

The last fiction book I read this year was truly special. My grandparents gave me Treasure Island for Christmas in 2004, but I never read it until this year. Both of my grandparents have passed away but I’m thankful they still gave me a delightful story all these years later. One of my favorite moments is when Jim Hawkins (main protagonist) says he decided to “take his leave like the French” and quietly abandon his friends shortly after a battle. Even in the 1880s people were giving French military prowess a bad time.

Well, if you stuck with me this long I have to say it’s an honor. There are plenty of other things you can do with your time than read a recap of the books I read in 2021. Though this took a while to write it was a joy reflecting on what I read and hopefully some of the lessons I can carry with me. Thank you and hope you have a great start to 2022!