2024 continued the brutal decline in books read per year and like any good CEO on a disappointing earnings call, I have my excuses. For starters, I spent quite a bit of time studying to get my Certified Financial Planner designation. Studying paid off though with passing the final exam in July and receiving the designation in August. Second, we welcomed a healthy baby girl in May and two kids take up more of the day than just one. Lastly, audiobooks are not as enjoyable as they used to be. I used to be able to count on Audible padding my stats a little bit, but most books these days aren’t worth the 12-hour listening time compared to the high-quality podcasts they compete with.

In summary, building a consistent routine with the family and having the CFP out of the way will likely contribute to a better 2025, but I doubt I’ll hit the highs of 2019-2022. Now to the reviews.

History, Investing, Religion, Autobiography, and Self-Help

My favorite book of 2024 was Astoria. This is the best book about Pacific Northwest history I have read and follows the merchant John Jacob Astor’s plan to build a global trading empire. Two teams are sent to build a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River: one traveled by sea around South America and the other was sent overland. All the while a conflict with Great Britain looms in the background. It has everything you need in a story about the frontier: a wild money-making scheme, interesting characters, geopolitics, risk-taking, and more.

The End: Germany 1944-1945 was a slow read but gives you a lot to think about and is a very well documented account of the German people and the Nazi government’s appraisal of their situation in the final eighteen months of World War II. If an Army reservist who has never deployed can have a theory of war and politics, this book in conjunction with world events (Ukraine War, Gaza, etc.) has greatly improved my ideas. Even though Germans supported the war for most of 1944, by the summer of 1944, it was clear the Allies were going to win, and it was just a question of how many people would die before victory in Europe was declared. Some of the lessons I learned on how to reduce human suffering while pursuing national interests are:

The responsibility of the people and leaders: This has a bit of circular logic to it, but societies should avoid empowering leaders who put “the party” and their own concerns above the people and leaders shouldn’t put themselves ahead of society. In Germany’s case, you have a large part of the population support an evil man, who is in fact so evil that he is willing to let his people suffer rather than surrender and face the gallows himself. An example of this problem is eastern Prussia in the winter of 1944-45. It was obvious that the German army wouldn’t be able to hold off the Russians and that Germany should begin moving civilians westward, however, that would imply the war was going poorly and Hitler couldn’t have that. Instead, the Russians broke through German lines in the winter and civilians had to evacuate on foot in freezing temperatures. It was sad to read accounts of babies and children dying from the cold during the unplanned evacuations. And of course, there are the cosmic karma questions of whether this was the German people reaping what they sowed since the German army did the same thing in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Violence: Precise and maximum violence should be applied towards strategic targets to achieve a quick capitulation of enemy forces. I don’t think the Allies could have done anything more along this line of thinking, but when thinking about Gaza and Ukraine, the longer the conflict is drawn out the worse it is for everyday people. So, if you’re an attacker, you might have a moral responsibility to defeat your adversary as quickly as possible.
Unconditional Surrender: If I recall correctly, Sun Tzu has a line on how you should never surround your enemy, because if they see no escape, they will fight to the death. You should always give them an avenue to escape or at least the appearance of one. My lesson from World War II is that leaders with no post-war future may fight to extend a conflict at the expense of their civilians. They’re gambling for resurrection but someone else is paying the bills so only pursue unconditional surrender if it’s easy to achieve or the only politically acceptable option.

The last of the history books is Killing the Witches which is part of Bill O’Reilly’s Killing series. He’s been going at these books for at least fifteen years, and I’ve always wondered if he actually participates in the writing. Anyway, I think this book should have been 90-120 pages. The witch trials were interesting, but the author stretches the book by adding other American history stuff.

Exiles is a book about how Christians relate to their country. I came across this book after a friend recommended the author’s podcast. It’s intellectually interesting in its assertion that Christians should view themselves as foreigners in their home country. I think it is a beautiful idea, but practically speaking I think some countries (the US) provide a better environment for the spread of Christianity, so patriotism for the US is directionally correct for Christians.

Leadership Strategy & Tactics and The Right Call are my two self-help books for the year. The first is by Jocko and goes more in-depth on his leadership philosophy and specific tactics. Good book, but if you’ve already followed him for a while, you won’t be surprised by what he has to say. The Right Call was an interesting examination of successful players, coaches, and franchises, but I think even more could have been gained if the focus was on a single player. I guess that’s what biographies are for though.

38 Letters from JD Rockefeller to His Son was a wonderful collection of three-to-five-page letters where Rockefeller distilled important life and business lessons to his son. What was nice about the collection of letters is that I could read a letter alongside my morning devotionals. Something Like an Autobiography is by Akira Kurosawa and covers his life from his childhood to the release of Rashomon. Kurosawa is great in his own right, but I mainly knew him through my love of Star Wars. George Lucas was a big Kurosawa fan and the early drafts of Star Wars and much of A New Hope follow the plot elements of Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress.

Gathering Assets: The Best of Nick Murray is a collection of articles that Murray wrote from the late 80s through mid-90s. Murray is a legend in the financial advisory community and has been a writer and influencer for nearly 40 years. I don’t think I learned anything specific that will make me a better advisor since I believe in Murray’s philosophy of keeping investing clear and simple. However, it was a great time machine to see what people were thinking during that time period and how the industry has evolved over time.

Fiction

On the 40th anniversary of each of the Original Trilogy films, Disney has released a short story collection about side and background characters that appear in their respective film. Return of the Jedi: From a Certain Point of View is the most recent edition and I imagine we won’t get another one until 2039 to mark the 40th anniversary of The Phantom Menace. From a Certain Point of View has been my only experience with short story collections and I’d say the authors are very hit or miss. My favorite is when you can tell an author hasn’t researched their subject very well. A jarring example in the book is when Admiral Piett recalls how meeting an Imperial officer as a young teenager inspired him to join the Empire. This clashes with Piett’s age and appearance in a different book during the early reign of the Empire when he appears as a rising officer in Grand Moff Tarkin’s entourage during a planetary visit. Details matter people.

Ring World and Rendezvous with Rama were joys to read and represent high water marks in 20th century sci-fi writing. Ring World follows a multi-species expedition to a megastructure orbiting a different star. I didn’t realize how much comedy would be in the book but I loved it. Nessus the puppeteer was by far my favorite character with his cowardice and strange sense of leadership. In puppeteer culture, the leader is referred as the “hindmost” because leaders lead from the back. Ring World continues as a series, but I’ve built a pattern where if the book ends on a great note and works as a standalone, I usually don’t read the series unless someone says the series gets even better. Rendezvous with Rama sees an unknown craft entering the solar system and only one ship is near enough to investigate before the craft slingshots around the sun and leaves the system forever. The book was great and I’m really excited to see Dennis Villeneuve turn this book into a film. He is one best directors at capturing scale which will be a strength in his adaptation. Funny enough, Rama is another book that continues as a series, but I won’t be reading the other books.

CFP Books

These weren’t the most enjoyable books, but they were packed with great information and got me across the finish line for my certification.

That’s all I have for 2024 books. 2025 is shaping up to be a better year so far so we’ll see where that leads us.