Book: Elon Musk
Author: Walter Issacson (Steve Jobs, Leonardo DiVinci)
Recommended to read: Yes
Comments:
The story is over 100 chapters. Each one tends to focus on an event or period of time in Musk’s life. Elon is a real life character and it’s amazing to see how much he has done in his lifetime. It seems like most of the commentary is based on his relationships – spouses and kids. While it’s most certainly atypical, I thought it was more interesting hearing his management style and the themes that emerged from it. I’m curious to see how Twitter does over the next 5-10 years based on his take over. I would assume that lean processes would carry over to the tech sector, but we’ll see how that goes. I wish he was more optimistic about the current state of humanity, but his perspective is understandable. I’m curious to see if he’ll be able to turn Twitter/X into his original idea for paypal. If anyone can integrate payment systems with the platform, I assume it would be him. In thinking about probabilities and risk, it’s unlikely that a person would be able to manage as many multi-billion dollar valued companies, but he seems to be able to do it, which I think has more to say about his talent identification abilities than his management style. I’m curious if this book makes employees more understanding of him and thus more empathetic to his cause or doesn’t change anything. The author did a great job trying to stay objective, and I’m hopeful his book on Leonard DaVinci is just as interesting/entertaining.
Book: The Sports Gene
Author: David Epstein (Range)
Recommend to Read: Yes
Comments: Quick read, but interesting to anyone who is interested in human performance. The theme seems to be nature vs nurture when it comes to human performance. There were several hypothesis tied into Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, genetics, regional disparities/adaptations, race, and genetics. Training modalities were minimally touched upon. The thought that there are easily trainable people out in public was also an interesting assessment. “Choose the right parents” was a statement that came up repeatedly when it came to high level performance.
Book: Clear Thinking
Author: Shane Parish
Worth the read: if familiar with mental models and cognitive biases – no, to anyone not aware of Farnam Street – yes
Comments: I’ve followed Farnam Street and the knowledge project podcast for several years now. Between reading the blog, listening to the podcast, and reading/listening to Munger for a while, there wasn’t a lot of new insights that I took away from this book. The models presented in the book are useful.
Book: Black Rednecks, White Liberals
Author: Thomas Sowell
Worth the read: Maybe
Comment: Working through his book on basic economics now and find it to be more valuable. Most of my dissatisfaction comes from being fatigued from listening to anything that could be deemed political. I think his hypothesis is reasonable and he talks about his critique being the lack of proposed solutions. The book makes the argument that American Blacks are less prosperous due to cultural constraints. That the origins of this culture is from parts of England that ended up the American South. The parallel that I took away from this came from building the Elite and the statement that there are no side effects, only effects. When bureaucratic institutions try implementing policy it tends to have effects that are less efficient than a society without them.
Seeking Progress 