2023
What I read in 2023
70 books, 24,934 pages across 12 months. Most recent read first.
December 2023
7 books · 2,949 pages
Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country
Adam Kinzinger · 2023 · read Dec 2023Adam Kinzinger's vote to impeach Trump after January 6 effectively ended his House career.
Peril
Bob Woodward · 2021 · read Dec 2023Start with Gen.
Rage
Bob Woodward · 2020 · read Dec 2023"Trump is the wrong man for the job," Woodward concludes, a rare verdict from a reporter who has covered nine presidents.
Fear: Trump in the White House
Bob Woodward · 2018 · read Dec 2023How far can you trust a book built mostly on deep-background interviews?
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
Tim Alberta · 2023 · read Dec 2023Alberta's case is that much of American evangelicalism has traded the pursuit of Christ's kingdom for partisan power, and its…
Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
Liz Cheney · 2023 · read Dec 2023Before anything else, Liz Cheney tells you that Trump must never return to the White House or any position of public trust.
The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos
Mark Chiusano · 2023 · read Dec 2023George Santos said he was a Wall Street high-flier from a wealthy family with Jewish ancestry.
November 2023
10 books · 2,850 pages
Pipeline to Power: The 40-Year Plan to Capture the Supreme Court
Vicky Ward · 2023 · read Nov 2023Pipeline to Power is an Audible Original, about four hours long, written and narrated by Vicky Ward.
Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show
Jonathan Karl · 2021 · read Nov 2023Trump would leave office, by escort if necessary, John Kelly told Jonathan Karl on January 6.
Front Row at the Trump Show
Jonathan Karl · 2020 · read Nov 2023The press is not the opposition party, and a president who treats it as one shows no grasp of the First Amendment.
Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party
Jonathan Karl · 2023 · read Nov 2023Trump's Republican rivals had an obvious case to make: two lost midterms and a lost presidential race.
The Future of Work: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights)
Harvard Business Review · 2021 · read Nov 2023Work from anywhere, AI on the team, inclusion and purpose: this short Harvard Business Review collection asks how your…
Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
Rachel Maddow · 2023 · read Nov 2023Members of Congress used their free mailing privileges to send Nazi propaganda to millions of Americans.
Happiness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)
Harvard Business Review · 2017 · read Nov 2023Happiness is something you can define, measure and deliberately build at work, according to much of this short Harvard Business…
Romney: A Reckoning
McKay Coppins · 2023 · read Nov 2023Journals, emails, text messages and about 45 interviews over two years: Mitt Romney handed McKay Coppins all of it.
Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
Jennifer Pahlka · 2023 · read Nov 2023Government technology doesn't fail because the people in it are stupid or evil, or for lack of money.
Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation
Jon Ward · 2023 · read Nov 2023Two decades inside evangelical circles, then two outside them: that's where Jon Ward writes from, starting as a pastor's son at…
October 2023
4 books · 1,936 pages
Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment
Robert Wright · 2017 · read Oct 2023Much of what your mind tells you was shaped to help your ancestors survive, not to show you reality, and Robert Wright's case is…
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
Eliyahu M. Goldratt · 2004 · read Oct 2023Find the slowest step in your operation and you've found what limits everything else.
Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson · 2023 · read Oct 2023How far past Elon Musk can you see after two years at his side?
American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15
Cameron McWhirter · 2023 · read Oct 2023The AR-15 was designed to make soldiers more mobile and safer.
September 2023
6 books · 1,802 pages
Counting the Cost
Jill Duggar · 2023 · read Sep 2023Jill Duggar discovered she had unknowingly signed a performance contract before her televised wedding.
White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity
Robert P. Jones · 2020 · read Sep 2023Robert P.
A Warning
Anonymous · 2019 · read Sep 2023The author of A Warning was presented only as a senior Trump administration official, expanding a 2018 New York Times op-ed into…
Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump
Miles Taylor · 2023 · read Sep 2023In Miles Taylor's telling, the first Trump term's unfinished agendas show where a second one could go.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder · 2017 · read Sep 2023"Do not obey in advance" is one of Timothy Snyder's twenty lessons, and it captures the book's approach.
The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb
James W. Kunetka · 2015 · read Sep 2023Before he ran the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers oversaw construction of the Pentagon.
August 2023
5 books · 1,743 pages
The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
Morgan Housel · 2020 · read Aug 2023Morgan Housel's case is that doing well with money depends more on how you behave than on what you know.
Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
Adam Schiff · 2021 · read Aug 2023Between two scenes of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which he blames on Trump, Adam Schiff tells the story of the first…
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
Peter Turchin · 2023 · read Aug 2023What tips a society into crisis?
American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
John Temple · 2015 · read Aug 2023A young ex-felon and his partners turned a South Florida pain clinic into the largest pill mill in the United States.
Trump / Russia: A Definitive History
Seth Hettena · 2018 · read Aug 2023Start with the collapse of Donald Trump's casino empire and follow his dealings with Russian money and power all the way to the…
July 2023
2 books · 790 pages
It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
Stuart Stevens · 2020 · read Jul 2023Trump didn't hijack the Republican Party, in Stuart Stevens's telling; he revealed it.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber · 2011 · read Jul 2023The barter story sounds sensible, and economists have told it since Adam Smith.
June 2023
4 books · 1,449 pages
Little Black Book of Entrepreneurship
Fernando Trías de Bes · 2008 · read Jun 2023You learn more from why other founders failed than from studying their successes.
Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
Andy Greenberg · 2022 · read Jun 2023Cryptocurrency was never as anonymous as the criminals using it believed.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt · 2012 · read Jun 2023In Jonathan Haidt's picture, your moral judgments start as intuitions, and your reasoning mostly arrives afterward to justify…
The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent (Forbidden Bookshelf)
Frederick Lewis Allen · 1935 · read Jun 2023Between the depression of the 1890s and the crash of 1929, American financiers and industrial capitalists built a huge corporate…
May 2023
5 books · 1,795 pages
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
Daniel H. Pink · 2022 · read May 2023Regret has a bad reputation, and the no-regrets creed tells you to ignore it.
Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot
Seth Andrews · 2022 · read May 2023Communion symbolism, crucifixion imagery, odd Bible passages.
The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets
Matthew Connelly · 2023 · read May 2023The United States was a republic with few formal secrets for roughly its first 150 years.
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
Michael Pollan · 2018 · read May 2023Pollan was known for writing about food.
Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
Brian Klaas · 2021 · read May 2023Does power corrupt, or do corruptible people go looking for it?
April 2023
5 books · 1,857 pages
Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice
David Enrich · 2022 · read Apr 2023Enrich's case is that giant corporate law firms now help powerful clients, Donald Trump among them, escape accountability.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein · 2017 · read Apr 2023Near Detroit, a developer built a wall between a white development and a Black neighborhood to win federal backing.
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
Terence McKenna · 1992 · read Apr 2023McKenna's claim is that psilocybin mushrooms were humanity's original tree of knowledge, and that early hominids who ate them…
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond · 2016 · read Apr 2023Some tenants in Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods spent 70 to 80 percent of their income on rent for substandard housing.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Pete Walker · 2013 · read Apr 2023Fight, flight, freeze and fawn.
March 2023
3 books · 1,126 pages
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Rick Rubin · 2023 · read Mar 2023Not a method, and not a manual.
Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness
Steve Magness · 2022 · read Mar 2023Toughness has long meant fear, bravado and hiding weakness.
The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History
Kirsten Grind · 2012 · read Mar 2023The largest bank failure in American history, and before it, a well-regarded regional lender that grew into a sprawling mortgage…
February 2023
9 books · 2,966 pages
Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free
Linda Kay Klein · 2018 · read Feb 2023Twelve years of research, hundreds of interviews, and a teenager who broke up with her boyfriend because she believed God…
The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
Steven Lee Myers · 2014 · read Feb 2023From a poor Leningrad childhood and the KGB to near-total control of the Russian state.
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
Beth Allison Barr · 2021 · read Feb 2023Written out of the record: that's where Barr says the women who led in the ancient and medieval church ended up.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
Johann Hari · 2022 · read Feb 2023If you've ever blamed yourself for not being able to concentrate, Hari's case is that it isn't a personal failing.
Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis (New Threats to Freedom Series)
Nicholas Eberstadt · 2016 · read Feb 2023How can the unemployment rate look low while so many men aren't working?
Drift
Rachel Maddow · 2012 · read Feb 2023Wars the public barely feels: that's the result, in Maddow's account, of war-making power drifting since Vietnam from Congress to…
How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self
Nicole LePera · 2021 · read Feb 2023The self-sabotaging cycles you keep repeating as an adult may trace back to childhood adversity, and the stress it leaves behind…
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
Chris Miller · 2022 · read Feb 2023Oil is the resource you'd expect great powers to fight over.
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
Philip S. Gorski · 2022 · read Feb 2023White Christian nationalism is a distinct ideology fusing racial, religious and national identity, and Gorski and Perry trace it…
January 2023
10 books · 3,671 pages
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
Steven Levitsky · 2018 · read Jan 2023Modern democracies rarely end in a coup.
How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development for Consulting and Professional Services
Tom McMakin · 2018 · read Jan 2023Selling a service isn't like selling a product, and the book is for experts trained in their craft, not in sales.
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Bruce D. Perry · 2021 · read Jan 2023Swap what's wrong with you for what happened to you, and behavior starts to make sense.
How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start: A Rainmaking Guide for Consulting and Professional Services
Doug Fletcher · 2021 · read Jan 2023If you work in consulting or another professional-services firm, sooner or later the job includes bringing in clients, not only…
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
Nir Eyal · 2019 · read Jan 2023Most of what pulls you off task isn't your phone.
Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It
Tien Tzuo · 2018 · read Jan 2023Companies are moving from selling you products to running an ongoing subscription relationship with you, and every part of the…
Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life
Eugene O'Kelly · 2005 · read Jan 2023In May 2005, at 53, the chairman and CEO of KPMG in the US learned he had terminal brain cancer and roughly three to six months…
I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else's Maze (Bk Business)
Deepak Malhotra · 2011 · read Jan 2023Spencer Johnson's cheese parable tells you to adapt when someone moves your cheese.
The Snowball System: How to Win More Business and Turn Clients into Raving Fans
Mo Bunnell · 2018 · read Jan 2023Be strategically helpful, build steady habits, and let the results compound like a snowball.
The January 6th Report
Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol · 2022 · read Jan 2023The House select committee's final report is an answer to one question, what caused January 6, and its answer is one man, Donald…