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46 posts
Ezra Vogel's biography of Deng Xiaoping is slow at times but a great summary of a life that coincided with most of China's major events over the past 100 years. My review and favorite highlights.
I read Kevin Maguire's The New Fatherhood in the final month before our second daughter arrived. My review and favorite highlights, including the idea of the Tunnel.
Jack Raines's Young Money is an honest, fun memoir of waking up to the default career path in your early twenties. My review and favorite highlights.
Novels, memoirs and histories I've read on Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Asian-American experience.
Jessica Lackey's Leaving the Casino is an absurdly useful guide to building a business on your own, beyond tactics. My review and favorite highlights.
Jonathan Goodman's Unhinged Habits does what most productivity books fail at: showing how he actually lives, trade-offs and all.
Nadia Asparouhova's Antimemetics is about ideas that resist spreading. It gave me a new way to see how The Pathless Path spread, slowly, one reader at a time.
Two AI researchers on why ambitious objectives can block discovery, and why stepping stones matter more. My take and favorite highlights.
How the 1854 London cholera outbreak reveals a timeless pattern: established experts cling to wrong ideas for decades, from miasma theory to Covid airborne denial.
Whyte predicted workaholism, work-life balance debates, and the security-obsessed employee in 1956. A review of the book that decoded the source code of modern work culture.
What I took from David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs in 2018, what I think now, my favorite highlights, and the guide from my 2018 virtual book club.
Four data-driven insights from Just Keep Buying that challenge common fears about spending, saving, retirement, and how rich you already are.
Peter Attia's Outlive is a book about living longer. Its final chapter, about workaholism, shame and emotional health, is the most powerful part.
Chris Miller's Chip War is a comprehensive deep dive into the history of semiconductors since WWII, up to the current chip war between China and the US. My takeaways.
The second book in Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy opens with a furious letter from a reader. My take and favorite highlights.
Crossing the Unknown Sea is my favorite David Whyte book, the story of his leap from naturalist to poet. Here are the lines that stayed with me, organized by theme.
Die With Zero is a persuasive argument for those who spend to much to turn money into time & experiences earlier in their lives
C. Thi Nguyen's Games: Agency as Art frames games as a way of practicing agency. My notes and favorite highlights, and why I think paths like mine are about taking a game stance toward the world.
One of the first modern work books that avoids both "hustle harder" and "capitalism sucks." My take and favorite highlights.
W. Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis is a short book about tennis that's really about how we learn, judge ourselves and get out of our own way.
For years cooking never clicked for me. Then a friend handed me J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab, and one idea from it changed everything: cooking is science.
The best book I've read on consulting. My notes on Venkatesh Rao's maxims, the inner game of indie life, and the price of freedom.
A review of Russ Roberts' Wild Problems and why the biggest life decisions can't be solved with logic. The upsides of bold leaps are impossible to imagine beforehand.
I didn't read Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek until a few weeks before I quit my job. Looking back, I think it's one of the most underrated books of the 21st century.
Jed McKenna's first book follows an enlightened man going about his days and reacting to the people around him. My take and favorite highlights.
Erich Fromm's 1941 book on freedom from and freedom to, and why so many people trade their freedom away. My take and favorite highlights.
David Whyte details the positive and negative sides of ambition and our challenge of grappling with it in our lives
Thoreau's first chapter of Walden, Economy, distilled into simple modern language, with his 1854 original a click away under each passage.
150+ links from the boundless newsletter on work, life, carving one's own path and making sense of the modern world
Stephen Cope's book on dharma, told through the lives of Thoreau, Frost, Keats, Jane Goodall and others. The work of your life is finding what matters and then building a life around it.
Book review on Agnes Callard's \"Aspiration\" about the philosophical role of aspiration and becoming in a meaningful and good life
The Body Keeps the Score makes it clear that many people are carrying enormous pain and trauma in hidden and plain sight. My review and favorite highlights.
Everyone has a religious, political or institutional utopia. A review of John Gray's book \"Black Mass\" gives us a way to be skeptical of these visions
Book Summary: Rest by Alex Pang makes sense of rest through his own journey taking a sabbatical after leaving Academia and the corporate world.
Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics shook me up and probably cost me tens of thousands of dollars as I explored a new relationship with money. My review, a follow-up on generosity, and my favorite highlights.
David Epstein's Range is full of stories about people who didn't follow a path of specialization. My notes and favorite highlights on generalists, slow learning, and finding your fit.
I revisit Bertrand Russell's famous essay to ponder the question: Do we work too much? Why aren't we having more fun in our days?
John Maynard Keynes essay about technological unemployment predicted that by 2030 we would have shifted worried more about how to occupy leisure
The top 175+ longform, essays, articles and podcasts from 2018. Boundless Reads is a weekly e-mail of the five best reads from around the web!
Erich Fromm reframes love as a practice rather than a feeling. My take and favorite highlights.
Want to escape the corporate world? Don't know how to imagine a new path? These ten types of books will help you rethink everything.
David Whyte's poetic look at the corporate world and the parts of ourselves we give up for safety. My take and favorite highlights.
The David Whyte book where I found the phrase "pathless path." How I found it, what I think, and my favorite highlights on work, marriage, and the self.
Alan Watts on why the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. My take and favorite highlights.
A book review of Adam Grant's originals on how to be a nonconformist and create change on your own and within organizations. (With cool charts!)
The news is designed to outrage you & addict you. Politics taps into this to get votes. I want to help you block the outrage and find better stuff to read.