July 23, 2024

Summer Book Recommendations 2024

It’s been two years since our last one and the Leith Wheeler crew has curated another great Summer Reading List! We’ve included a handful of biographies, some great books on tech, as well as the complex systems that are quietly shaping both our geo-political and geological realities, and possible futures. There’s a Martin Scorsese movie in here, some Charlie Munger quips, and a Novel Prize winner with advice on doing better on gender equality and couple equity. We’ve included abbreviated book jacket summaries and where we have them, some Leith Wheelerite commentary on why they liked the books. Enjoy!

A quick word on how to buy these books

We like to support local where we can – if any of these books appeal, consider ordering from an independent bookstore in your area! Here are some resources to help locate them:

• Indiebookstores.ca
• Canadian Independent Booksellers Association – Members Map
• Penguin Independent Bookstore List

Listening is also the new reading for many. Audiobook sources:

• Audible.ca
• Audiobooks.com
• Spotify Premium (download app)
• Apple Books (download app)
  

(Auto)Biography

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon | Michael Lewis

Book jacket: When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.

Comment: Michael Lewis tells the story of SBF in a way only he can. And the fact that he was just following him around to profile him when FTX blew up made the recounting that much more compelling. He’s a complex guy – not your typical villain, and possibly not a villain at all – more of an introverted anti-hero whose downfall wasn’t greed, but rather hubris and ego. A great read.

One Man in His Time… | Michael Audain

Book jacket: The unlikely and riveting story of how a left-wing activist became one of BC’s most accomplished business leaders and philanthropists, championing projects in the visual arts and innovation in Canadian wildlife protection and sustainability.

Freedom rider. Student radical. Academic. Social activist. Residential developer. Museum builder. Grizzly bear protector. Michael Audain has been all of these things and more in a colourful life spanning eight decades, three continents and five careers.

Along the way, Audain did time in a Mississippi prison for participating in the Freedom Rider movement. He started the Nuclear Disarmament Club at the University of British Columbia and was a founder of the BC Civil Liberties Association. He advocated for the radical Sons of Freedom Doukhobor sect on their protest march from the Kootenays to Vancouver. He proudly displayed a photograph of the communist revolutionary Fidel Castro at the founding convention of the New Democratic Party until Tommy Douglas persuaded him to take it down. Audain worked for an airline in the Arctic, became a probation officer and a farm appraiser, was detained in Ireland under suspicion of terrorism, and sought wisdom from a Buddhist monk in Thailand. In 1980, he took the most unexpected turn of all and became a developer in Greater Vancouver’s volatile housing market. As chairman of Polygon Homes Ltd., he has been responsible for the construction of over 30,000 homes.

“My life never had a business plan,” muses Audain. One Man in His Time… is a story of life’s unplanned twists and turns, victories and defeats, recounted with characteristic wit and candour. It is a tale of adventure and perseverance that will inspire many seeking to find their place in the world.

Comment: Really enjoyed the Audain book. An interesting read, and it supports a great Canadian. 

Elon Musk | Walter Isaacson

Book jacket: #1 New York Times bestseller. From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence.

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

Comment: The book provided a good opportunity to understand a bit more about one of the most influential people on earth.

Investing

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger | Charlie Munger

Book jacket: “From 1733 to 1758, Ben Franklin dispensed useful and timeless advice through Poor Richard's Almanack. Among the virtues extolled were thrift, duty, hard work, and simplicity. Subsequently, two centuries went by during which Ben's thoughts on these subjects were regarded as the last word. Then Charlie Munger stepped forth.” – Warren Buffett From the Foreword to Poor Charlie's Almanack

For the first time ever, the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger is available in a single volume: all his talks, lectures and public commentary. And, it has been written and compiled with both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett's encouragement and cooperation. So pull up your favorite reading chair and enjoy the unique humor, wit and insight that Charlie Munger brings to the world of business, investing and life itself. Charles Helman Lea once said, "It will generally be admitted that the true test of all books is the influence they have upon the lives and conduct of their readers." We hope this book passes that test, exerting a lasting influence on you.

Comment: I’m re-reading this book in light of Charlie’s passing earlier this year. I’ve always enjoyed reading the Berkshire Annual Letters and this compilation of Charlie’s quips puts me of mind of those.

Technology

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future | Sebastian Mallaby

Book jacket: Named a Best Book of 2022 by The Economist. Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Excellent reviews from Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, others.

From the New York Times bestselling author of More Money Than God comes the astonishingly frank and intimate story of Silicon Valley’s dominant venture-capital firms—and how their strategies and fates have shaped the path of innovation and the global economy.

In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in the Valley and ultimately worldwide. We learn the unvarnished truth about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in Valley history, from the comedy of errors at the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber.

Silicon Valley VC remains the top incubator of business innovation anywhere—it is not where ideas come from so much as where they go to become the products and companies that create the future. By taking us so deeply into the VCs’ game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology | Chris Miller

Book jacket: One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023. The Financial Times Business Book of the Year.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing. Now, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America’s military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the US became dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America’s victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. Until recently, China had been catching up, aligning its chip-building ambitions with military modernization.

Comment: Interesting insights into the development of the semi industry and the importance of Taiwan.

Geopolitical Focus

Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization | Ed Conway

Book jacket: The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. An Economist Best Book of the Year. Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future.

The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.

In Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty | Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

Book jacket: Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities [while] the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions … due to the politics [underpinning] these completely different institutional trajectories.

Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today.

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources | Javier Blas & Jack Farchy

Book jacket: The World for Sale tells the story of modern-day commodity traders, largely unknown to the public. Commodity traders are the last swashbucklers of global capitalism: willing to do business where other companies don't dare set foot, thriving through a mixture of ruthlessness and personal charm – and often shaping global politics, from Cuba to Iraq, and from Russia to Libya.

The book profiles companies like Glencore, which emerged from the shadow of its notorious founder Marc Rich, a long-time fugitive from US justice, to become a blue-chip stock, and Cargill, the 153-year-old agricultural trading house whose family of American shareholders contains 14 billionaires – more than any other family in the world. It also shows how commodity traders play a critical role in modern finance, facilitating the flows of raw materials that keep the world's populations fed, its factories supplied, and its ships, planes and automobiles fueled. Benefiting from three decades of reporting from nearly 100 countries, including tens of thousands of pages of previously unpublished financial and legal documents and interviews with more than one hundred former and current executives, the book sheds unprecedented light onto an industry that has long operated in the shadows.

Oceans

“Both my boys are avid surfers and have a strong connection to the oceans. As a semi-retired ski instructor – who got them carving on the mountains before the age of four – I guess this is how they rebel... both boys love these books.”

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman - Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual | Yvon Chouinard

Book jacket: "Wonderful . . . a moving autobiography, the story of a unique business, and a detailed blueprint for hope." —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

In this 10th anniversary edition, Yvon Chouinard—legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.—shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.

From his youth as the son of a French Canadian handyman to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.

Comment: It was fascinating to read the history of the man who – rather than sell it and cash out – donated his $3 billion company to fight climate change back in 2022. The book also includes big adventures and highlights his clear respect for nature – and focus on values over profits – throughout.

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | William Finnegan

Book jacket: Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography. Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List.

Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life… It takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves.

Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.

Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.

Comment: Great storytelling by a Pulitzer prize-winning author with vivid descriptions of global travel and adventure and a focus on the pursuit of goals, and living life well.

True Crime & History

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI | David Grann

Book jacket: #1 New York Times bestseller. National Book Award Finalist. Now a Martin Scorsese picture.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Comment: This book was amazing! A true Indigenous story that covers the beginning of the FBI.

Gender Equity

Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity | Claudia Goldin

Book jacket: Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics.

A renowned economic historian traces women’s journey to close the gender wage gap and sheds new light on the continued struggle to achieve equity between couples at home.

Drawing on decades of her own groundbreaking research, Claudia Goldin provides a fresh, in-depth look at the diverse experiences of college-educated women from the 1900s to today, examining the aspirations they formed—and the barriers they faced—in terms of career, job, marriage, and children. She shows how many professions are “greedy,” paying disproportionately more for long hours and weekend work, and how this perpetuates disparities between women and men. Goldin demonstrates how the era of COVID-19 has severely hindered women’s advancement, yet how the growth of remote and flexible work may be the pandemic’s silver lining.

Antidiscrimination laws and unbiased managers, while valuable, are not enough. Career and Family explains why we must make fundamental changes to the way we work and how we value caregiving if we are ever to achieve gender equality and couple equity.

Comment: Claudia Goldin is the third woman of 92 Nobel prize winners in economics, and the first to win it outright – i.e., not share the award with male colleagues. This book is a worthy read for its research on gender gaps in pay and labour market outcomes.