Tag: books
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American Pastoral
Last book I read this year and it was very enjoyable. It’s America Dream, both as it is and the story it tells about itself. I think it’s a tale, a commentary maybe, on what we all collectively think America was post-WWII through the 60s contrasted with the internal and external experience of people we’d…
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January 2026, Ambitions
Here’s what I plan to do in January 2026. Starting tomorrow. No measurements on how much. Just do them as a matter of existing. The purpose is the live as focused as I can in contrast to the ever-losing-battle to the attention economy. As realistically hermetic as possible.
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Age based reading list
Super cool reading list broken up by age. Get off Twitter and could read. https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/a-library-to-build-great-americans?r=b8lae
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On reading
Found this interesting. I don’t check as many books out from the library because they feel impermanent that way.
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We’re Wrong
Read this little world-buster this morning from Philip Roth’s novel, American Pastoral. “You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try and come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot…
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Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest
Saw this recommending on Marginal Revolution and just bought it to read. I’ve recently been reading quite a bit about liberalism, and classical liberalism specifically. This provided quite a bit of awareness for me on the tensions between economic development and freedom. As I think about classical liberalism these days, it’s a sharp edge to…
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Liar’s Poker
by Michael Lewis “You don’t get rich in this business,” said Alexander when I complained privately to him. “You only attain new levels of relative poverty.” Very enjoyable to read throughout. The main thing I’ve come away thinking after reading is just how much activity is going on downstream of the word “finance” that most…
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Stubborn Attachments
A vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible invidviduals By Tyler Cowen Opening of the book: “Growth is good. Through history, economic growth in particular has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines and ensure greater…
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Brave New World
As seems to happen each time I come to recounting a book I’ve read, I don’t like to do it very much because, I’m sorry to say, it requires me to think about it, comprehensively, and I think I’m so ‘of my time’ that thinking this way is uncomfortable. It’s much easy to just read…
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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Enjoyed this biography on Ben and ended up reading about 4/5ths. Got bored at the end when Isaacson is detailing his life in Paris. Seems important, especially considering he was America’s representative in securing important aid from the French to take on the Revolutionary War, but it was incredibly detailed in a way I no…