Deep Reads: "Gone with the Wind"

An easy book to cite, but it’s typically forgotten in favor of the all-time classic movie.  It is definitely worth losing yourself in.

I did during my daughter Emily’s long cancer fight in the 1990s, and I became a huge fan of Scarlett’s ability to compartmentalize her worries from one day to the next. There were many days in that struggle when I said to myself, “Oh, I can’t worry about that anymore today or I’ll go crazy.  I’ll just think about that tomorrow.”

I recall just now because we're taking a mini-family vacation in the Atlanta area.

Deep Reads: "Religious Literacy" (2007)

Great book that I used in "Great Powers," the basic thesis is that as Americans become more religious over time, they nonetheless know less about their faiths.  So we believe more intensely even as we observe less and understand less.  The "illiteracy" theme is so strong that I frequently refer to the book as "Religious Illiteracy."

That theme can get a bit tedious (How crucial is it really to know the Bible is all its arcane and conflicting imagery?), but what really marks this book as great is the short history of religion in the United States that is Chapters 3 and 4.  Without those, the book would have been a waste of time in many ways, but with them, you get a history lesson that's worth the entire book's somewhat bitchy and condescending attitude.

So I say read the opening chapters that describe "The Problem" and most definitely read the two chapters (pp. 59-124) for the history (fascinating), but skip the proposal part that follows.  The "dictionary of religious literacy" is a cool skim.

Deep Reads: Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" (1943)

I actually watched  the movie first on video, sometime in the early 1990s, and found it intriguing enough for its iconoclastic view of human creativity, but it really didn't connect.

Then my first-born was diagnosed with an advanced-stage cancer at two years of age, and after a few months of heavy drinking, I recomposed myself as father and re-engaged the subsequent battle more fully (as my wife had to step back due to her pregnancy).  During that epic year, I got ahold of the book and read it like my life depended on it.

I won't tell you I'm a Howard Roark or anything. I will just say that this book, along with a couple of others, really saved my life back then.

Upon reading it, I also knew that someday I would write fiction.

I guess the book's primary impact was that it made me feel proud to be me, no matter who didn't understand what being me was all about.

Toward that end, I was reborn as a writer and thinker from Emily's long struggle, beginning with "The Emily Updates" that I currently am reworking with Warren for eventual publication.

Deep Reads: The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Won’t offer a ton of commentary here.  The idea is pretty simple:  When America has seen rising per capita incomes, it’s a more generous and open and happy and thus inventive place.  But when incomes have stagnated or declined, America’s gets awfully nasty, awfully fast—especially toward immigrants.

A timely reminder for today.

Friedman writes well, but he’s an economist, so it can feel like a bit of a wading.  When he goes off to other countries, I got bored, but when he kept to American history, it was an eye-opening romp that made sense to me instinctively.

I advise people to read it simply to get that core thought deeply embedded in their thinking, because it reminds us all that we have a great democracy here because we have a great economy—less so the other way around.  Our democratic “civilization” is just a few years of stagnating income thick, meaning it does not take that much to strip it away.

Buy the book at Amazon.

Deep Reads: "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001)

Of all the books I've bought over the years, I think I've gone back to this one for data and charts more than any other, which makes sense, because it's a huge meta-data compendium, or basically, Bjorn Lomborg (who made his rep with this book) leveraging hundreds of other people's studies to give the reader a realistic appraisal of the world's state, the amazingly positive trends that got us here, and what's likely to happen going forward.

It is like a bible to me, and I've read everything Bjorn Lomborg has written since.

I like to note that I did my rank-ordering of environmental dangers with an expert group a few years before Lomborg did his own with the "Copenhagen Consensus" crowd of Nobel winners, but that's just my way of unsubtly insinuating that great minds think alike.

And yeah, I wish I had a mind as sharp as Lomborg's when it comes to data.  He really is amazing and always provocative.

Best still:  the guy's optimism.

Not had the pleasure of meeting the guy yet, but hope to someday.

Coolest factoid: his book was published the day before 9/11, and has remained an antidote to end-times pessimism every since.

Deep Reads: Conrad Black's Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Anyone who followed the blog over the last year knows how much I loved this book.  It started me reading again at night before bed, largely in response to the tremendous insomnia and angst I was going through as a result of all those non-stop sinus infections across 2009 that just kept getting worse and worse, until my surgery late last October set me on an infection-free path (seven months and counting--knock on wood).

Well, I was in bad shape and really needed something to occupy my mind during those long nights, and "Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  Champion of Freedom" did it.  It's arguably now my all-time favorite biography. 

It is huge, and goes on for almost 1200 pages.  It is detailed, but never dull.  I never found myself scanning pages.  

The book is also unabashedly in love with FDR's historical accomplishments, something I've always felt was lacking in other books I've read on him (too much revisionism), and really treats him like the supreme grand strategist he was--not always getting his way but achieving the next best iteration possible.  

I also love Black's many and entertaining counterfactual explorations, especially involving Douglas MacArthur (the best surrounding FDR's decision to go with Ike over MacArthur to run the invasion of Europe).

Black, BTW, is now serving a 6-7 year term in a Florida prison for mail fraud stemming from his stint as CEO of a publishing entity. Like FDR, he was born into money. Fabulous historian, though--at least he's the kind I like.

I actually miss reading the book, although I recently loaned it out to my father-in-law.

Like my sister with the "Firefly" DVDs, I will want it back!

Deep Reads: Martin Wolf's classic "Why Globalization Works"

The temptation here is to cite his more recent, post-crash work ("Fixing Global Finance"), but if you want a soup-to-nuts explanation of why I believe in globalization's overwhelmingly positive impact on the world in recent decades, this 2004 book is still the ultimate primer in my mind--worth the long slow read.  It's like taking an international economics course.  So best to start here and then trying the more complex recent volume.

Whenever I get asked, "What's the single best book I can read on the global economy and globalization?" I always cite this book and will until probably Wolf dethrones it himself.  

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Wolf at a regional Davos meeting (off the coast of Australia).  He saw me give the brief and we had dinner following, with my old friend Minxin Pei.  He is as charming and fascinating and intelligent in person as he appears in print.