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The Sinister Pig by Tony Hillerman

Tony Hillerman brings out his franchise characters, Navajo officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, to spin an interesting and readable story on drug smugglers operating through a derelict oil pipeline from Mexico to Southern New Mexico.

The Sinister Pig was a light read, perfect for the beach or the airplane, and it contains plenty of what draws me to Hillerman stories: his evocations of the American southwest and the Navajo peoples who live there. However, Hillerman has written better books. Coyote Waits and A Thief of Time are titles that I'd recommend long before this one. Nevertheless, this was still a diverting story, and there's a place in everyone's summer reading list for an easy-to-read book that you can blast through in a couple of days.

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How to Survive and Thrive in the Coming Wave of Deflation by A. Gary Shilling

I'd like to accomplish two things with this review of a book that, frankly, isn't worth a close read. First, I'll briefly point to the specific sections of the book readers can skim to extract most of the book's value--see the next paragraph for that part. Second, I want to use this book--which is the macroeconomic prediction equivalent of a man with a hammer--to expose the "expert prediction" game and illustrate how dangerous it is to credulously follow so-called expert predictions, especially when it comes to stock markets and economics. We'll start with what to skip and skim. A time-constrained reader can extract 99% of the value of the book by skimming parts 3 and 4 (pages 209-331) and studying the two charts on pages 330 and 331, which spell out all the dos and don'ts for surviving deflation. Readers might also consider reading Chapter 15 for its discussion of the Kondratieff wave concept, a useful mental model for thinking about cyclicality in a...

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

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