Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono

This was one of the most valuable books I read all year. It has certain problems (one of which is the author's inability to use a comma!), but this book will teach a patient reader anything and everything about how to think creatively.

Some notes/reminders:

* The mind as a self-maximizing memory system that grabs set patterns and is resistant to letting go of mentally acquired patterns and conceptions.

* Sequence of arrival of information and how it locks in certain conceptual frameworks.

* Logical/vertical thinking (where every step has to be judged/right), vs lateral thinking where you embrace being wrong on purpose, deliberate restructuring of inputs and information, etc.

* Use of the made-up word "PO" as a conversational/cognitive trigger for lateral thinking, both linguistically and conceptually.

The Shipping Man by Matthew McCleery

A must-read for shipping investors--and even if you're not, it will likely make one out of you. It's a fun story, hilarious at times, and it teaches readers all kinds of nuances about investing. Our main character, running his own little hedge fund, finds out by pure accident that the Baltic Dry Index is down 97% (!) over the course of just three months. It makes him curious, and this curiosity takes him on a downright Dantean journey through the shipping industry. He's outwitted left and right: first by savvy bankers in Germany, then by even savvier Greeks. And then, in an awful moment of weakness, he gets lured into buying a "tramp" (a very old, nearly used-up ship needing massive repairs) at what seems like a good price. The industry nearly eats this guy alive more than once, but he comes out the other end a true Shipping Man. This should be mandatory reading for MBA students. I think back to all the terminally boring "case studies" I had to read ov

The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb

"What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it, the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history." Sometimes a book hits you with a central idea that seems at first so preposterously unlikely that you can't help but laugh out loud (as I did) and think, &quo

The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World by Adrian Murdoch

A slow, workmanlike biography, but it gets the job done, conveying context on the Roman Empire during the 4th century AD, a period that began with Constantine I imposing Christianity, featured tremendous brutality and paranoia among the empire's ruling families, and led to Julian's ascension to emperor mostly by luck. This period was also a sort of mini-cycle of breakdown and recovery within the Roman Empire's much longer multi-century breakup and collapse. Julian was extraordinarily fortunate just to survive to adulthood as the then-emperor killed not only Julian's parents but practically his entire family to eliminate any possible future political threat. Julian then became emperor by still more miraculous luck: just as he and his opponent (and cousin) Constantius were girding for what was shaping up to be a tremendous civil war, Constantius died of a fever, and Julian took power peacefully. And then, luck of the other kind: a mere eighteen months after becoming emper

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