What I Just Read

An environmental travelogue of a walk, on foot, across Kenya, from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro all the way to the Indian Ocean. You'll learn about the various debates surrounding efforts to conserve habitat and wildlife in Africa, you'll learn a lot about elephants and the people who used to hunt them, and you'll be perhaps disturbed by the arrogance of non-local "experts" meddling with (and often catastrophically disrupting) entire cultures, all in the name of "conservation." You'll also, at times, suffer from author Rick Ridgeway's leaden pen. His style would improve significantly if he would do three simple things: 1) Put down the thesaurus and stay within the constraints of his working vocabulary, 2) Stop using compound verbs (e.g.: have done, has said, had known), and 3) Omit needless words .  There's also something creepy and bothersome about a white environmentalist/travel writer walking unburdened through the African bush with guides...

Short, concise and useful introduction to Taoism. This book is a timely read: many Taoist ideas are helpful cures for the ills of modernity, particularly the media-induced fear and divisiveness we are being subjected to right now. Notes:   Tzu = master (e.g. "Lao Tzu" = master Lao) Tao = the way [as in: the way to be followed], the path, doctrine  Te = virtue Ching = a moral canon, sutra, teachings of outstanding moral value * Very little is known about Lao Tzu, specialists do not even agree on his historicity, even whether he lived or was just a legendary figure. "Shrouded in impenetrable obscurity." * The Tao Te Ching "appears to be an anthology of apothegms [aphorisms, sayings] borrowed partly from the common stock of wisdom, partly from various proto-Taoist schools." * Taoism and Confucianism as the only main philosophical schools of China that survived from the so called "hundred schools." Confucius lived during a period of growing decadence...

Excellent biography of Thomas Cochrane, a daring sea captain capable of near-mythological genius on the waters, but blind and deaf to the institutional politics of his own military.  The finest biographies teach, and this one teaches readers twice over: by backdrop, it teaches 18th and 19th Century world history; by telling of Cochrane's various successes and failures, it offers lessons for navigating life. Analogous historical figures from the 20th Century could be someone like George Patton (brilliant on the battlefield but a constant irritant to superior officers) or John Boyd (a revolutionary military thinker who was  so  revolutionary that his own chain of command in the Air Force saw him as an existential threat). Cochrane, according to his own son, "made enemies were a cautious man might have made friends" and it led to him being brought down by the military and political leaders of his own time.  Cochrane also reminds me of a long list of examples in corporat...

Sri Sarada Devi was the wife of the 19th century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna. This book contains a short, informal biography of her along with records of her thoughts and conversations as told by followers and disciples.  I know nothing, absolutely nothing , about Hinduism nor do I know anything of the famous Hindu mystics like Ramakrishna, but what's striking to me are the significant parallels with the mysticism of my own Christian tradition. You'll see the same paradoxes and questions discussed in this book also grappled with in The Sayings of the Holy Desert Fathers , or the works of Elder Porphyrios, St. Francis or St. Theresa of Avila. Questions on how to balance spiritual life with worldly responsibilities like earning a living, how to live a life of quiet virtue and asceticism, to what extent one should practice devotions or austerities like fasting in daily life, how to escape the various (and sometimes nested) traps of attachment, and so on. Notes/Quotes: * Sri Sarad...

A book about the evolution and development of human ingenuity, and how that ingenuity drives a ratcheting up of our standard of living, albeit with periodic retrogressions.  If you've never studied college-level biology, anthropology, or ecology/environmental studies, you'll find this book helpful, although it's written in the style of a class reading assignment. Those already conversant in these subjects will find this book orthodox rehash. Notes: * An inauspicious start to the book: on page 2, the author presents readers with a strawman representation of Julian Simon's book The Ultimate Resource . It sounds as if the author read the Wikipedia page on Simon's book, not the book itself.  * If you're a frequent reader of books on the environment and on environmental policy, you know it's a you've read your fair share of depressing and preachy books. In fact, you get to the point where you already know mostly what the book is going to say. Moreover, nobody...

This is an important book to read. It gives readers a non-orthodox lens for thinking about the Federal Reserve System (the USA's central bank): what it does, what it doesn't do, the questionable circumstances under which it was created, and how its stated purposes are substantially different from its ostensible purposes. You will never find this perspective in any economics, history or political science textbook. No one wants you to think about our central bank in this way, for reasons that become increasingly obvious as you read.  I'm grateful to this author for showing me a different way to think about our country's money supply, its banking and currency issuance policies, and for illustrating what it really means to be a "cantillon insider." Although the author never uses this specific phrase, he is quite clear in showing who benefits--and who is cruelly harmed--from loose monetary policy.  Notes: * The central bank should be thought of as a cartel meant...

An exploration of the spiritual and mystical dimensions of athletics. Quite a sincere, beautiful and even romantic book that gives you a clear idea that more--much more--is possible in life and sport than you think. A reader will need a certain level of credulousness to get maximum value out of this book, while a cynical or highly skeptical reader shouldn't bother reading it at all.  This book also offers a tremendous list of additional books to read. At the bottom of this post I share those that caught my eye. Notes:   Ch 1: The Spiritual Underground in Sports * Interesting examples of mystical experiences athletes have while performing. States of mind which could be described as a type of ecstasy or a type of stillness, zen-like experiences that happen through the performing of sport.  * The mystical collective intelligence of a team when it "clicks" and performs at a level far beyond the sum of its parts.  * The various psychological and emotional paradoxes that ...

Competent, readable, co-written bio of a great basketball player who was both blessed and cursed to live in Michael Jordan's shadow. For better, more insightful bios I recommend others: Andre Iguodala's book The Sixth Man or Andre Agassi's absolute page-turner,  Open.   The book is full of mixed emotions. Pippen wants to be traded, then was grateful he wasn't. He's happy with, but later deeply disappointed in, coach Phil Jackson. He's angry at Jerry Krause (the Chicago Bulls general manager) for underpaying him and treating him with disrespect, but then he's grateful to him for other reasons. He's angry at Michael Jordan for being a cruel and condescending narcissist, but then grateful to him for all the positive things that being a teammate with Michael Jordan would later lead to.  One gets the impression that Pippen is  still  trying to work out how exactly he feels about his experiences across his basketball career, that he's unsettled about it a...