Unguarded by Scottie Pippen (with Michael Arkush)

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 and doesn't really know what he thinks about it all. I think I see where he's coming from. In some ways I feel the same about my (far less decorated!) professional career; I don't know what it all means, and I have my own tangled mix of emotions about it.

A couple of final comments. This book will teach you to be deeply cynical about the media--not that we need the reminder of course, especially in this era. And finally, Pippen constantly gripes about being underpaid, but it's worth noting that he made a decision to sign a long-term contract at a certain wage rate, and his team fulfilled that contract to the dollar. During his contract, however, the economics changed for NBA players as the league grew in popularity and profitability. But this is the risk you take when you lock in a long term deal! Pippen chose a long term contract over the risks of a shorter term contract with potential upside, and the bet didn't work out for him.

The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Francis Golffing)

Of the three essays of The Genealogy of Morals I recommend the first two. Skim the third. Collectively, they are extremely useful reading for citizens of the West to see clearly the oligarchic power dynamics under which we live. Show me a modern Western nation-state where there isn't an increasing concentration of power among the elites--and a reduction in freedom for everyone else. You can't find one. Today we live in an increasingly neo-feudal system, where elites control more and more of the wealth, the actions, even the thoughts of the masses. Perhaps we should see the rare flowerings of genuine democratic freedom (6th century BC Athens, Republic-era Rome, and possibly pre-1913 USA ) for what they really are: extreme outliers, quickly replaced with tyranny. The first essay inverts the entire debate about morality, as Nietzsche nukes centuries of philosophical ethics by simply saying the powerful simply do what they do , and thus those things are good by defi...

The Fourth Turning is Here by Neil Howe

If you've read the original The Fourth Turning , much of this book will be review. However, this book explains the Forth Turning framework more cogently and tightly than the original, so if you haven't read the original book, I recommend just reading this and skipping the original. You'll walk away with the same central ideas plus the author's additional new (and slightly-adjusted) conclusions. The most profound takeaway from the overall Fourth Turning paradigm is that it teaches you to remember your place in the grand scheme of things. Sadly, modernity teaches the exact opposite: it persuades us to think we humans are bigger than history, that we can ignore it, be oblivious to it, and yet not repeat it. Worst of all, modernity teaches us to believe we've somehow managed to defeat history with our SOYANCE!!! and tEcHNologY--ironically none of which we can understand, replicate or repair. These "modren" beliefs, as arrogant and wrong as they are, conflic...

Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard

Tight, concise discussion of what the State really is and what it really does, not what we would like it to be. Thanks to the recent pandemic response, most of us lost once and for all our delusive belief that governments are a force for good, a force for fairness and justice. In this short book, Murray Rothbard shows how the State--no matter how "limited" a government you might set up in the beginning--always, always abrogates its citizens' rights and freedoms. It's just a matter of time. We also come to understand why the State loves war. It loves it. It gives the State far more power. It provides an easy justification to abrogate still more freedoms. And of course those in the State apparatus who profit politically or economically from war never seem to send their own sons to fight it. An all-too-typical example: note how Benjamin Netanyahu's military-age son lives safely and luxuriously in Miami, his security paid for by Israeli taxpayers . The fourth chap...

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