What I Just Read

These are fun throwaway novels. Occasionally a really well-turned phrase, interesting settings, good plots and memorable villains. The book  Live and Let Die  is so much better than the movie featuring Roger Moore that I almost feel pity for my generation who grew up thinking that was James Bond. The allegedly racist parts of the novel ( the parts that are shortly to be sanitized ) aren't particularly racist, with the unfortunate exception of Chapter 5 (lamentably titled "Nigger Heaven"). This chapter is actually rather tone deaf: Fleming did not appear to know Harlem all that well, he attempts to write in a sort of dialect... He tried. It's presumably with the aim of creating what would feel like a thrilling, exotic atmosphere to his 1950s-era readers in England, but it's beyond his ability as a writer to do it convincingly.  Notes: * "I smoke about three packs a day." The James Bond of the novels remains far more interesting than the modern smoke-fre...

A good read--especially if you're interested in gambling, probability or unusual investing problems--and still a tolerable read even if you're not. The book grabs you early on, but by the last third it loses some of its momentum and becomes a bit too didactic. All in all an interesting autobiography of a rigorous thinker: Thorp is a sort of Richard Feynman of the mathematics world--uh, just without mashing all the young coeds. It's instructive to read Thorp's extensive thoughts about Bernie Madoff (see pages 213ff). Thorp identified the Madoff fraud many, many years before the truth came out, and not only is it one of the most interesting parts of the book, but it shows how "experts" and "authorities" (like the SEC, or the supposedly "watchdog" media) fail to act on or even perceive  a fraud, while an outsider with critical thinking skills can easily identify one. It's a staggering embarrassment that the Madoff fraud lasted as long as ...

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...