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Titles Reviewed/Index of Posts

What follows is a list of all of the books reviewed so far in this reading blog. The titles contain links to each individual post; the links that say "Amazon Link" will take you to that specific title on Amazon.com.

1) The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith
[Amazon Link]

2) New Think - The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas by Edward de Bono
[Amazon Link]

3) The Sinister Pig by Tony Hillerman
[Amazon Link]

4) The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine
[Amazon Link]

A Simple Rule for Getting Rid of Your Excess Books

5) Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar
[Amazon Link]

6) The Fords: An American Epic by Peter Collier and David Horowitz [Amazon Link]

7) The Overspent American by Juliet Schor [Amazon Link]

Full Disclosure: if you purchase any items from Amazon by following the links provided, I will receive a small commission. Please think of it as my "tip jar"--and thanks so much to readers for all of your support!

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Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Tedious, weak, and worst of all  "riddled" with errors  and oversights. Do not read. I recommend instead  Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction  by J. Allan Hobson  for information about the REM/dreaming stage of sleep, as well as  Restful Sleep  by Deepak Chopra  for readers interested in practical help for improving sleep quality. Unlike Why We Sleep , both of these books are short, direct, readable and clear. Sadly, I also have to spend a brief few sentences  on Alexey Guzey's devastating criticisms of this book . Alexey's entire post is very much worth reading, but if you want to see just one glaring example of atrocious academic ethics, you can start with a chart Matthew Walker uses in Chapter 6 to prove a linear relationship between sleep loss and sports injury-- except that he cuts off the part of the chart that disproves his argument . This is childish middle school stuff, way beneath the line of a Berkeley and Harvard professor, a...
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The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai

Worth reading, and rereading, and re-rereading. An elegant book that teaches fundamental principles of value investing, and much more. The Dhandho Investor  also has the highly unusual quality of being useful at a wide range of reader sophistication levels: you can gain tremendously from this book as a beginner or as a deeply experienced investor. I'll single out Chapters 5 and 6 for particular mention: Chapter 5 describes author Mohnish Pabrai's investing framework, with nine interlocking and synchronistic rules. Chapter 6 describes in very simple language all of the gigantic structural advantages of investing in the stock market, as it offers low frictional costs, a tremendous selection of possible businesses, and, most importantly, periodic incredible opportunities. These two chapters explain why you will take a pass on almost all investments--but then, once in a while, make large bets on specific situations that meet your requirements. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon ...
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By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy by Michael G. Vickers

The least deceptive way to read this endless, muddled and minutia-laden memoir would be to view it as a very long piece of propaganda: a type of limited hangout of all of the covert (and overt) things the United States does globally in its attempts to project power. It can also be read as an attempt at an extended--and I mean extended --defense of the CIA and all of its meddlings all over the world. This is if you actually read the book. Don't. Piled up with words but saying little of substance, this is the most obfuscatory memoir I've ever read. The author's voice fundamentally irritates: he has a compulsive need to share staggering amounts of unnecessary detail, he comes across as a relentless credit hog, and he repeatedly attempts to place himself right in the middle of the action--even when it's clear he wasn't. Perhaps least ethical of all, he has a habit of framing his actions and decisions so they appear more correct and predictive in retrospect than they ac...
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