My Favorite Books of 2022
In no particular order, here are the books I enjoyed reading the most this year.
Most (but not all) of these are published in 2022. Yes, I know-not enough fiction this year! :-(
If you are pressed for time, I have also included interviews with the author that gives a good overview.
Will be back in January. Happy holidays!
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller: “Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. became dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US.”
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Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Dr. Anna Lembke: A deeply disturbing, painfully honest, hugely important and ultimately exhilarating book. We are all addicted to something or the other in this age of abundance. “This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting....”
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When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe: “In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company's stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey collects millions of dollars advising government agencies that also regulate McKinsey's corporate clients. And the firm frequently advises competitors in the same industries, but denies that this presents any conflict of interest.”
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Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka: “Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war. Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire” (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.”
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Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya: “There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.
In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya’s own experience, Life Is Hard is a book for this moment—a work of solace and compassion.”TL;DR:
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx: Annie Proulx is the Pulitzer-winning author of Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News. Peatlands are wetlands with a thick water-logged soil layer made up of dead and decaying plant material. They include moors, bogs, mires, peat swamp forests and permafrost tundra. Though only 3% of the global total land area, they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests. Proulx “brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit.”
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The Cashless Revolution: China's Reinvention of Money and the End of America's Domination of Finance and Technology by Martin Chorzempa: “How China’s revolution in finance and technology is changing both Wall Street and the way individuals manage their personal finances. The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes from China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing, and advertising.”
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Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson: All models are wrong, some are useful, an aphorism attributed to statistician George Box. “In Escape from Model Land, statistician Erica Thompson illuminates the hidden dangers of models. She demonstrates how models reflect the biases, perspectives, and expectations of their creators. Thompson shows us why understanding the limits of models is vital to using them well. A deeper meditation on the role of mathematics, this is an essential book for helping us avoid either confusing the map with the territory or throwing away the map completely, instead pointing to more nuanced ways to Escape from Model Land.”
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The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation by Scott Carney, Jason Miklian: A searing and unflinching look at the events around Super Cyclone Bhola in 1971. “The deadliest storm in modern history ripped Pakistan in two and led the world to the brink of nuclear war when American and Soviet forces converged in the Bay of Bengal. In November 1970, a storm set a collision course with the most densely populated coastline on Earth. Over the course of just a few hours, the Great Bhola Cyclone would kill 500,000 people and begin a chain reaction of turmoil, genocide, and war. The Vortex is the dramatic story of how that storm sparked a country to revolution. Bhola made landfall during a fragile time, when Pakistan was on the brink of a historic election. The fallout ignited a conflagration of political intrigue, corruption, violence, idealism, and bravery that played out in the lives of tens of millions of Bangladeshis.”
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Whole Numbers And Half Truths: What Data Can And Cannot Tell Us About Modern India by Rukmini. S: Rukmini punches a big hole in a lot of the BS analysis floating around about India. “In Whole Numbers and Half-Truths, data-journalism pioneer Rukmini S. draws on nearly two decades of on-ground reporting experience to piece together a picture that looks nothing like the one you might expect. There is a mountain of data available on India, but it remains opaque, hard to access and harder yet to read, and it does not inform public conversation. Rukmini marshals this information—some of it never before reported—alongside probing interviews with experts and ordinary citizens, to see what the numbers can tell us about India. As she interrogates how data works, and how the push and pull of social and political forces affect it, she creates a toolkit for data, a blueprint to understand the changes of the last few years and the ones to come.”
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The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak: “Acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak, incarnates (13th-century poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic) Rumi's timeless message of love. The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz—that together explore the enduring power of Rumi's work.”
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Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization & Make Hybrid Work Work for Everyone by Lynda Gratton: Work, as we know it, is changed forever. The question is how and when employers will recognize and adapt to the tectonic shift. “LBS Professor Lynda Gratton is the global thought leader on the future of work. Drawing on thirty years of research into the technological, demographic, cultural, and societal trends that are shaping work and building on what we learned through our experiences of the pandemic, Gratton presents her innovative four-step framework for redesigning work. She presents real-world case studies that show companies grappling with work challenges. These include the global bank HSBC, which built a multidisciplinary team to understand the employee experience; the Japanese technology company Fujitsu, which reimagined three kinds of “perfect” offices; and the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, which established new roles to coordinate work across the organization.”
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Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval Kindle Edition by Jon Hilsenrath: “Award-winning economics writer Jon Hilsenrath examines what happened, viewing events through the experiences of two historic figures: Janet Yellen was Treasury Secretary, Federal Reserve Chairwoman and Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Her husband, George Akerlof, was an imaginative Nobel prize–winning economist. In telling their story, Hilsenrath explores long-running intellectual battles over the fragile balance between unruly democratic government and unpredictable markets. He introduces readers to the cast of modern intellectuals and policy makers who deciphered, shaped, and steered these systems through prosperity, chaos, and reformation. And he explains what went wrong, why, and what might happen next.”
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