Book Recap 2024

19 Dec, 2024

I decided to do a wrapped for the books I read over 2024.

At the bottom I list all the books I read this year. * means I would recommend reading and ** means I highly recommend reading. Textbooks are not ranked.

Category Breakdown

Other Statistics

Total Books Read: 85

Top 5 (tentative):

1. The Snowball - Alice Schroeder
2. The Dark Genius of Wall Street - Edward J. Renehan Jr.
3. The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness
4. The Power Broker - Robert Caro
5. The Prize - Daniel Yergin

I was going to write a summary for all of them, but that wouldn't do them justice. To summarize why I liked them, it's because they provided me with good mental models of how those individuals operated and behaved, and the things that make them tick. As for The Prize, it's a fascinating to read about the development of civilization and power over the past ~200 years from the perspective of oil/energy. I have a whole notebook on the book, but I'll write that up later. Notes for The Dark Genius of Wall Street and The Power Broker are on the bottom.

Biographies:

1. A Man for All Markets - Ed Thorp
2. Alexander the Great - Phillip Freeman
3. Alexander the Great - Plutarch
4. American Prometheus - Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
5. American Rascal - Greg Steinmitz
6. Bloomberg - Michael Bloomberg
7. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein
8. Damn Right - Janet Lowe
9. Einstein - Walter Isaacson
10. Frank Oppenheimer - Something Wonderful Happens K.C. Cole
11. Phillip and Alexander - Adrian Goldsworthy
12. Phillip II - Plutarch
13. Phillip II of Macedonia: Greater than Alexander - Richard A. Gabriel
14. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
15. The Autobiography of Henry Ford
16. The Company I Keep - A Life in Beauty - Leonard Lauder
17. The Dark Genius of Wall Street - Edward J. Renehan Jr.
18. The Duty of Genius (Wittgenstein) - Ray Monk
19. The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart
20. The Man Who Solved the Market - Gregory Zuckerman
21. The Power Broker - Robert Caro
22. The Snowball - Alice Schroeder
23. Titan - Ron Chernow
24. 回錄 × 貼身採訪：《製衣》 - Yohji Yamamoto
25. 武則天

Companies/Business:

1. Berkshire Shareholder Letters
2. Beyond the Horizons (Lockheed) - Thomas Dunne
3. Creativity Inc - Amy Wallace, Ed Catmull
4. Facebook - Steven Levy
5. Herb's Heroes (Southwest Airlines) - David Sanders
6. High Output Management - Andy Grove
7. Nuts! (Southwest Airlines) - Kevin Frieberg
8. Ogilvy and Advertising - David Ogilvy
9. Only The Paranoid Survive - Andy Grove
10. Principles - Ray Dalio
11. Skunk works - Ben Rich
12. The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness - Ogilvy and Mather
13. The Firm (McKinsey) - Duff McDonald
14. The NVIDIA Way - Tae Kim
15. The Outsiders - William N. Thorndike, Jr
16. The Quants - Scott Patterson
17. When Genius Failed - Roger Lowenstein
18. 文明，現代化，價值投資與中國 - Li Lu

History:

1. Against the Gods - Peter Bernstein
2. The First Tycoon - T.J. Stiles
3. The Lessons of History - Will and Ariel Durant
4. The Library, Books 16-20 - Diodorus
5. The Prize - Daniel Yergin
6. The Rise and Fall of American Growth - Robert J. Gordon
7. 武則天

Textbooks:

1. Financial Statement Analysis
2. Reinforcement Learning - Sutton and Barto
3. The C Programming Language
4. Option Pricing and Volatility
5. OS Design and Implementation - Woodhull and Tanenbaum
6. Information Theory - Mackay
7. Computer Science: A Programmer's Perspective - Bryant and O'Hallaron
8. Little Book of Deep Learning - Francois Fleuret
9. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning - Chris Bishop

Recommended to me (directly or indirectly):

1. Why Greatness Can't Be Planned - Kenneth O. Stanley, John Lehman
2. The Choice - Edith Eger
3. Out of the Gobi - Weijian Shan
4. From Good to Great - Jim Collins
5. The Duty of Genius (Wittgenstein) - Ray Monk
6. Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
7. Lexicon - Max Barry
8. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
9. The Rise and Fall of American Growth - Robert J. Gordon
10. Frank Oppenheimer - Something Wonderful Happens K.C. Cole
11. The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
12. Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
13. The Prize - Daniel Yergin

The full list of books I read in 2024, mostly chronologically (save for the ones I tacked on the end because I forgot to note them down)

1. From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin *
2. All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there - Peter Bevelin
3. Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
4. The Snowball - Alice Schroeder **
5. The Intelligent Investor - Ben Graham
6. The First Tycoon - T.J. Stiles *
7. American Prometheus - Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
8. Foundation Trilogy - Asimov **
9. Financial Statement Analysis
10. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie *
11. The Company I Keep - A Life in Beauty - Leonard Lauder
12. Berkshire Shareholder Letters *
13. 48 Laws of Power - Hamilton Helmer
14. 7 Powers - Hamilton Helmer
15. 武則天
16. The Lessons of History - Will and Ariel Durant
17. Skunk works - Ben Rich **
18. American Rascal - Greg Steinmitz *
19. The Autobiography of Henry Ford *
20. The Symbolic Species - Terrence W. Deacon
21. Herb's Heroes (Southwest Airlines) - David Sanders
22. Nuts! (Southwest Airlines) - Kevin Frieberg *
23. Titan - Ron Chernow **
24. High Output Management - Andy Grove
25. Only The Paranoid Survive - Andy Grove
26. The Quants - Scott Patterson *
27. Why Greatness Cannot be Planned - Kenneth O. Stanley, John Lehman *
28. Bloomberg - Michael Bloomberg *
29. Damn Right - Janet Lowe
30. Creativity Inc - Amy Wallace, Ed Catmull
31. The Choice (Auschuwitz) - Edith Eger
32. Reinforcement Learning - Sutton and Barto
33. The C Programming Language
34. Option Pricing and Volatility
35. Out of the Gobi - Weijian Shan
36. From Good to Great - Jim Collins
37. Frank Oppenheimer: Something Wonderful Happens - K.C. Cole
38. The Outsiders - William N. Thorndike, Jr **
39. The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
40. The Man Who Solved the Market - Gregory Zuckerman **
41. Beat the dealer - Ed Thorp
42. A Man for All Markets - Ed Thorp *
43. Beyond the Horizons (Lockheed) - Thomas Dunne
44. The Black Swan - Taleb
45. OS Design and Implementation - Woodhull and Tanenbaum
46. 回憶錄 × 貼身採訪：《製衣》 - Yohji Yamamoto *
47. The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness - Ogilvy and Mather **
48. The Creative Act - Rick Rubin
49. Alexander the Great - Phillip Freeman **
50. Alexander the Great - Plutarch
51. The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart
52. The Power Broker - Robert Caro **
53. The Last Question - Asimov *
54. The Duty of Genius (Wittgenstein) - Ray Monk *
55. Last and First Men - Olaf Stapeldon
56. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein *
57. Zen Mind, Beginner Mind - Suzuki *
58. Ogilvy and Advertising - David Ogilvy *
59. The Prize - Daniel Yergin **
60. Against the Gods - Peter Bernstein
61. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
62. A Cook's Tour - Antony Bourdain
63. Lexicon - Max Barry *
64. Phillip and Alexander - Adrian Goldsworthy
65. Data Scientists at Work - Sebastian Gutierrez
66. The Dark Genius of Wall Street - Edward J. Renehan Jr. **
67. Principles - Ray Dalio
68. Speech Can Change Your Life - Dorothy Samoff
69. Architects of Intelligence - Martin Ford
70. Facebook - Steven Levy *
71. The NVIDIA Way - Tae Kim *
72. Einstein - Walter Isaacson *
73. Phillip II - Plutarch
74. The Rise and Fall of American Growth - Robert J. Gordon
75. The Library, Books 16-20 - Diodorus
76. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Fischer/Margulies/Mosenfelder
77. When Genius Failed - Roger Lowenstein
78. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
79. 文明，現代化，價值投資與中國 - Li Lu **
80. World War Z - Max Brooks
81. CSAPP - Bryant and O'Hallaron
82. Little Book of Deep Learning - Francois Fleuret
83. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning - Chris Bishop
84. The Firm (McKinsey) - Duff McDonald
85. Phillip II of Macedonia: Greater than Alexander - Richard A. Gabriel

Notes

These are very rough.

The power broker

• turn every page, never assume anything
• Ruthlessness and detail to the point of genius
• Starting on pg 69, everything before has to be typed up
• Furious impatience, wants to learn everything
• “The way to get things done, Moses was making clear, was to be in government”
• He began to neglect his work at the bureau and spend more and more time at city hall hanging around their offices. His colleagues began to whisper about bob Moses.”
• His devotion to nyc basically consumed his soul
• People actually read his thesis; speaks to the importance of putting work out there. e.g Richard Childs recruiting him from that.
• His earliest plans for civil service made everyone his enemy; mandatory education and cutting useless bureaucracy meant this antagonized the people trying to get promotions and jobs this way
  • Failed to consider self-interest and greed in his calculations
• Only because of his dedication to reform that he was acknowledge by the like minded and belle moskowitz could give him his opportunities later
  • Mentor
  • Rejected/approved/evolved his ideas
  • Shaped him to stop thinking in absolutes, to consider the human factor/incentives, more politician-like
• Al smith:
  • Hung around the club waiting for contracts (thing that needed to be done); once he was given them he’d execute to a high precision
  • Extremely gregarious
  • Started off with low education
• Page 132, about speaking in groups, becoming acquainted with the subset of society that did things, and having regular meetings. get into a position like that, host meetings like that, find meetings like that.
• Bill drafting is the “dark arts of politics” because it’s basically working with a very badly organized codebase with an extremely anal reviewer. Moses made himself the foremost expert on the topic.
• Knew legislation and writing extremely well and entered hidden clauses in almost all of them that would bypass the screens of the incumbents and give him and him alone all the power over parks, and to appropriate all the land and resources that were being hoarded
• Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs
• The important thing is to get things done
• If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?

Dark genius of Wall Street

• no limit loans, b access to high up officials, but why do people do this? Why are they so easily bribed? Framing and perception? Idk. I never got this.
  • Borne of privilege ig
• Price war with Vanderbilt, undercutted each other until Vanderbilt charged one dollar per car and one penny per head of livestock, then bought every single head of livestock to be shipped on Vanderbilt’s cars at that price.
• A lot of his strategies are based on the slow info and communication and reliance on physical shares
• Used Erie as an instrument to game people
• Destroyed reputation, but personality is kinda like me but more focused. Down to the plants
• Every time he surrenders somehow he has massive holdings and comes away with a fucking fortune
• Carefully analyzed rival railroads, used smaller railroads to support his main one, complete control, will annotate every single map with every detail imaginable to define his vision and strategy. has stenographer write down his ideas to be passed to his chief of staff. He loved the roads.
• Didn’t need gaudy displays of wealth
• Regularly donated to entrepreneurial young men and sponsored those he deemed like himself
  • Edwin bok (publisher) (really wanted him on WS for some reason)
• Manhattan railways: was losing money, financial quagmire, etc (depression); Gould used media control and printed a lot of negative news on his newspapers to drive down the stock, influenced government to make moves to help raise alarm, kept people in suspense
• “Some people say that the market goes up when Gould goes away. Goodbye”
• Probably worked harder near his death than ever, to tidy things up for the next generation