2022
What I read in 2022
36 books, 11,016 pages. Newest first.
Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control
Ryan Holiday · 2022 · read Dec 2022The second volume in Holiday's Stoic Virtues series (after Courage Is Calling), organized around self-discipline applied to body,…
Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion
Gabrielle Stanley Blair · 2022 · read Dec 2022A short, argument-driven reframing that places responsibility for unwanted pregnancy squarely on male behavior — specifically,…
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
Nick Bilton · 2017 · read Dec 2022The story of Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road darknet marketplace — its libertarian-utopian founding, its multi-million-dollar…
Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry
Jacquie McNish · 2015 · read Dec 2022The inside story of Research in Motion's rise to global smartphone dominance and its rapid collapse after the iPhone — told…
Blowout
Rachel Maddow · 2019 · read Dec 2022Maddow's argument that the oil and gas industry — by its nature — corrupts politics and weakens democracy wherever it operates,…
For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America
Jonathan D. Cohen · 2022 · read Dec 2022A historian's account of how state-run lotteries went from constitutionally banned vice to ubiquitous fixture of state finance…
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Kristin Kobes Du Mez · 2020 · read Nov 2022A historian's argument that the Trump-evangelical alignment wasn't a sellout but the predictable endpoint of a 75-year project to…
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
Anne Applebaum · 2020 · read Oct 2022Applebaum's part-memoir, part-analysis of how former liberal-democratic allies — many of them personal friends across Poland,…
Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church
Andy Stanley · 2022 · read Oct 2022Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley's argument from within evangelicalism that the church's alignment with partisan politics —…
The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump
Bob Woodward · 2022 · read Oct 2022The audio (and transcribed) record of Woodward's twenty interviews with Trump — material that fed Rage and Fear, presented here…
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen · 2001 · read Oct 2022Allen's foundational system for handling the volume and ambiguity of modern knowledge work — the goal isn't to do more but to…
The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 - 2021
Peter Baker · 2022 · read Oct 2022Peter Baker and Susan Glasser's comprehensive single-volume history of the Trump presidency — broader and more measured than the…
Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential
Tiago Forte · 2022 · read Oct 2022Forte's framework for using digital notes as an external memory system that captures, organizes, and recombines information into…
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science & Spirituality
Ken Wilber · 1996 · read Oct 2022Ken Wilber's compact 2000 introduction to his "integral theory" — a meta-framework that attempts to integrate scientific,…
American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
Tim Alberta · 2019 · read Oct 2022A Politico reporter's blow-by-blow account of how the Republican Party transformed from the post-2008 Tea Party insurgency into…
Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America
Kurt Andersen · 2020 · read Sep 2022Andersen's companion-volume argument that the explosion of inequality since the 1970s wasn't drift or accident but a deliberate,…
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
Kurt Andersen · 2017 · read Sep 2022Andersen's argument that America has always been disproportionately credulous — built by religious utopians, hucksters, and…
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877
Eric Foner · 1990 · read Aug 2022Foner's own condensed version of his 1988 magnum opus — the same revisionist argument, made more portable.
The Infinite Game
Simon Sinek · 2017 · read Aug 2022Sinek's application of James Carse's finite/infinite games distinction to business — arguing that companies in pursuit of a "win"…
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
Dorothy Roberts · 2022 · read Aug 2022A legal scholar's argument that the U.S.
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday · 2014 · read Jul 2022Ryan Holiday's 2014 popular-Stoicism book — the volume that launched his "modern Stoicism" project and most of the subsequent…
Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
Anna Merlan · 2019 · read Jul 2022A reporter's immersive tour of contemporary American conspiracy subcultures — anti-vaxxers, Sandy Hook truthers, Pizzagate, UFOs,…
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari · 2018 · read Jul 2022Harari's present-focused volume (after Sapiens on the past and Homo Deus on the future), tackling the immediate disruptions — AI,…
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
Yuval Noah Harari · 2015 · read Jul 2022Picking up where Sapiens ended, Harari argues that humanity's next project — having largely solved famine, plague, and war — is…
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
Mehrsa Baradaran · 2017 · read Jul 2022Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran's history of Black banking in America — from Reconstruction's Freedman's Savings Bank through…
The Tragedy of Rudy Giuliani
Michael Wolff · 2020 · read Jul 2022Michael Wolff's compact biographical-and-political treatment of Rudy Giuliani — from prosecutor through "America's Mayor" through…
The 12 Week Year
Brian P. Moran · 2009 · read Jun 2022Brian Moran's compact framework book on treating 12-week periods as your "year" — the argument that annual planning produces low…
The Original Watergate Stories (Kindle Single) (The Washington Post Book 1)
The Washington Post · 2012 · read Jun 2022A Kindle Single compilation of the original Washington Post Watergate stories — the Woodward-Bernstein bylines as they ran in the…
The Membership Economy
Robbie Kellman Baxter · 2015 · read Jun 2022Robbie Kellman Baxter's framework for membership-based businesses — distinguishing membership from subscription, from loyalty…
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality
Chris C. Mooney · 2007 · read May 2022Science journalist Chris Mooney's 2012 argument that the cognitive-and-personality literature shows measurable differences…
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
Brené Brown · 2021 · read May 2022Brené Brown's 2021 systematic mapping of 87 emotions — drawing on years of her research lab's qualitative coding work — organized…
The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process: Transcend Your Toughest Times
David Berceli · 2008 · read Apr 2022David Berceli's foundational book on TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) — a somatic practice using deliberate muscle…
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
Stephen Cope · 1999 · read Mar 2022Psychotherapist and Kripalu Institute scholar-in-residence Stephen Cope's introduction to yoga's psychological dimensions —…
Ditch the Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion
Steve Yastrow · 2014 · read Mar 2022Steve Yastrow's compact framework book on persuasion as improvisation — arguing that the "pitch" (rehearsed, one-directional,…
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Bessel van der Kolk · 2014 · read Feb 2022A foundational synthesis of trauma research arguing that traumatic experience is stored physiologically — not just narratively —…
The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur's Formula for a Beautiful Life
Ari R. Meisel · 2016 · read Jan 2022Ari Meisel's compact framework book on his "Less Doing" methodology — a three-step optimize-automate-outsource progression…