The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read a lot of behavioral economics, and I've read Kahneman and Thaler, but I was missing the context of the history of Kahneman and Tversky, followed later by Thaler, being the inventors of this discipline. I was also missing the context of the in-between location of the discipline between psychology and economics, but more importantly as the source of strife between psychologists and economists. This book also expressed my frustrations with my economics classes, and I'm even more annoyed now that I realize my economics professors were basically just ignoring research that was at that point already 20 years old. I was also interested in learning about how this research came out of Israel. I was maybe a little less interested in the ins-and-outs of Kahneman and Tversky's personal relationship and about which Lewis left me a bit confused.

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Holy Bible: New International Version

Holy Bible: New International Version by Anonymous


I started at the beginning of the year and it took about an hour a day for 8 months. Sometimes I'd skip a few days, but then sometimes I would do 2 hours to make up for falling behind. The Old Testament is much longer obviously and I think I made it feel even longer by reading The New Testament's Gospels, The Old Testament, and then the rest of the New Testament. I spent 6 of the 8 months on the Old Testament and only 2 months on the New Testament.

A few thoughts on the Old Testament, it's very long, and I think there's a lot of merit in the Jewish tradition of focusing on the first five books (the Torah). Genesis and Exodus are particularly interesting. [Repeat from my Tanakh review:] Much of the rest of the Old Testament is wars and God getting angry for his worshippers breaking rules, especially marrying those of other religions. A few notable exceptions: Song of Songs is very romantic, Jonah is the stuff of great adventure books, and the locusts are as scary as a Steven King novel.

As for the New Testament, the Gospels are really interesting, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Not to be outdone by the locusts in the Old Testament, Revelation is some scary stuff.

Since I finished the Bible in less than a year, I'm going to try to read nonfiction books about the Bible for the rest of the year.


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Worlds at War by Anthony Pagden

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West by Anthony Pagden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was interesting but crazy. Obviously, over 2000 years is a lot to cover in one book. I was oftentimes lost in the early history section because I didn't have a lot of background in the historical players, and sometimes I wasn't even sure which one Pagden was referencing when he said "he." Even though his thesis about the difficulty and incompatibility of Islam with modern secularism has to rely heavily on more modern times, the Epilogue begins in 1991. Of course, it makes sense he has to rush through history if he's going to cover all that time to make a bigger over-arching point, but why does he spend so much time talking about Napolean and Lawrence of Arabia?

He touches on the problem of fanatical religions generally, and there is no shortage of fanatics in Christianity- historically or today- but he offers no good explanation for why there's been a big difference in the development of secular societies. If President Bush wasn't slowed down by Jesus's statement to render onto Caesar what is his, then how big an impact did that one sentence really make?

I gave it 4 stars mainly because I liked reading about 2000 years in such a (relatively speaking) short book.

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Failed States by Noam Chomsky

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy by Noam Chomsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The premise of this book is that America is no great hero of democracy at home or abroad. While Chomsky makes his case, the book is so heavy-handed and doesn't examine counterarguments or nuances. We are to believe all our leaders are evil or sold out completely? While I agree with his ideas and policy aims, I think the reality of being a political leader is a lot more complicated.

The best chapter was Chapter 6 about all the ways that we're undermining democracy at home. Of course, some intellectuals argue that increased democracy is not what we need, but leaders that are independent of special interests. Special interests might always have an edge in a democracy with free speech, even if the influence of direct money on politics were limited. Chomsky doesn't examine any of these differing views.

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