The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a good introduction to systemic racism in America as it exists currently. While it does discuss politics it very evenhandedly explains the forces that have led both the right and the left to contribute to the broken system. It's not a complete history nor does it cover all the relevant legal concepts that contribute to the system but it's a strong and persuasive introduction. It's also excruciatingly sad.

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My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The memoir started off slowly as she spent what I thought was an undo amount of time on her childhood. (Spoiler alert: The book ends with her confirmation in 2009, and has only one mention of President Obama, though it's not a significant interaction.) But I got into it about halfway through as I was particularly interested in how her relationship with her family and friends developed, her struggle with diabetes, her legal cases. (I'm a licensed but not practicing attorney.) I was also interested in her personal views on affirmative action, professionalism, and the costs and benefits of giving your life to your career.

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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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