Years back, I only read a handful of books each year and spent a lot more time on articles, blog posts and social media. Around 2016, I started publishing notes here that I took from the few books I did read, and I found it helpful to review what I learned from a slower, deeper medium.
From then on, I resolved to put more time into books, and I kicked that off with a resolution to focus on women and authors of color. A book a month seemed a realistic goal, as I juggled work and other priorities. Then the pandemic hit. In 2020, which included the birth of my first child, I read far less, and I thought my goal was doomed. But by 2021, I rediscovered my neighborhood library and found that I needed an escape from the breaking news — while still learning. I read more books in 2021 than ever before in my adult life. Then in 2022 I more than doubled that total — even though my second kid arrived that year.
Point is that I’ve gotten great joy out of engaging with books, especially from that local library. Below I recap the books I read this year for my own recollection.
I was committed to reading across the political spectrum, which I accomplished. Otherwise, I read a range of nonfiction, spanning subject matters from history and science to business and economics. I can’t rave about libraries enough.
Below is a roundup of what I read in the year:
- Money by Jacob Goldstein
- The Age of AI: And Our Human Future by Daniel Huttenlocher, Eric Schmidt, and Henry Kissinger
- The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
- The Anthropocene: Reviewed by John Green
- VC: An American History by Tom Nicholas
- Off the Books by Sudhir Venkatesh
- Neuro Tribes by Steve Silberman
- Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses
- All the News that’s fit to sell by James T. Hamilton
- Me & White Supremacy by Layla Saad
- Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama
- Principles: Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
- Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman
- Seek and Hide by Amy Gajda
- Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
- Stumbling Upon Happiness by Dan Gilbert
- Rise and Reign of Mammals by Steve Brusatte
- Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
- Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
- Dialect Diversity in America by William Labov
- Half Life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman
- The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer
- The Journalist the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
- Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
- The Greatest Invention by Silvia Ferrera
- Culture of New Capitalism by Richard Sennett
- The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Goldstein
- End Times by Bryan Walsh
- Free to Choose by Milton Friedman
- Germs Gun and Steel by Jared Diamond
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes
- Ikigai by Héctor García, Francesc Miralles:
- Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell
- I Never Thought of It That Way by Mónica Guzmán
- Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation by David French
- Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City by Elijah Anderson
- The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro
- Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
- Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford
I also got my hands on Ben Bernanke’s Monetary Policy in the 21st Century, but I made slow progress of it, especially as my second kid arrived, and it was due back to the library before I got even halfway through it. I didn’t count it.
