I read a lot of books this year. I’ve always enjoyed reading but I made more of an effort to do it over the last 12 months. Part of it was that I spent a lot of time waiting in hospital rooms. But I also decided that every time that I wanted to mindlessly scroll through a social media feed, I would read a book instead.
It made a big difference for my peace of mind. There’s something calming about unplugging from all the noise and losing yourself in a book. It helps you to think and put things in perspective. Reading books isn’t for everyone but more people should do it.
The big thing is that it’s not a homework assignment. You can get caught in a mindset where you have to finish a book once you start it. But that’s not the case. You want to give a book a little bit of time before you give up on it but that only goes so far. If a book is boring or poorly written then you should stop reading it. Forcing yourself to read a bad book is why people don’t read.
Here’s the 10 books I found most interesting this year, in no particular order. Most weren’t written in 2021 but there’s no reason they should be either. People have been writing books since the beginning of time. The ones that stick around usually do so for a reason. It’s the new ones you can’t be as sure about.
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
A good rule of thumb is that if a book gets made into a movie then it was probably pretty good. This was by far my favorite Wolfe book. He goes behind the scenes of the Apollo program and does a fantastic job of capturing the insanity of it all. Wolfe has a keen eye for the absurdity of the human condition and there’s no better example than the culture of the fighter pilots who competed to be astronauts in the 1960s. They were absolute maniacs in the best possible way. They all had to act like what they were doing was no big deal even though they devoted their lives to it and they were treated like gods for doing it. It’s a great window into describing what life was like in those days while also being hilarious.
The True History of the American Revolution by George Sydney Fisher
What if everything you learned about the Revolutionary War in school was wrong? This is not the first book to ask the question but it was one of the most interesting ways to ask it. It was written early in the 20th century, when the British Empire was at its peak, and asked why they were rolled so easily by the Founding Fathers, who were essentially a bunch of glorified thieves and all-around ingrates. His answer is that the British threw the war as part of a political dispute between the Whigs and the Tories. They were the Republicans and Democrats of their day and they hated each other more than they cared about America. One of the interesting things about reading books written so far in the past is that they reveal the underlying assumptions of their day, which are usually very different from what they are today. No one now would ask the question because the British haven’t been an empire for almost a century.
Here’s a fun fact I learned from this book. The reason the US Military Academy is based in West Point is because that was one of the key strategic sites in the Revolutionary War. The British wanted to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies and they needed to control the Hudson River to do that.
Medical Nemesis by Ivan Ilich
This might have been the wildest book I read all year. I have a lot of respect for modern medicine given that it saved my life but I’m also a lot more aware of its limitations now that I’ve seen the system up close and personal. Ilich doesn’t have any respect for it. He thinks it kills more people than it helps. He doesn’t so much push the Overton Window so much as smash it into a million pieces. I’m not sure that I agree with everything that he says in this book but I’m glad I read it. It will challenge a lot of your assumptions about the world.
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Books are usually better than movies so if the movie was good than you have to think that the book was too. I read another one of Puzo’s novels and it was really good too. He knows what he’s doing and he knows how to create characters that stick with you for a long time. Michael. Sonny. Fredo. Don Corleone. Even Johnny Fontane is a compelling character in the book. Like all great novelists, Puzo understands the human condition. And that’s what great art is all about.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Just because it’s a long book that they assign in school doesn’t mean that it’s not good. I wasn’t sure if it would be worth my time to read Moby Dick but it definitely was. I read pretty fast so I was able to get through it pretty quickly. Your mileage may vary if you don’t. The good news is that it’s about way more than just a hunt for a whale. Melville is giving everything you need to know about the whaling industry which was way more interesting than you might think. His tongue-in-cheek defense of why whaling is a noble calling was one of the funniest things I’ve read all year.
It’s Better to be Feared by Seth Wickersham
I wasn’t sure if there was much more to be said about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick but Wickersham found a way. To be fair, I stopped paying attention to the conversation around them a long time ago so he might be repeating stuff that everyone else already knew. But he has known them since the beginning and they both gave him a ton of access. He humanizes them a bit and gives some insight into why they have been so successful. I still can’t say that I would ever root for either but I respect what they have done more after reading this.
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen
One of the problems with how Americans learn history is that we treat Native Americans as part of a single monolith. But different tribes had very different cultures and histories. The Comanche were no more like the Lakota than the French are like the English. The rise of the Comanches happened simultaneously with the rise of the US because it was based on the combination of power of horses and guns, which were both introduced by Europeans to the North American continent. This book tells their entire history and way of life and it’s the kind of book that every society deserves to tell their story.
Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday
The story of how Peter Thiel took down Gawker is so unbelievable that it’s easy to take it for granted. Holiday is given incredible access by both Thiel and Nick Denton to give both sides of it. The interesting part is how it upends your assumptions about what success actually looks like. Was getting revenge actually psychologically healthy for Thiel? And was being taken down actually good for Denton? Things aren’t always what they seem nor do our successes and failures end up having the consequences that we might imagine.
The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock
This is the book to read if you want to understand politics in 2021. Reading this and then going back to look at some of the coverage of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will blow your mind. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. The short version is that tactics don’t matter if there’s no strategy behind them. We spent the last 20 years arguing about tactics when there was never any chance that any of it was going to work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or uninformed. Probably both. Draw your own conclusions from there.
Hyperreality by Frank Mulder
This one is short but sweet. It’s for anyone who has wondered whether we are going down the wrong path as a society and whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we live our lives in 2021. It’s a good one to keep in mind the next time you decide to get in an argument with someone online or think you know someone based on what they post on social media.
