Highlighting some books that I loved reading in 2018. These are not necessarily books that were published in 2018.
(Before I get into the list, I loved three wonderful books by my colleagues this year: The Customer Centricity Playbook by Peter Fader and Sarah Toms, Never Stop Learning by Brad Staats, and The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust by Kevin Werbach. I am finishing the last one now).
Business and Society: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most unputdownable book of the year. Here is my Review.
- The Great A&P and Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson is an excellent way to understand Amazon and its challenges.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence: Prediction Machines: Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agarwal and others, and Rise of Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford are two books that I recommend this year.
Understanding America: Janesville by Amy Goldstein. An impressive microscopic study of supply chain & societal issues that began with the shutdown of a GM factory in Wisconsin.
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard is an excellent portrait of President Teddy Roosevelt discovering a hidden river in Brazil.
Critical Essays: No one is better than George Orwell in describing the drudgery in work and idleness, in his Down and Out in Paris and London. Here is my Review.
- Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is a prescient essay on our troubled media business and the hellish descent into “infotainment”.
- Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy by Nick Bostrom is a thought-provoking, deep book on Bayesian view of the world.
Literature/Fiction: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Here is my review of the book that begins the Neapolitan series.
- Attrib by Eley Williams is a highly under-rated collection of beautiful stories with a wit of language that freezes the moments of life.
- I lucked out this year with some excellent fiction: Bruges-la-Morte, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Snow, and Disgrace.
Math and Science: An excellent popular math book I recommend is How not to be wrong by Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. This is a book that deftly combines an appreciation for theory and the love of writing. Follow him on Twitter.
- I also liked Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.
India: I loved Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha — I learned the history of Gandhi’s life in South Africa, not much known in India. Here is my Review.
- I loved This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian, which is a beautiful travelogue in Sri Lanka, which is much a much-divided island on religion, language, and culture.
My entire reading list of 2018 books (and my wish list) is here. If you are curious, see my 2017 book list and recommendations. Also, see 2017 media recommendations.
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