Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott. Even as we mark the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, and that generation of citizen soldiers passes away, the literature of the war continues to add spectacular books. This first account of the Doolittle Raid that can be termed definitive is a case in point (as, I suspect, will be Antony Beevor’s forthcoming book on the Battle of the Bulge). Mr. Scott has not merely rendered the most detailed and authoritative account of the men and the mission, but has developed as no one before a complete history of the aftermath, and the terrible reprisals carried out by the Japanese against the Chinese who aided the fliers. Only two of the 79 raiders remain with us, including Doolittle’s co-pilot, Richard Cole, who turned 100 on Labor Day. (My grandson Will Dickerson has his autograph, framed with a photo of their plane lifting off the deck of the USS Hornet.) Target Tokyo evokes the memory of these gallant Americans, all of whom volunteered for what they knew to be a one-way mission.
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler. It is only in the last 40 years that we have come to realize that investor behavior rather than investment performance is the dominant determinant of real-life financial outcomes. In Misbehaving, the godfather of behavioral economics, Richard Thaler, takes us on that four-decade, epiphany-by-epiphany journey in an account that advisors will find even more spritely than scholarly. Along the way, we meet the other actors in this quest, including Daniel Kahneman, his late (and bitterly lamented) colleague Amos Tversky, and many of the lesser known but important contributors to the science. This is the best account of that development we will ever have, and a joy to read—because in addition to all his other sterling qualities, Professor Thaler turns out to be a genuinely funny guy.