It’s that time of year! With Thanksgiving behind us, and the long dark winter ahead, it is as good a time as any to assemble a list of books I hope to read this winter.
These are what I find to be the most promising titles for cracking open in front of a fire, and digging in. I have hundreds of titles in my wish list to read, but these 10 are what I am most interested in right now.
A few caveats: Most of these were published in 2018, with limited exceptions. Second, the list is based on my personal interests — not the pitches of book agents or publicists. And last, I will actually read — or at least start — all of them.
On to the book list!
No. 1. “Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government,” by Paul Volcker.
He may be 91, but “Tall Paul” is still working at teaching the rest of us. Thank goodness for that.
The arc of Volcker’s career parallels sweeping economic changes in the U.S. since World War II. As Federal Reserve chairman, Volcker broke the back of inflation in the 1970s, set the stage for a 30-plus year bull market in bonds, and gets way too little credit for the rampaging equities bull market of the 1980s and ’90s. He’s arguably the greatest Fed chairman all time, and this book is at the top of my list.
No. 2. “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are,” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.
What happens when a data scientist delves into all of the data from Google Trends and Adwords, Wikipedia, Facebook and PornHub? As this vast, rich dataset reveals, it turns out that big data is a “digital truth serum.” Both The Economist and PBS NewsHour ranked this as their Book of the Year.
No. 3. “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis.