Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“We all love an easy buck.”

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How it Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin

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CBR18 BINGO: Wealth because much wealth was gained and lost “Temptation has driven  human folly for centuries, whether the serpent in the Garden of Eden or the market manias of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence. Each wave seduces us into thinking that we’ve learned from history and, this time, we can’t be fooled. Then it happens again.” I’m old enough to remember the 1987 stock market crash. The dot-com bubble of the early 2000s dashed my hopes of getting rich off of the stock options I […]

Life Could Be Different

Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

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Best for: Anyone who is interested in the ways capitalism is bad for individuals and society; how it is propped up by the state; and crucially, what alternatives exist that we can fight for. In a nutshell: Author Blakeley shares her thesis that capitalism is an inherently undemocratic system with illustrations of corporations and states acting poorly while adhering to the very essence of capitalism. Worth quoting: “Most people are denied autonomy over their lives, yet we are told we are free to choose how […]

Where are my footnotes?

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner

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Bingo 25: On the air I first heard of Freakonomics as an NPR show; I think the radio (aka air-waves) form fits this concept better than the written. Firstly, every chapter in the book opens with some reference to the brilliance of the economist author (the other author is a journalist); granted Steven Levitt does seem pretty unconventional as an economist and I do think his novel approach leads to really interesting insights. However, the repeated reminders of his brilliance start to get irritating. The […]

Old Wives Tales Vs. Science

Expect Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong, and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

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After much wondering if it was even possible, hubby and I are expecting. And while I’d done quite a bit of research on the process and probability of conception, I’d done virtually no research on what to do after you managed to succeed (mostly because I didn’t think we would). Days after my second positive test, I stared at the coffee pot, vaguely remembering my pregnant friends abstaining from caffeine, fish, deli meats and a hoard of other things. I stood in a first-trimester fatigue […]

The Book For The Moment

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather C. McGhee

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It was wild reading this book and following the climate catastrophe unfold in Texas. It’s almost like it was published for this exact moment. While it’s understandable that Texas wouldn’t be accustomed to a snowfall and deep freeze, it’s not understandable, at least in the abstract, that its power grid wouldn’t be able to accommodate. But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Conservative Texas politicians immediately went on the offensive. Former Governor and energy secretary Rick Perry said the state would freeze before it […]

Not dead, just tired

The Tyranny of Dead Ideas by Matt Miller

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I have a hard time explaining the type of business and economics books that I’m interested in; I really enjoy explanations for the unpredictability of human behavior and science-based thinking about the irrationality of people on an individual and group scale. I’m not opposed to hard data, but prefer the quirkier parts.  I just keep thinking about this comic: I may not love economics, but I definitely look at its butt when it walks by. Since I’m a dilettante in the field, it’s hard to […]



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