Books I have re-read
and that have stuck with me; including books by the recently deceased David Halberstam
One indicator that a book is worth more than a “vibe read” is that you choose to re-read it. Not many books written in this century meet that standard. Here are books that I re-read and that stuck with me. The order is the order in which I first read them, as best I can recall.
You will see very little fiction here. Most of the fiction that I have read has been read-once only. I mean, Remains of the Day is a book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to experience great writing, but who would want to read it twice?
Dumas is here because I developed an emotional attachment to him from watching (on television) the 1939 movie of The Count of Monte Cristo, which is perhaps an even better story than what Dumas wrote. Grahame and Kesey are here because the characters are so recognizable (even though they are animals in the former case).
As a young reader, my nonfiction interests centered around the second World War. But most of the books I read then have not motivated a re-read. As an older adult, I find that biographies seem to do better at passing the “willing to go back and re-read it” test.
K-6 (all of these books I re-read in later years)
Louis L. Snyder, The First Book of World War II. My parents gave this to me about age 6, roughly two years after I learned to read. I ordered a copy several years ago, out of regret for what our culture has lost since my childhood. If I had been born in this century, what would adults have given me? Heather has Two Mommies?
Winston Churchill, History of the Second World War (6 volumes)
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers. I had already been introduced to Dumas by the film version of The Count of Monte Cristo. In 6th grade, my family was renting a home from a professor who was on sabbatical, and he had a luxurious edition of The Three Musketeers. What I later re-read was not as fancy.
Middle School and High School
S.L.A. Marshall, The American Heritage History of World War I
Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (an abridged version). I have since read an unabridged version. Nothing quite so emotionally satisfying as the 1939 film.
Jim Brosnan, The Long Season and The Pennant Drive.
Earnshaw Cook, Percentage Baseball. The ur-text of what became sabermetrics or analytics of whatever you want to call it. His most important claim was that letting a pitcher bat was malpractice. He proposed pinch-hitting for pitchers early and often. The creation of the designated hitter validated Cook’s point while obviating his tactical advice.
George Goodman, aka ‘Adam Smith,’ The Money Game. A journalist and a great storyteller. And sooner than most professional economists, he was exposed to and understood the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
Jerry Kramer, Instant Replay. Football books tend to be inferior, but this one has such a colorful central figure in Vince Lombardi.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He is the giant of writers in my lifetime. I would not argue with anyone who believes that there are better Tom Wolfe selections. But in my early teen years, there was nothing more fascinating than the hippies and the drug phenomenon. I never got up the nerve to participate in either.
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I first read it because Kesey is the central figure in Kool-Aid; but Kesey’s novel holds up as a story of a man finding himself out of place in an institution ruled by a woman.
College and Beyond
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. I always include this on any list of great books I offer. The care he put into writing it. The insights into bureaucratic behavior. The anecdotes about key figures that shed light on their personality traits. And, for me, the lesson that if winning a war requires nation-building, then stay away.
Goodman (‘Adam Smith’), SuperMoney. He was such a fun writer and story-teller.
Bill James, Baseball Abstract (various years). He did solid empirical analysis of baseball, but beyond that he could coin a phrase (“runs like an anvil.”) Later imitators fail to come up to his standards.
Goodman (‘Adam Smith’) Powers of the Mind. I came across this while browsing in a used bookstore. Not nearly as iconic as his books on Wall Street, but I love it. He takes his great gift for storytelling on a tour of the “New Age” movements of the 1970s and later. These showed up in my life at Freddie Mac around 1990, when a consulting firm came in with training programs based on such, er, stuff. For example, where new-age influencer Ouspensky created a concept called “the witness,” this consulting firm created “the watcher,” which was the same thing.
Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker. Speaking of Freddie Mac, its business was mortgages, and several of the figures in this book were mortgage traders. Lewis’ gifts as a writer were already evident here in his debut, although as with Tom Wolfe you may find that other books in his oeuvre have aged more gracefully.
Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, Barbarians at the Gate. Like Lewis, this features protagonists from the “decade of greed” era, but re-reading today leaves one with the sense that they were only modestly well off by the standards of today’s moguls.
Halberstam, The Fifties. If nothing else, you should come away with an insight about how much American business success has changed since then. Halberstam profiles modestly-educated founders who built companies that served average families. Holiday Inn, Levittown, McDonalds. In less than two generations, a completely different social structure would emerge in this country, with educational credentials featured much more prominently.
William Manchester, Alone. Churchill is a great historical figure, and Manchester’s second volume, covering the 1930s when Churchill was furthest from power, is the most compelling of the many biographical accounts that I have read.
Robert Skidelsky, Hopes Betrayed. This is the first book of his trilogy on Keynes (subsequently abridged, unforgivably, to one volume). It covers the period 1883-1920, which for me turns out to be the most interesting time in Keynes’ life. His anti-Victorianism and membership in the Cambridge Apostles can readily be seen as foreshadowing his economic opinions. If the Victorians praised thrift, then of course Keynes would characterize it as having unintended harmful consequences.
Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism. Eminent libertarians, so to speak.
Perry Mehrling, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance. Black was an oddball character and an original thinker. Mehrling captures both aspects.
Sebastian Mallaby, The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan. Ayn Rand asks, “Is our Alan a social climber?” and, boy, is he.