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After today we’ll get back to regularly scheduled programming.
I hope this series has given you some ideas on what to read next. Audiobooks are the way to go for people like me. Long, long-form content is good too. Balaji’s nearly 8-hour interview on the Lex Friedman podcast is one for the ages. I’ll be reading The Network State in the new year - I’ve perused a lot of it already, and it’s worth your time.
As for the rest of this list, five are macroeconomically heavy. Peter Zeihan has a lot of opinions, and they’re provocative. If you read his books, do so alongside his world-class maps (1,2,3,4). I don’t have many counterarguments to his conclusions, so I’m forced to take much of it with a grain of salt.
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Let’s start this article with the YEAR’S SECOND BEST BOOK.
31) Overstory
By: Richard Powers
Rating: 5/5
Overstory is an epic ode to trees. The first eight chapters introduce the main characters and their connections to trees, and chapter nine sees their stories converge into an 8:52:49-long epic called Trunk. Crown, a 5:37:16-long chapter, follows that and leads into the ending, Seeds.
The format feels monolithic as you’re reading it because you know that the characters you haven’t heard about in 5 hours will come back and be a significant part of the story. This book takes place in the 1960s and has an existential tension surrounding the environment that Ministry for the Future carries on into a different century.
I consider Overstory to be a prequel to Ministry for the Future. The characters and story are different, but the themes introduced in Overstory are a fitting backdrop to the near-future semi-dystopian world that Ministry takes place in.
32) Ministry for the Future
By: Richard Powers
Rating: 5/5
As Overstory helps explain the mindset of the activist-environmentalist movement from the 1960s, Ministry helps explains what the future could look like if their warnings aren’t heeded.
I don’t want to give too much away, but the opening scenes of Ministry paint a dire picture of climate change effects on a region of the world that had a relatively small carbon footprint. As many have noted, a depressingly ironic fact of the future is that countries with the least impact on humanity’s global carbon footprint will suffer the most - at first.
What stems from this introduction is a rolling escapade that travels the globe, which frankly loses me after about 17 hours - but it’s great. I will listen to this again one day because so many smart ideas are introduced that do not seem impossible. Sci-Fi is always ahead of the curve on these types of things.
Authors introduce something, and ten years later, someone figures something else out that’s unrelated, then 50 years later, someone else who is a multi-disciplinarian polymath puts 2 and 2 together and changes the world.
32) The Illiad
By: Homer
Rating: 5/5
Similar to Dante’s Inferno, this was tough to get through.
I’m not an old English or classical literature major, have mercy. Nonetheless, I enjoyed what I did listen to, and I gained a greater respect for Homer and all the bards who told this epic poem at fire and brimstone meetings.
Although I would fail a test on this book, I do feel I have enough of a foundation to see its influence on our world today. Maybe I’ll read (skim) the Odyssey sometime.
33) Accidental Superpower
By: Peter Zeihan
Rating: 4/5 - Recommended reading for macro people.
Peter is a strong and persuasive speaker. So much so that I think it prevents some people from taking his work seriously because he is, in their mind, too confident in his position to the point of being smarmy. This confidence also shines through his writing and may turn people who disagree with his conclusions off.
With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all four of his books. They felt like a modern history of the relevant economic world, and Peter is insanely well-read. Not just well-read from the perspective of books but also from the perspective of understanding how many Destroyers the US has on a specific body of water at any given time or how many gallons of oil would make any country a net exporter.
That’s enough of an introduction to his work - the next reviews will be more topical.
34) Absent Superpower
By: Peter Zeihan
Rating: 3.5/5 - Really interesting but a bit overkill on the shale statistics for my liking.
The Absent Superpower carries on the narratives introduced in the Accidental Superpower that the US still reigns supreme - but now has reasons and incentive to withdraw itself from world affairs.
The Accidental Superpower explains how the US became so powerful by happenstance. It sets the foundation for the Absent Superpower to explain what the world could look like without the US being as international as it historically has been. To do so, the US will need to focus on Mexico, Canada, and SHALE.
This book goes deep into the shale industry, which is not for the faint of heart if you’re uninitiated. Lots of statistics and geopolitical explanations of historical events. He makes compelling arguments for why the US will be the leader in shale for the foreseeable future (decades). The most recruited talent is in the US, the most money and arguably the most incentive is in the US, and there are no competitors on the North or South American continents. The US also has the most known shale beds in the world, of course.
Once the US takes advantage of its shale fields and continues to improve its relationships with Canada and Mexico, it can withdraw from the global oil stage and immediately stop having to bow down to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, etc. - at least in the ways it has to now. OPEC+ would be on its way to being obsolete in US markets.
35) Disunited Nations
By: Peter Zeihan
Rating: 5/5 - My favorite of his catologue.
If you don’t have the capacity for four geopolitical books that build on a singular theme, just read this one. Disunited Nations is the least America-focused of the four and paints interesting pictures of world powers and their connections to each other.
One chapter will be about Argentina; one will be about Turkey; one will be about Angola, etc. The book is enlightening because I wasn’t aware of most of the facts that Peter Zeihan wrote about most of the countries in this book. As I said, there are so many facts so let them just come in one ear and see if they stay. Just make sure not to confuse them with the conclusions.
36) The End of the World is Just the Beginning
By: Peter Zeihan
Rating: 4/5 - The most modern extensions of Peter’s thesis.
I probably would not have read this book if it was the first of a series. This is because the title reminds me of titles written by James Dale Davidson - one of the authors of the Sovereign Individual, which I reviewed in 40 Audiobooks: Part 1. It seems doomsayery. and that’s a red flag to me, BUT, it’s a good book.
It’s an extension of the theses laid out in Peter Zeihan’s previous three books, and having read all of them in a row - I was burnt out when I finished this book. If you’re into his work and want to read his most up-to-date analysis, subscribe to his newsletter and read The End of the World is Just the Beginning.
37) Guns, Germs, and Steel
By: Jared Diamond
Rating: 3.5/5
I listened to this about four months after finishing all of Peter’s books, and it is very similar in some areas and very different in others. Jared is more conservative in his conclusions than Peter and a more boring author overall. That’s not necessarily bad, but its not my favorite.
So many authors are writing about the topics brought up in this book. I have to give Jared credit because I think he started a trend - its economic analysis mixed geopolitics and anthropology. The conclusions it reaches are sometimes too clear of a picture for me.
This problem reminds me of the famous forest image from Seeing Like a State, a book I reviewed in 40 Audiobooks: Part 2.
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38) Deep Work
By:
Rating: 3/5 - Good ideas but too boomery.
Good but it’s a little too boomery.
Although Cal isn’t even a boomer (he was born in 1982), he is very smart; he does succeed in imparting a stale perspective on the masses and their technological addictions. Some of what I listened to was refreshing, but most of it was obvious - use the least amount of technology you need to.
It’s a good book, but you don’t need to read it.
39) Breath
By: James Nestor
Rating: 5/5 - Absolute must read if you care about health.
Everyone knows that mouth breathing is bad, but no one knows why.
James found out, and I’m aggravated that more scientists haven’t made it a big deal. No doctor has ever said anything to me about it. If I had a platform, I would preach about this book.
There is so much proven value in breathing correctly, and no one talks about it or even prescribes it. It reminds me of the doctors that prescribe three different anti-depressants to a teenager who just had their first breakup rather than prescribe them diet and exercise.
I’m not saying anything else about this book. Go read it.
40) Four Thousand Weeks
By: Oliver Burkeman
Rating: 5/5 - Let it put things into perspective.
This was my last audiobook of the year, so it only fits that it’s the last book on this list.
Four Thousand Weeks is a heavy title for a heavy book about death. That number is scary and limiting if you think about it, but it is what it is. It’s not a bad number; there are no bad numbers.
Because of that, you never know if you’ll get to do everything you want to do. Actually, you do know that you will never get to do everything that you want to do. This book highlights that fact in its main thesis and rides down the yellow brick road with insights into why this situation feels the way it does and why it’s important to single out what matters.
We’re done here
Thanks for your time. BTW there are actually 41 books in this series; 32 is counted twice, but I realized it too late - let’s see who notices.
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Who is zachary r0th?
Zachary is a technical writer, product manager, and aspiring full-stack developer with expertise in blockchain technology.
As part of the original team behind Solrise, the parent company for Solana's Solflare Wallet and Aptos' Rise Wallet, Zach managed product backlogs, ran all consumer-facing publications, led user research initiatives, and developed diverse documentation for several blockchain products, including programming resources, courses, and editorials that helped onboard hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to crypto for the first time.
As a freelance writer, Zach manages the DAOJ - a freemium newsletter about blockchain-enabled innovations with an occasional sponsor.
He also contributes to various financial publications, often as a ghostwriter. Recent projects have included ghostwriting newsletters about global blockchain regulation for an audience of institutional investors whose AUM > $3 billion and authoring multiple key sections of a private placement memo for a fund that raised $500,000,000 to source streaming and royalty deals on precious metals.
His website features work across dozens of publications, including MoonPay, Solflare, Solrise, Rise, Substack, Global Coin Research, CryptoManiaks, and more.
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