Category: Book Summaries
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The Wealth of Nations
Notes from the Capstone version of the most influential economics book of all time – Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
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The Great Mental Models Volume 3
Volume 3 of TGMM from Farnam Street, covering systems and mathematics.
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The Great Mental Models Volume 2
Volume 2 of TGMM from Farnam Street, covering physics, chemistry and biology.
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The Psychology of Money
Notes from Morgan Housel’s bestselling collection of essays on the psychology of saving, investing, and setting oneself up for financial robustness.
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Poor Charlie’s Almanack
Notes from the immense collection of wisdom from Charlie Munger, edited and compiled by Peter Kaufman.
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Liar’s Poker
Notes from Michael Lewis’s first national bestseller Date read: 1/8/2023 Lewis found himself in the middle of the 1980s investment banking craze. It stuck out to me when he mentioned the “zero sum” nature of the industry—putting money in the firms pockets largely by taking it from their customers, using…
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The 4-Hour Workweek
Notes and excerpts from my second time reading Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek Takeaways: The treasure of recessionary periods—how to get ahead by going left when everyone is going right (page xiv): Economic downturns produce discounted infrastructure, outstanding freelancers at bargain prices, and rock-bottom advertising deals—all impossible when everyone is…
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The War of Art
Notes from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art Date read: 12/29/2022 Big takeaways: Robert McKee setting the tone in the forward, explaining Pressfield’s “Resistance” concept: Pressfield labels the enemy of creativity Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish—that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever…
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Bird by Bird
Notes and quotes from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life Date read: 12/27/2022 Big takeaways: Lamott reflects on how her father influenced her desire to write (pages xiiv – xiv): Every morning, no matter how late he had been up, my father rose at 5:30,…
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Built to Last
Notes and excerpts from Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’ Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Date read: 12/23/2022 The simple implicit question on every page of the book (author’s note): Why on earth would you settle for creating something mediocre that does little more than make money, when…
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
Notes and excerpts from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People Date read: 12/18/2022 Introduction by Lowell Thomas (pages 4,10): Leadership gravitates to the man who can talk. The way to develop self-confidence, he [Carnegie] says, is to do the thing you fear to do [emphasis mine] and get a record of successful…
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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
Notes and excerpts from Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool’s Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise Date read: 12/15/2022 You are limitless (page xx): We now understand there’s no such thing as pre-defined ability. The brain is adaptable, and training can create skills … that did not exist before…
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The Snowball
Notes and quotes from Alice Schroeder’s Snowball biography Date read: 12/7/2022 The Market Buffet on the nature of the market (page 16): In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it’s a weighing machine. Buffet on interest rates (page 17): What you’re doing when…
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Benjamin Franklin
Notes and excerpts from Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Date read: 11/26/2022 Franklin describing the themes in Poor Richard’s Almanacks (page 17): Industry and frugality are the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue. Franklin’s self-improvement course (page 28): Franklin read the essays, took brief notes, and…
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Alexander the Great
Notes and excerpts from Philip Freeman’s Alexander the Great Date read: 11/12/2022 1. Self Control Alexander’s displayed extreme self-control even at a young age. He refused a wife at 21 because of the precious time it would take away from his dream of conquering Asia. Freeman writes this on Alexander’s discipline…
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Good to Great
Notes and excerpts from Jim Collins’ Good to Great Date read: 11/14/2022 A Level 5 Executive: builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. Humility + Will = Level 5. To expand, Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and…
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Essentialism
Notes and excerpts from Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Date read: 11/11/2022 Question one (Page 26): What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if we instead celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the…
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The Practicing Mind
Notes and excerpts from Thomas Sterner’s The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life Date read: 10/3/2022 Life is one long practice session — an endless effort to refine the motions that compose our days. Live in the present and become process-oriented. The practicing mindset is “the blank…
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Digital Minimalism
Notes from Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism Date read: 9/29/2022 Big takeaway: if you aren’t consciously curating your relationship with digital products you will quickly be consumed by them. The Plunge Digital Minimalism: focus online time on optimized activities aligned with your values. Abstain from everything else. To do this you need…
The Directed Life 