Books I Read in 2021

I had heard about this book on Marketplace and given the tumultuous 2020, felt like this would be an interesting read to maybe give myself some insight. It was an interesting read going into areas where McDonald's did well and where it fell short.

I've been a big fan of Ben's Effectively Wild podcast and his previous book The Only Rule is it has to Work so I decided to pick this up and wasn't disappointed. It was a great look into how teams and players are trying new things to get a leg up in the game.

Having listened to Jacob on NPR's Planet Money podcast, I had heard about this book and thought it had an interesting premise.

I had figured out a while ago that publicly funded sports stadiums were a raw deal. This book only enforced my opinion on why these are raw deals. I learned more details on how they've been able to pull it off. The book goes into detail on how bad these deals are how owners were able to swindle us all.

Having lived through 2020, I understood that the US Government royally screwed up its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reading this book gave me a better idea of why the different departments struggled to get a handle on it.

I wrote a whole post on this. It was a good read looking at trying to get us to change our thinking and recognizing when we might not know as much as we think we do.

It still amazes me reading about the WeWork saga that it got as far as it did. I had heard some of the craziness that was going on thanks to Make Me Smart , but until I read this book...let's just say...wow!

This book just made me angry seeing Wall Street & Hedge Funds come in and destroy companies and jobs for a quick buck. But as angry as I might be over what happened, I feel that it's important to know what and how it happened. This book does a good job of giving examples and talking about the history of it all.

This was my second attempt at reading this book. I finished this time. It wasn't a bad read, but it was felt like a dense read. The explanation Jonathan gives does seem to fit some of the things we see going on in politics today.