General Knowledge

Don Norman’s classic on design, affordances, and why “user error” is usually design error in disguise. Page Points: 21.

James Gleick’s history of how humanity has encoded and transmitted signals offers investors useful context on the decay of information advantages in modern markets.

If you’ve never read a book by Yuval Noah Harari, start with Sapiens. It’s still his undisputed masterpiece. Check out my review here. But once you’ve torn through Sapiens, Nexus needs to be next on your list. In this sweeping history of information networks, Harari traces how information has informed, organized, and manipulated human society from ancient bureaucracies to social

A quarter of a century after his breakout hit, “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a darker, more complex sequel. “Revenge of the Tipping Point” argues that we’ve learned to engineer tipping points so well that we’ve created unintended consequences, social, health, and technology epidemics we didn’t anticipate and can’t control. Where the original

Following up on his best-seller, Influence, Robert Cialdini argues that what happens before persuasion may be even more important than the act of influencing.  Cialdini’s “Pre-Suasion” argues capturing attention immediately before a message matters more than the message itself. The “privileged moment” before influence occurs determines whether people are receptive or resistant to what comes

In his hauntingly prescient book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman delves into what happens when the primary form of communication is television. Written in 1985, it’s somehow more relevant today than when published. Postman begins with the insight that the medium is the message, then traces communication through history (spoken word, books, newspapers, radio)

How many people should you date before you pick one to marry? In Algorithms to Live By, Christian and Griffiths explore everyday problems, dilemmas, and decisions like this and delve into how math and computer science can help us make better choices. At the end of every book I read, I always ask if I

Ever wonder why you’re still in that default 401(k) allocation from your first day at work? Or why you can’t bring yourself to sell that losing position even though you know you should? Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge explains why we make predictable, irrational decisions—and how subtle changes in how choices are presented can dramatically improve outcomes without

What could a book written in 1970 called Future Shock offer readers in late 2025? Surprisingly, a lot—as evidenced by the whopping 33 page points, a record for our newsletter. The well-traveled know culture shock: that feeling of unease, wonderment, and (hopefully) eventual adaptation when entering a new culture. Toffler takes that geographically-based concept and applies it

In his enthralling tome, Yuval Harari sweeps through the entire history of the universe to discuss where we came from, how we got here, and what might be next. This masterpiece covers cycles on an epochal scale—epochcycles, super-dupercycles, megacycles (are those words? They are now). From the big bang through the formation of fundamental forces

Have you ever been stuck in a long commute home, ▶️gas-brake-honk▶️, and thought, “I can’t wait to get home and read all about traffic”? OK, probably not. But Tom Vanderbilt’s 2008 book takes us through the surprisingly intriguing world of traffic and how we get around—and yes, it really is fascinating. While traffic is undeniably

Page Points Used: 18 Ever wonder why we say “I’m in a meeting” but at a party? Or something is underwater, when it’s actually in water? Pinker dives into how the language we use every day reveals the hidden workings of our minds. I’ve read several of Pinker’s books over the years and have always