Thoughts on Books, Q3'25

I am unsure if I should be disappointed with myself or not, given I have only read eight books this quarter. At this pace, I am hardly on track to do the 52 I had set myself as a target. Indeed, three-quarters in and I am only just over halfway to that goal. On the other hand, I have been reading some quite big books recently. Page-wise, I read 2,527 pages in Q2. In Q3, I read 3,736 pages. That's 50% more. So, the key take-away seems to be that it is stupid to care about the absolute number of books read, and focus instead on the quantity of reading itself. Also, of course, the quality.

I have generally liked the books I have read this quarter. Lastly, I have been good insofar as I have mostly stuck to the writing list I put in the last book review post. Having planned to read 12 books, and only reading eight, means some have not been dealt with. But most have, and so the list below is more new than old.

To read:
1. The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell
2. The Doctrine of DNA, R. C. Lewontin
3. The Invention of Science, Dan Wootton
4. The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Benjamin Friedman
5. The Race Between Education and Technology, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz
6. The Winner's Curse, Richard Thaler and Alex Imas
7. The History and Power of Writing, Henri-Jean Martin
8. How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn
9. How Progress Ends, Carl Benedict Frey
10. Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom
11. Korolev, James Harford
12. Pursuing the Knowledge Economy, Nick O'Donovan

Strategy: A History, Lawrence Freedman

So, I teach a module called economics of strategy. I have for several years. I've also never really looked too deeply into what strategy is. Having read Freedman's book, I am quite doubtful that anyone who teaches something adjacent to strategy in a business school, like me, has actually read this book. Strategy: A History is an ambitious work which spends much of its time discussing military strategy, military history, and what I guess might be called the philosophy of strategic thinking. It is really interesting, and certainly Freedman's wheelhouse. The bits which I found most interesting came later in the book, where Freedman tackles more modern conceptions of strategy and thus, inevitably, strategy within economics and the wider business school setting. These topics, I suspect, I not the areas of strategy that Freedman has a tremendous interest in; nor are they the areas where I think he excels as a writer. Nevertheless, Freedman discusses various ideas which I found very interesting, and which I was otherwise unaware of. There is some worthwhile criticism of game theory, and the more abstract apsects of economics and political science as they relate to strategy. I found these conversations quite balanced and worthwhile. There is also a fascinating discussion of Vilfredo Pareto, and the links (at least I think!) to Herbert Simon, which I am excited to look into further (I will at some point be reading Pareto's The Mind and Society). Overall, I liked Freedman's book. I'm not sure I would recommend it to people. It strikes me as the kind of thing a (male) retiree reads because they want to look authoritative and have visions of themselves directing battles as some master general. Typical Tory peer kind of stuff. Maybe I'm being unkind. But I struggle to imagine too much who this book is for. For me, apparently. I quite enjoyed it, and got some worthwhile insights out of it.

The Peter Principle, Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull

Like most people who know of the Peter Principle, I had heard of the principle before having ever read the book. Now, I had for a long time believed the principle to be something more scholarly than what it actually is. The book begins by basically admitting to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at modern management practices. In the version I have--one of the many reissues of the book--there is some admission that despite the humourous nature of the book, there does indeed seem to be something about the book that rings true to people. This, I think, is undoubtedly case, given the core claim--people rise to their level of incompetence--is so famous amongst orbiters of middle management. Truth be told, I did not find the book especially funny. I think the kind of humour it is going for is much more highbrow than I am used to. Or, to put it another way, the comedy of The Peter Principle is snobby. It appeals--and I think this must be intentional--to the kind of person who believes they are competent, but they are being held back by incompetent bosses and colleagues. Of course, the joke is this instance is that the reader would be failing to recognise that they have achieved their level of incompetence.

The only real 'joke' that I picked up on in the book was the endless coining of terminology. The Peter Principle is not a book about the titular principle, but about literally dozens of concepts, moments, and characters. It is difficult to believe this book is as old as it is, as this joke strikes me as poking fun at a litany of modern (shit) business books, all of which exist only to sell meaningless new phrases or, more specifically, tickets to expensive professional development workshops. Overall, I think there are things to like about The Peter Principle. I also think it's quite an annoying book--the style is not to my taste. But, finally, I think there is a critical flaw with the book. Namely, the book never defines what it means to be incompetent. Incompetency is always put onto someone else, hence why I can imagine this book appealing to those frustrated in their own careers, and eager to represent their own failures as the failure of someone else. I am confident incompetent people can be found at all levels of an organisation. But I am less confident of any kind of guiding principle when the definition of incompetence is left so open, so vague. I recall Graeber's work on bullshit jobs, and a similar problem with the notion of bullshit--if what you are doing is so obviously pointles, you would be fired; as you are not, what you are doing must have a point. I disagree with this critique. While Graeber's notion of bullshit is fundamentally subjective, there are ways of understanding bullshit work which do not rely on the judgement of those engaging in it. I am sure the same is true of incompetence. But to do so, in either case, one needs to see organisations and hierarchies quite differently to how they are depicted in The Peter Principle.

I say all this knowing the book is satire, and that, to an extent, one should not take it too seriously. But people do take it seriously, and to this end, it should be treated with a degree of criticality.

The Technology Fallacy, various

I generally have a policy of keeping comments on books I dislike quite brief. I did not like this book at all. I found it very shallow, tremendously corporate, and likely riddled with conflicts of interest throughout. This book would have more honestly been a consultancy report, rather than something published under the banner of a publisher like the MIT Press. I do not say this because I disagree with the content per se. The Technology Fallacy is about how people make technology work in organisations, rather than technology automatically producing productivity benefits (the titular fallacy). And I absolutely agree with this! This is basically my MO right now. There were multiple times I made notes of comments which I felt articulated some of my own ideas better than I could myself. So, I ought to really like this book. And yet...

A big premise in the book is a whole bunch of data collection the authors have undertaken to understand how companies are using new information technologies. This is where the first problem lies--for a book written in 2019, the discussion of IT adoption feels twenty years out of date. The data are not especially compelling. I am sure there are some worthwhile insights there, but much of the discussion follows basic descriptive statistics, hence why I feel like it reads more like a corporate report than a well-researched book. Descriptive statistics are not bad by any means, but they can only become evidence of something when used in conjunction with other data, and other sources, to bolster confidence that the story of a descriptive statistic is a story which reoccurs, independently, in other places. The authors do not do this, and so the whole book reads like a glorified discussion of a survey of businesses. Because, to be fact, it kind of is. The last problem--this book is written by consultants. The whole book is about how organisations need to restructure and manage their people better to achieve the best outcomes from their technologies, and it is written by people who get paid to help businesses restructure and learn how to manage their people better. I cannot take the recommendations seriously because they lack the scholarly edge and I am consistently thinking about how this book is, more than anything else, a product to win new clients. I do not like this book at all.

Not in Our Genes, Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin

I had not heard of this book before stumbling across a stray recommendation to read it. I am quite glad I pursued it, though doubt I would have independenly discovered Not in Our Genes. The book presents various counterarguments to assertions that human nature can be understood on an essentially genetic level. But rather than the book strongly siding with the 'nurture' side of the false nature-nurture debate, the book presents a Marxist reading of biology, in two interesting ways. Firstly, the authors note that science has a political life, and in some ways in to modernity what religion was to feudalism, as an institution to legitimise existing power structures, and to explain inequalities throughout society. This is not to suggest science, and in particular biology, is a fraud--the authors are all quite distinguished biologists--but to argue (I think quite rightly) that capital-S Science does not exist independently of the society in which it takes place. Science shapes, and is shaped by, society, and thus cannot be divorced from political interests and power dynamics which constitute society. Hence, on genetics, the authors argue that while genetic research might tell us things about cell division and reproduction, the recourse to genetics to explain things like wealth inequality, or to argue against interventionist programmes in healthcare or education, shows how biology is used as a political instrument of the powers that be. Secondly, the authors argue that insofar as the environment shapes us, environmental factors shape our genetic expressions. But, that does not and should not foreclose debate about how we can change our environment, about how we can live under different social and political conditions, and about how this would change the relative importance of genetic expressions. To this end, Not in Our Genes argues--I think rightly--that our genes do not contain a mysterious code determining all aspects of human life; but rather, that our genetic traits take on meaning within the society in which we live. This, I think, should be obvious to most people; unfortunately, I also think it is not. To put it another way, our genes are the printing press; but we still decide what gets printed, and whether what gets printed should matter in the long course of human affairs.

Perhaps it is because I have read Not in Our Genes but I have found Richard Lewontin's The Doctrine of DNA (which I have read prior to writing this review, because I am woefully late with writing up these reviews) much more accessible. If I were making recommendations, I would recommend The Doctrine of DNA as a much more accessible introduction to these ideas (I have definitely explained them badly). But I also think Not in Our Genes is an important book, and the ideas contained within it are ones which we as a society would benefit from being more aware of. I could not help but read the book and draw some links to some of Illich's work--though I don't think these were entirely intentional overlaps--as well as my own impression of economics as a legitimising institution (economics is, much more transparently than the natural sciences, a field which exists to legitimise existing hierarchies and inequalities through the 'discovery' or 'evidence' in favour of the status quo, or at least, the interests of the status quo).

The Price of Civilization, Jeffrey Sachs

I think it's difficult to discuss this book without first considering the books author. Jeffrey Sachs is a man who confuses me. The more I know about him, the less confident I feel in staking out a position about him. He was an important architect of the post-Soviet privatisation movement in Eastern Europe, which devastated those countries and removed vital economic lifelines from millions of people. Perhaps reflecting on that time, and those decisions, Sachs is today known for his very public and forceful comdemnations of American Empire. It is here I have mixed feelings, insofar as a) he raises worthwhile points about American imperialism; and b) he raises points--around, say, the Russian-Ukraine war--which could be construed as downplaying the act of aggression undertaken by Russia in that conflict. I am also aware that he has expressed views around the origin of COVID-19 which, to be clear, I'm generally agnostic about. Sachs is, therefore, someone who today rallies against mainstream narratives, and does not always sound wholly unreasonable in his doing so. But, at the same time, I am wary of engaging in good faith in some discussions of which Sachs is a part, in part because for every Jeffrey Sachs there is a brain-broken Facebook mom or red-pilled edge lord.

What adds to my confusion about Jeffrey Sachs is quite how banal The Price of Civilization is. It's quite readable, and it makes some broadly socially democratic points about the role of the state in supporting citizens and wider economic development (again, one feels Sachs reflected on the disaster of post-Soviet privatisation, though I might be wrong on this). There are some interesting comments which speak to the subversive nature of thinking that I know Sachs most for. For instance, his comment that the computer revolution happened at the same time as China's emergence into the global economy is important, I think, given the debates--then and now--about the productivity effects of information technologies. But much of the book does not feel subversive. Or, maybe it's the case that Sachs, writing in 2014, was much more ahead of his time than someone like Stiglitz, writing in 2024, who in The Road to Freedom will cite radicals such as Gramsci, and who will--like Sachs--essentially argue that freedom/civilisation is not something which just exists, but is something which needs to be created and recreated (my words, but I don't think a misrepresentation).

Thus, like Sachs himself, I am quite agnostic towards this book. It is fine. I also think it feels quite milktoast. The man himself, whatever I think of him, is much more interesting than The Price of Civilization.

When China Rules the World, Martin Jacques

This is the final (for now) in my list of big books about China. To be honest, When China Rules the World is probably also the best in that list. I really enjoyed this book, and got a lot out of it. I know nothing about Martin Jacques, but it is evident from the opening pages that he is an authority on the subject of modern China. He writes with a degree of confidence, mixed within scepticism of both China and the West, which creates a very engaging narrative, but one that also feels quite genuine and honest. My problems with the other books on China I have read--I am thinking specifically Elizabeth Economy's The World According to China and Julia Lovell's Maoism: A Global History, is that they both felt like suspicious commentators making a study of a foreign, almost alien entity. Jacques does not do this. To give an example by contrast, someone like Economy--who is very much pulled into the Washington startegy circuit--understands China's historical role as the premise of its amibitions to conquer the world. Economy thus casts China, implicitly it must be said, as an enemy, or at least, an antagonist to the West. Jacques, on the other hand, understands China's historical role as one befitting a country with its unique size, geography, and history. He treats the re-emergence of China as a global power much more as a return to a norm than an aberration of the Western system, and in doing so, I think treats it simultaneously less hawkishly and more critically.

I am not sure how much of Jacque's commentary reflects genuine cultural dynamics in China, versus his personal observations and interests. For instance, a major theme of When China Rules the World is the abhorent racism and sense of racial hierarchy which Jacques reports to be prevalent within China. Others have made nods to this idea, largely building off the idea of 'all under heaven' and the historical attitudes of the Chinese emperors to outside powers. But Jacques emphasises much more the commonality of racism and racial attitudes in China today, in a way which others books I have read simply do not. I am unsure what to think of this. Firstly, heaven knows there are enough Western commentators looking to criticise China, who will cite the 'social credit system' without an inkling of research to see if this thing actually exists. Yet, I have heard so little about what Jacuqes reports is a very clear racial hierarchy where darker skinned people are reviled and lighter skinned people (whites and the Chinese themselves) are seen as preferable. Maybe this line is not taken because of Western ignorance about China. Maybe it is because the West, too, is replete with racism in some areas. Maybe it is because Jacques over states the racial elements of the Chinese zeitgeist. I don't know, but it is interesting.

I found the whole book interesting. For a book that could feel out of date, When China Rules the World feels remarkably up to date in part because there are several predictions, or at least discussions of trends, which with the betwnee of a decade plus of hindsight we can now see where more or less accurate. I think if I were to recommend any book on modern China, based on what I have read so far, it would be this one.

The New Makers of Modern Strategy, various

I think The New Makers of Modern Strategy is the longest book I have ever read. I have also read Infinite Jest, which is a similar number of pages to New Makers' 1,140 pages (do I include the footnotes for Infinite Jest? Who knows...). Given its length, I read this book while also reading others. At 45 chapters from various authors, I spent six and a half weeks reading a chapter a day to defeat this monster. At the end, it was quite satisfying.

Oddly, I think the when I read the book enhanced by reading experience. A major flaw with the book, which one might be more attentive to if reading in fewer, longer sessions, is that the book lacks a coherent narrative, but also have a remarkable degree of repetition in places. The book is essentially written end to end by historians, many military historians of some persuasion, who have their own niches. Reading a chapter a day, the book thus becomes a dive into a part of the world I have little experience with. I can learn about Soviet military planning; about Napoleon's formation strategy; about how naval warfare doctrine developed. This is all genuinely very interesting. But it does not make for an especially coherent collection of essays. Indeed, at 1,140 pages--quite beautifully bound by Princeton University Press, too--one gets the impression this book mostly meant as a decorative piece for the bookshelves of people (as above, armchair generals) who want to look really smart on these matters.

Perhaps that is unkind. I really enjoyed the book. I just also think, of the people who have purchased this book, I am one of the few who will have actually read it end to end. And doing so, I don't know who this book is for. Given this, I'll talk about some of my highlights. I initially read the book because it had two contributions from Sarah Paine, whose YouTube lectures I enjoy. While these chapters are competent, and quite a bit more focused than some others, they are also essentially transcripts of her lectures, which was a bit disappointing. I found myself surprisingly enthralled with some of the chapters on defensive naval warfare, in part because I do not think the UK should pursue a defence policy of projecting power, and should instead lever the defensive advantages of being an island to have a better defence policy, without so high a defence budget. Lastly, there was some interesting stuff about how information technology has transformed warfare, and around ideas like the battlefield as a network. Though, i would say I was quite disappointed at how little this book talks about contemporary issues, especially given the title. It all feels extremely backwards looking, despite the introduction to the book talking about how the West (or, more realistically, the US) desperately needs to get a grip on its grand strategy. I return to my earlier point, therefore: I don't know who this book is for. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

The Trouble with Computers, Thomas Landauer

There was a risk, as with The Technology Fallacy, that The Trouble with Computers would be a disappointing whole lot of nothing. I had no knowledge of either book prior to buying them, and I found both languishing in charity shops. Yet, The Trouble with Computers is a fascinating--if perhaps a bit dated--read. The edition I have if from 1997, and Landauer explores a question which is of incredible importance today, too: why have computers not made us more productive? Landauer reviews the data as it exists in 1997, and draws three conclusions. Firstly, computers in automation have had positive productivity effects, but these are one-time improvements, and do not contribute to long-run productivity growth (Daron Acemoglu would agree). Secondly, even accepting these positive effects, computers have had nowhere near the level of productivity benefit of technologies to which have were (and are) frequently compared, like electricity. This, Landauer suggests, should temper how we think about computers in terms of their productivity benefits. And third, in areas where computers augment rather than automate, the productivity benefits (again, as of 1997) have been near zero, if not negative.

Now, this is all very interesting. One interesting element to this is Landauer advocates for policies which, I believe, Silicon Valley adopted throughout the 2000s, like user-centred design, pushing to market quickly to get feedback and improve software, and so on. So, perhaps we ignore Landauer's book now, as surely the productivity gains have been realised? But the other interesting part of Landauer's book is how many of the problems he describes remain problems we face today. Take, for instance, typing. A friend of mine in the pub bemoaned my argument that computers have not made us that more productive, pointing to the ease with which he could type up something, and share it with the world, compared to hand-writing it. However... 1) the comparison must not be between someone typing on a computer, versus someone writing, today, but between someone typing on a computer, and a trained typist, fourty years ago. Landauer presents evidence that computers were not really faster than trained typists back in the day, and probably were less efficient because the person who types on a computer often charges more for their time than the typist, suggesting the computer replaced cheap, skilled typist labour with expensive, unskilled executive labour. 2) The benefit of writing a message today does not come through the ease of producing that message, but the value of sending the message. If the message conveys little, zero, or even negative information, who cares if it took you thirty seconds to type, rather than two minutes two write. Again, Landauer presents evidence that when given a word editing programme, people both send more messages than they need to, wasting time, and spend more time editing low-value messages, wasting even more time. Now, back to my point. Everyone knows that the modern information ecosystem is filled with shit. Indeed, this blog is probably part of that problem. We can more efficiently produce garbage, and we now live in a world replete with algorithms which encourage the exponential production and consumption of this garbage. And given this, I just struggle to believe that, genuinely, computers have made us that more productive, and I am confident the same is, and will be, true of generative AI.

But, you might say, we all use computers. Surely they must have made us more productive? Not necessarily. Imagine you're a manager who buys the hype, spends thousands on computers, expecting millions in productivity benefits, and then... zilch. Well, you've got the computers, so you're probably going to use them. You're probably going to make people use them. You'll digitise systems and set up email systems and event emails with which to send through those systems, and so on. It is a common fallacy that we live in the best possible world through some confusion of social evolution. But we do not. We live in a viable world, filled with inefficiencies that persist for reasons of problems being hard to solve, and entrenched interests not benefiting from such solutions. Once one accepts this, it is easy to see how we all use computers not because they make the world more productive, but because at a time some powerful people thought they would, and the economic system lumbered and shifted towards this silicon plateau. Lining to The Price of Civilization, Jeffrey Sachs points out that the apparent boost to productivity in the US economy around 2000 was probably due to the flood of cheap Chinese goods into the US (China prices), rather than a sudden benefit from computers. But the China explanation is not something a manager can take credit for. The computer explanation is, and so they will. Fast-forward to 2015, and Daron Acemoglu reports new evidence that the benefits of information technology have likely been much smaller than everyone thinks. Maybe we should not discount Landauer all that quickly...