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by Max Nova

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2018 - The Best Books I Read This Year

The 10 best books I read in 2018: A Gentleman in Moscow, Lords of Discipline, The Brothers Karamazov, The Tropic of Cancer, Circe, Treasure Islands, The Looting Machine, The Devil's Chessboard, Lenin, and The Score Takes Care of Itself....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
5 min read
5-stars

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

Under Eisenhower, two brothers ascended to the commanding heights of the US foreign policy establishment. One brother was appointed Secretary of State. The other, Allen Dulles, became the head of the CIA. Or as he himself sinisterly called it, "the secretary of state for unfriendly countries."...

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
64 min read
5-stars

The Score Takes Care of Itself

This book exists at the intersection of the two worst genres in all of literature: business and sports, yet manages to transcend the typical drivel and self-glorification of these sorts of books. Walsh's perspective is thoughtful and self-aware....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
19 min read
4-stars

Billion Dollar Whale

Wright and Hope help us track the ascent of Malaysian con-man Jho Low and unravel the complex financial chicanery that enabled him to siphon more than 5 billion dollars from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund while financing the Hollywood movie "Wolf of Wall Street"...

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
36 min read
5-stars

The Lords of Discipline

Conroy gifts us with a nearly perfect novel, equally fluent in the literary classics and in the viciousness of boys and men....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
19 min read
4-stars

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

Coll clearly delineates the boundaries between ExxonMobil's profit-focused, engineering-driven enterprise and the messy, internally-conflicted, and constantly shifting world of official US geopolitics....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
34 min read
5-stars

Tropic of Cancer

"Tropic of Cancer" ruined my whole week. Ever read "Catcher in the Rye" in high school? That's bitter lemonade. This is straight up battery acid. Raw, smart, bitter, and true....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
1 min read
4-stars

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia

A revisionist history of Sino-US relations that traces how a concerted Chinese PR campaign duped American policymakers for generations and cost US taxpayers 3x more than the Manhattan Project....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
38 min read
5-stars

A Gentleman in Moscow

"A Gentleman in Moscow" is the book that Montaigne would have written had he lived in the 20th century. It's a book that slowly seduces you with wit, grace, and Old World charm....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
1 min read
2-stars

Los Zetas, Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico

Correa-Cabrera opts to take an academic, quantitative perspective on the war on drugs. Unfortunately, she falls flat, delivering a lifeless narrative that doesn't redeem itself with any real insight into the economics of the cartels....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
24 min read
1-star

Autonomous

Newitz takes a potentially interesting idea, only superficially executes on it, and then slathers it with an artless dose of radical intellectual property activism, pseudo-edgy hackerspace/academia wet dreams, and transsexual robotic intercourse....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
1 min read
4-stars

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

Partnoy helps us untangle Kreuger's intricate international web of hidden bank accounts, secret deals, bond issues, and government monopolies to understand how Kreuger pulled off one of the greatest swindles in history....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
33 min read
5-stars

In the Distance

A strange, achingly beautiful book that richly deserved its Pulitzer nomination. Following the lonely Hawk as he spends nearly his entire life in profound isolation, Díaz exposes the desolation, violence, and greed of the American West....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
1 min read
4-stars

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Carreyrou goes beyond gossip by making us take a hard look at the "fake it 'til you make it" mentality of the Bay Area. While Holmes may have been at the extreme end of the pathological ambition spectrum, her attitude and tactics were not unusual....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
25 min read
3-stars

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

I don't get what all the fuss is about. Peterson's book is a ultimately just a grab-bag of old-school self-help advice. He tries to do too much and in too short of a book, but his ideas are not particularly radical....

  • Max Nova
    Max Nova
40 min read
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