100 Books Like Who Is Government?

Annie Jacobsen is an acute observer of the absurdities of the defence industry. In this timely and very lively book, she turns her attention to the issue of nuclear catastrophe. Like movies such as 'Fail Safe', she narrates 'A Scenario', which, while at times stretching credulity, is highly readable. Her writing style is spare and precise, creating a fast-paced narrative that is difficult to put down. The terrible scenes of destruction, and the decisions and reactions that are put in motion by the various 'programs' and 'operational plans' are horribly vivid, and difficult to purge from memory. While I'm sure many experts in nuclear operations and strategy will deny that such a 'Scenario' could ever develop (could a diesel-powered North Korean sub really get to within striking range of the West Coast of the U.S.?), the book is a great contribution to literature on the horrific prospect of nuclear war… show more.

This is a great new biography of a powerful but terribly flawed figure from 20th century America.

The Taubman brothers (an academic and a journalist) have together produced a compelling picture of Robert S. McNamara, former Harvard Business School academic, Ford Motor Company executive, U.S. Secretary of Defense, and President of the World Bank. McNamara's epic career is narrated in detail in a highly readable, extensive book that is partially based on new sources that have come to light only recently. The Taubmans had access to reams of private correspondence that previous researchers and biographers haven't seen, including, for example, letters from McNamara's mother to his son at college, and Jackie Kennedy's letters to McNamara during his time at the Pentagon. Like a lot of other scholarship, journalism (or indeed documentary film) about McNamara, what emerges is a complex figure, portrayed here as haunted and broken by his moral and… show more.

I didn’t read Liar’s Poker until fairly recently.

I started working for Dow Jones Newswires during the dot-com boom and saw how greed could drive markets. I worked through the housing boom in the Aughts and the financial crisis, and then started covering bitcoin around 2013. So by the time I got to Lewis’s book, I had a good understanding of how people can become obsessed with money.

But Lewis is just such a good writer, and has such insights into how markets work, that a book about bond buyers in the 1980s still feels like it’s about people trading so many other things today. 

As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.

In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.

Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.

This hits every high note for me. It’s both aspirational and accessible. The “Moneyball Generation” has had a profound impact on every element of sports—from how games are managed, how they’re covered, who is valued, and who makes decisions. That’s because of Lewis, whose writing I love because it is so breezy and conversational, especially when explaining complicated concepts.

My passion is telling stories that explain what’s happening behind the scenes and how they impact sports fans. Lewis does this better than anyone in this book.  

Any book by Michael Lewis is fun and educational, but this one I couldn’t put down. In 2002, for the first time, the Nobel prize for economics did not go to an economist but to a psychologist—Daniel Kahneman—who had single-handedly (with his genius collaborator Amos Tversky) disrupted the economics profession and its core theories—much like Einstein had transformed our understanding of reality and Freud of ourselves—and created an entirely new field called behavioral economics.

This is the story of a remarkable partnership of two eminent scientists who brought about this revolution. Tversky and Kahneman had such a close relationship that even their wives became jealous. This book might make you laugh and cry. And you might learn much about cutting-edge economics and our chronic biases.

Michael Lewis is a master at exposing the mechanisms behind financial and technological disasters, and this book is no exception. His deep access to Sam Bankman-Fried makes this a rare inside look at how Silicon Valley hubris can spiral into catastrophe. If we want to build a better future, we have to understand how influential failures happen—and how movements with promise can go off the rails.

I was especially interested in this story because of SBF’s ties to Effective Altruism, a movement with real potential that will now always carry his shadow. As I build my own initiatives—like OpenDI in decision intelligence—this book reinforced the importance of staying vigilant against the forces that can derail even the most well-intentioned ideas.

This fascinating read tells the story of the rise and then spectacular fall of the once celebrated hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

What made LTCM so attractive to Wall Street investors was its stable of "dream team" quants and financial minds, led by the laconic John Merriweather. Merriweather (featured in the opening Chapter of Liar's Poker) was a former Solomon Brothers bond-trading guru, who after leaving the firm amid a scandal managed to assemble a team of financial powerhouses that included two Nobel Laureates as well as a cadre of respected traders.

From 1993 to 1997 LTCM's returns were first-rate; the sky seemed the limit for this small band of supertraders, professors, and modelers who arrogantly considered themselves a cut above the rest of The Street.

But in 1998, it all came crashing down...and right quick. Having believed their financial models could accurately predict price action not just in… show more.

The book does an outstanding job in describing the people and events that produced the October 1929 stock market crash in a highly entertaining style. Galbraith wrote more like a witty and insightful journalist than the award-winning economist that he was. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about American financial history. The book is a model for writers who want to educate non-experts about public policy issues.

There is an abundance of writing and rhetoric that points out instances of political success that lead to governmental catastrophe. None capture the current breakdown between politics and governing better than Michael Lewis did here.

As a former lobbyist and current political columnist, I try to connect how politics should be all about governing, but the electorate is drifting away from this hard truth.

The transition of the first Trump administration following eight years of Obama reveals the lack of preparedness or even care about the job of governing the new administration had. It foretells what America should have expected the second time around.