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468. Great Society: A New History

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Nick Reader

Author:   Amity Shlaes

Genre:   Non Fiction, Economics, History, Sociology, Politics

511 pages, published November 6, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In Great Society, Amity Shlaes takes a critical look at the genesis, enactment and repercussions of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs.  Shlaes argues that Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to a silent majority of citizens who rejected what they saw as the federal government’s overreach.  Despite trillions in government spending kicked off by LBJ, poverty today remains as difficult to eradicate as ever.

Quotes 

“Reagan told the press that he opposed family assistance: “I believe the government is supposed to promote the general welfare,” Reagan said. “I don’t believe it is supposed to provide it.”

 

My Take

While not as persuasive or powerful a read as The Forgotten Man (Schlaes’ history of the Great Depression), Great Society does provide a lot of food for thought.  The hubris of LBJ, Richard Nixon and other leaders of the 1960’s and 1970’s, both in foreign and domestic policy, led to stagflation, rioting, despair, and national self-doubt.  I hope we never repeat the mistakes of this time period.

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466. The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ross Douthat

Genre:   Non Fiction, Sociology, Cultural, Economics, Politics, History, Philosophy

272 pages, published February 25, 2020

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explores his thesis that the Western world is facing a crisis of decadence.  Douthat describes how the combination of wealth and technological advancement combines with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline create a kind of “sustainable decadence,” i.e. a civilizational malaise and drift.

Quotes 

 

My Take

While Douthat posits some interesting ideas in The Decadent Society, the sum is less than its parts.  He stretches hard with various anecdotes and data to validate his theme that we are in the midst of societal decline and decadence.  A few weeks after finishing, there is little memorable that I took away from this book.

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462. In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Adam Carolla

Genre:   Non Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Cultural, Politics, Essays

256 pages, published November 2, 2010

Reading Format:  e- Book on Overdrive

Summary

In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks is basically a humorous rant by Adam Carolla against many things PC.  He rips into an absurd culture that demonizes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turned the nation’s bathrooms into a free-for-all, and puts its citizens at the mercy of a bunch of minimum wagers with axes to grind.

Quotes 

“My feeling is this whole country is founded on the principle of ‘if you are not hurting anyone, and you’re not fucking with someone else’s shit, and you are paying your taxes, you should be able to just do what you want to do.’ It’s the freedom and the independence.”

 

“Fixing your fucked-up life is not government’s job. Handling the stuff that people can’t do themselves—like war—is.”

 

“The government is a giant corporation with no competition that is constantly trying to keep you off balance so it can siphon more money from you.”

 

“I don’t know why I seem to be the only one who understands that when the government provides something for free—whether it’s food, housing, or health care—there is a human cost. The government may be handing you a free block of cheese but they are taking away your motivation to get a job and buy your own f***ing cheese. And what more powerful motivator is there to get up, get work, and get insurance than the fact that not having it could literally kill you?”

 

“But our leaders can’t tell the truth. We won’t let them. We’ve created a society where the politicians aren’t allowed to criticize the people. There’s no tough love coming out of the White House or Congress. They’ve gone from leaders and legislators to wedding caterers. If they want to keep the gig, they better give us what we want.”

 

“Humans need challenges to overcome, just like a muscle needs resistance to grow. In a zero-gravity environment, an astronaut’s muscles atrophy because there is no resistance. The government giving you a bunch of handouts and living your life for you is the equivalent of doing push-ups in outer space. Big government is like the void of space—it’s massive, constantly expanding, and if we immerse ourselves in it, we’ll simply wither away.”

 

“I also remember it was Sunday night because that was the time I felt most depressed and vulnerable. Somehow have a moment to contemplate the miserable, low-paying week that lay ahead was more painful than living it.”

 

“Until you get the family unit back together, we have no hope and we’ll never dig ourselves out of this hole. No matter how great the school is, how excellent the teachers are, how many computers, field trips, or other window dressing there is, until you have intact families that give a s***, we’re doomed. If you have chalk, pencils, and a roof that doesn’t leak, you’ve got a school. Back in the day people would do stuff by candlelight on the prairie and are a f***load smarter than kids now despite all the iPads and online homework. Why? Because if they didn’t read their assignment, their parents would take the ruler they were supposed to be using for that assignment and smack them with it. We don’t need to keep throwing money at the problem, we need to throw parents at the problem.”

 

“Everything seems overwhelming when you stand back and look at the totality of it. I build a lot of stuff and it would all seem impossible if I didn’t break it down piece by piece, stage by stage. The best gift you can give yourself is some drive–that thing inside of you that gets you out the door to the gym, job interviews, and dates. The believe-in-yourself adage is grossly overrated.”

 

“I am not agnostic. I am atheist. I don’t think there is no God; I know there’s no God. I know there’s no God the same way I know many other laws in our universe. I know there’s no God and I know most of the world knows that as well. They just won’t admit it because there’s another thing they know. They know they’re going to die and it freaks them out. So most people don’t have the courage to admit there’s no God and they know it. They feel it. They try to suppress it. And if you bring it up they get angry because it freaks them out.”

 

“As I’ve often said, this is the biggest problem we have in our society—unwanted kids. If we solve this problem we solve all the other problems. So we have to start judging. As I said before, we judge smokers more harshly than we judge deadbeat dads in our current society. Seriously, how many antismoking PSAs have you seen this week vs. ones saying raise your kids, or don’t have kids if you can’t afford them? And what’s hurting our society more? People need to see that asshole and call him an asshole so maybe other people thinking about being assholes wouldn’t become assholes. We stopped judging people a long time ago because the idiots on the left told us everyone is the same and that we couldn’t do that. We need to bring back judging.”

 

“This silliness always starts with celebrities and then spreads to the common folk.”

 

“You should never say to a superior, “I did my best,” when you fuck up, because you are then declaring you are a fuckup. Your best is fucking up. If that’s the case I’d hate to see you on a bad day when you were only putting in 50 percent. The answer is not “I did my best,” it’s “I’ll do better.”

 

“Alaska seems like the most rough-and-tumble spot in the world. Everyone there seems to be running from something in the Lower 48, whether it’s the law, the tax man, or their ex. Alaska’s where you go to forget your past, especially when you owe your past a shitload in child support. The state motto should be “Love fishing but hate your kids? Alaska.” Forget the Jackass movies. I’d like to do a hidden-camera show where we get a guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache, put him in an ATF windbreaker, have him walk into any Alaska bar or honky-tonk after quitting time, and say, “I have a warrant for . . .” and just watch everyone jump out the window. It’s never “I was born and raised in Alaska, lived here my whole life.” It’s usually something like, “My business partner faked his own death and then tried to kill me, but that was before my wife had her gender reassignment . . .” Basically Alaska is the cold-weather Florida. It’s Florida without the Jews. The state capital should be spelled “Jew? NO!”

 

“Being a depressed hippie is a lose-lose. It would be like if a rice cake had the caloric content of a MoonPie.”

 

“My son I worry about. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be gay. At this point I’m just hoping he’s not a bottom. Sorry to sound closed-minded and uptight, but let’s face it, no dad wants his son to be gay. Not only do you get no grandkids, but I’m sure high school is no picnic for a fifteen-year-old gay boy. On the other hand, maybe I’m just viewing this through the bifocals of an old heterosexual dude. The way things are going, my son will probably get his ass kicked for not being gay. ‘Carolla thinks he’s too good to suck cock. Come on boys, lets get him.”

 

“You measure a good song the same way you measure architecture, fashion, or any other artistic endeavor. Time. You know when you see a picture of yourself from the eighties with a horrible hairdo and some stone-washed jeans and you think, “How embarrassing—what the fuck was I thinking? Why didn’t somebody stop me?” It’s the same thing Mick Jagger and David Bowie should be thinking every time they hear their cover of “Dancing in the Streets.” The point is, at the time it seemed like a good idea, just like kitchens with burnt-orange Formica and avocado appliances, den walls covered with fake brick paneling, and segregation—all horrible decisions that we now universally recognize as wrong. But somehow when it comes to music, we can’t just admit we made a mistake with “Emotional Rescue.” There’s always some dick who defends the past. “Hey, man, I lost my virginity to ‘Careless Whisper.’ ” I’m sure there was somebody who got laid for the first time on 9/11 but they don’t get a boner when they see the footage of the planes going into the tower.”

 

My Take

While not quite as good as the classic Not Taco Bell Material, I mostly enjoyed reading In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks, Adam Carolla’s anti-PC rant.  A bit repetitive at times, but there are some true nuggets of comedy gold.

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458. White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Scot Reader

Author:   Shelby Steele

Genre:   Non Fiction, History, Politics, Sociology, Public Policy

208 pages, published May 29, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of “white guilt” and neither has been good for black Americans.  In this deeply thought analysis and personal recollections, acclaimed scholar Shelby Steele examines how liberal in the United States has undermined the black community by absolving them of personal responsibility thereby debilitating their ability to lift themselves up as equal members of American society.

Quotes 

“It was the first truly profound strategic mistake we made in our long struggle for complete equality. It made us a “contingent people” whose fate depended on what others did for us.”

“Poetic truth—this assertion of a broad characteristic “truth” that invalidates actual truth—is contemporary liberalism’s greatest source of power. It is also liberalism’s most fundamental corruption.”

 

“despite all he had endured as a black in the South in the first half of the twentieth century, he taught the boys that America was rich in opportunities for blacks if they were willing to work.”

 

“One of the delights of Marxian-tinged ideas for the young is the unearned sense of superiority they grant.”

 

My Take

I found White Guilt to be a compelling read, especially in light of the “moment” our country is having with protests and rioting.  Shelby Steele offers a counter narrative to the one projected in the media and advanced by the woke Left, i.e. that America is irredeemably racist and it is impossible for blacks to get ahead in the face of so much discrimination.  Rather than accept this defeatism, Steele posits that the only way forward for black Americans is to embrace a culture of personal responsibility and empowerment.  The guilt of whites has made that harder to achieve as they have low expectations of blacks and seek to make allowances for them that actually serve to depress their initiative.  A “must read” for anyone interested in race relations.

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435. The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author: Arthur C. Brooks

Genre:   Non Fiction, Public Policy, Politics, Philosophy, History, Economics

261 pages, published July 14, 2015

Reading Format:  e-Book on Hoopla

Summary

In The Conservative Heart, former American Enterprise Institute President and author Arthur C. Brooks writes about his vision for conservatism as a movement for happiness, unity, and social justice that will challenge the liberal monopoly on “fairness” and “compassion.”  While Progressives have always presented themselves as champions of the poor and vulnerable, Brooks argues that they have failed the people they are trying to help as more and more people are hopeless and dependent on the government while Conservatives possess the best solutions to the problems of poverty and declining mobility.  However, because the right doesn’t speak in a way that reflects their concern and compassion, many Americans don’t trust them.  In response to this problem, Brooks presents a social justice agenda grounded in the four “institutions of meaning”:  family, faith, community, and meaningful work.

Quotes 

“No one sighs regretfully on his deathbed and says, “I can’t believe I wasted all that time with my wife and kids,” “volunteering at the soup kitchen,” or “growing in my spirituality.” No one ever says, “I should have spent more time watching TV and playing Angry Birds on my phone.” In my own life, nothing has given my life more meaning and satisfaction than my Catholic faith and the love of my family.”

 

“The ideals of free enterprise and global leadership, central to American conservatism, are responsible for the greatest reduction in human misery since mankind began its long climb from the swamp to the stars.”

 

“There is a lot to be mad about in America today, but we must never forget that our cause is a joyous one. Conservatives should be optimists who believe in people. We champion hope and opportunity. Fighting for people, helping those who need us, and saving the country—this is, and should be, happy work.”

 

“Meaningful progress toward social justice cannot be made in sclerotic education systems that put adults’ job security before children’s civil rights.”

 

“the best data consistently show that more than eight in ten Americans like or love their jobs. And incredibly, that result holds steady across the income distribution. This notion that “knowledge work” is fulfilling, but everyone who works in a garage or a restaurant loathes his or her life, is an incredible act of condescension masquerading as concern. The truth is much more egalitarian. Again, economic mobility is crucial, and stagnant wages are a huge problem for American families. But this doesn’t change the deep truth that work, not money, is the fundamental source of our dignity. Work is where we build character. Work is where we create value with our lives and lift up our own souls. Work, properly understood, is the sacred practice of offering up our talents for the service of others.”

 

“When Ronald Reagan made his case to the American people, he didn’t spend a lot of time talking about what he was fighting against. He spent most of his speech talking about who he was fighting for. This is what conservatives too often forget.”

 

“Households headed by a “conservative” give, on average, 30 percent more dollars to charity than households headed by a “liberal.”

 

“First, we should concentrate each day on the happiness portfolio: faith, family, community, and earned success through work. Teach it to those around you, and fight against the barriers to these things. Second, resist the worldly formula of misery, which is to use people and love things. Instead, remember your core values and live by the true formula: Love people and use things. Third, celebrate the free enterprise system, which creates abundance for the most people—especially the poor. But always remember that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that the ideal life requires abundance without attachment.”

 

“But at the same time, a bloated welfare state that nudges middle-class citizens away from the labor force is moving our society away from the dignity of earned success.”

 

My Take

I had previously read and enjoyed Love Your Enemies by Arthur Brooks, so I had high hopes for The Conservative Heart.  I was not disappointed. Brooks posits compelling ideas and makes a strong case for him.  He also weaves in a lot of on point anecdotes which makes the book very readable.  I was also struck by his thought that the ideal life requires abundance without attachment.  It made me think about my relationship to things and how I need to hold them loosely.  Recommended.

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407. Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lisa Goldberg

Author:   Ronan Farrow

Genre:   Nonfiction, Crime, Politics

448 pages, published October 15, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Catch and Kill is the story behind Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow’s groundbreaking story in which he helped to expose the powerful interests, including his own employer NBC News, who conspired to protect serial predator Harvey Weinstein and how that scandal ignited the “Me Too” feminist movement.

Quotes 

“In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories – the big ones, the true ones – can be caught but never killed.”

 

“You know, the press is as much part of our democracy as Congress or the executive branch or the judicial branch. It has to keep things in check. And when the powerful control the press, or make the press useless, if the people can’t trust the press, the people lose. And the powerful can do what they want.”

 

“I think that it doesn’t matter if you’re a well-known actress, it doesn’t matter if you’re twenty or if you’re forty, it doesn’t matter if you report or if you don’t, because we are not believed. We are more than not believed—we are berated and criticized and blamed.”

 

“Look at what’s happening! No one on these calls wants to own any of this, because it’s so obviously bad! It’s like a reverse Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone wants it dead, nobody wants to stab it!”

 

“I called Maddow, who listened, and said no one tells her how to run her show. And so it came to pass that, all through the two years after the Weinstein story, I appeared on her show, and never again on any other NBC or MSNBC program.”

 

“Weinstein laughed. “You couldn’t save someone you love, and now you think you can save everyone.” He really said this. You’d think he was pointing a detonator at Aquaman.”

 

“Ultimately, the reason Harvey Weinstein followed the route he did is because he was allowed to, and that’s our fault. As a culture that’s our fault.”

 

“Bourdain said Weinstein’s predation was sickening, that “everyone” had known about it for too long. “I am not a religious man,” he wrote. “But I pray you have the strength to run this story.”

 

“All the women before feel I am their fault,” she said. “And if there were women after me, I feel that is my fault.”

 

“The writer and actor Lena Dunham disclosed how, during the 2016 campaign, she’d told Clinton’s staff that the campaign’s reliance on Weinstein as a fund-raiser and event organizer was a liability. “I just want to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” she recalled telling a communications staffer, one of several she said she warned.”

 

“She had graduated from the best Ivy League institutions, in the sequence required to achieve maximum prestige.”

 

My Take

I had loosely followed the Harvey Weinstein story while it was all over the news and therefore had an interest in reading Catch and Kill.  Ronan Farrow narrates a compelling story of just how hard and how many obstacles had to be overcome before dam burst and Harvey Weinstein got his due.  It was especially troubling to see how corrupt NBC News was in covering up for Weinstein and Today show host Matt Lauer.  Hopefully, the world we be spared from future Harvey Weinsteins.

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402. In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You are Better Than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Joel Stein

Genre:    Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Humor, Economics

336 pages, published October 22, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In Defense of Elitism is former TIME columnist Joel Stein’s take on America’s political culture war and a defense of the elite to which he proudly claims membership.

The night Donald Trump won the presidency, Joel Stein knew the main reason wasn’t economic anxiety or racism but that Trump was anti-elitist.  Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they’re better than you. People like Joel Stein.  Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein.  To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He also goes to the home of Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who predicted Trump’s win.

Quotes 

“More than 90 percent of whites with postgraduate degrees who voted for Hillary Clinton believe it’s “racist for a white person to want less immigration to help maintain the white share of the population,” while only 45 percent of minority voters feel that way. More than 80 percent of white people who voted for Hillary Clinton think diversity makes America stronger, while only 54 percent of black voters agree.”

 

My Take

In Defense of Elitism was an entertaining read.  Joel Stein is a witty writer and I found myself chuckling throughout this book.  Also, to his credit, Stein does not look down on the Trump supporters he meets in Roberts County, Texas.  To the contrary, he seems genuinely touched by their good will and continued prayers for him.

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391. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Jonathan Haidt

Genre:    Nonfiction, Psychology, Politics, Theology, Philosophy

419 pages, published March 13, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our cultural polarization and explores way to bridge the chasms that divide us.  Haidt mixes his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He examines the origins of morality, rejecting the view that evolution has made us selfish.  Rather, we are tribal creatures which accounts for most of our religious divisions and our political affiliations.

Quotes 

“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”

 

“Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.”

 

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.”

 

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”

 

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”

 

“Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”

 

“People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.”

 

“We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).”

 

“Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.”

 

“The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship.”

 

“Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).”

 

“Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.”

 

“Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.”

 

“Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality —people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.”

 

“The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.”

 

“If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way—deeply and intuitively—you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.”

 

“The “omnivore’s dilemma” (a term coined by Paul Rozin) is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger, and this variation will come back to help us in later chapters: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.”

 

My Take

The Righteous Mind fulfills one of my basic criteria for a worthwhile read; I learned something new or gained some interesting insight.  With this book, I came to a better understanding of how we make moral judgments and why it is nearly impossible to persuade someone to change their mind on a moral issue with logic and rational arguments.  I also learned why we are so tribal and how banding together has advanced the course of human civilization.  I appreciated that Jonathan Haidt backs up his conclusions with lots of research and anecdotes.  A thought provoking read.

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390. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Mike Brady

Author:   Ryan Holliday

Genre:    Nonfiction, Business, History, Politics, Biography

331 pages, published February 27, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Conspiracy tells the tale of Peter Theil, Paypal founder and billionaire investor, and the conspiracy he funded to exact revenge on Gawker Media.   In 2007, in a short blogpost on Valleywag, Gawker outed Peter Thiel as gay.  While Thiel’s sexuality had been known to close friends and family, he didn’t consider himself a public figure and was incensed that his privacy had been invaded.  It took almost a decade, but Thiel finally exacted his revenge.  He financed a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan who sued Gawker for invasion of privacy after they posted a videotape of him having sex with his best friend’s wife.  Hogan would end up with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker which had declare bankruptcy.  Only later would Thiel’s role in bringing down Gawker become public.

Quotes 

“It is always revealing to see how a person responds to those situations where he’s told: “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is the way of the world.” Peter Thiel’s friend, the mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, has a category of individual he defines as a “high-agency person.” How do you respond when told something is impossible? Is that the end of the conversation or the start of one? What’s the reaction to being told you can’t—that no one can? One type accepts it, wallows in it even. The other questions it, fights it, rejects it.”

 

“His path was in some ways traditional—Stanford to Stanford Law to judicial clerkship to high-powered law firm—but it was also marked by bouts of rebellion. At Stanford he created and published a radical conservative journal called The Stanford Review, then he wrote a book that railed against multiculturalism and “militant homosexuals” on campus, despite being both gay and foreign born. His friends thought he might become a political pundit. Instead he became a lawyer. Then one day, surprising even himself, he walked out of one of the most prestigious securities law firms in the world, Sullivan & Cromwell, after seven months and three days on the job. Within a few short years, Thiel formed and then sold PayPal, an online payments company, to eBay for $ 1.5 billion in July 2002, the month that Nick Denton registered the domain for his first site, Gizmodo. With proceeds of some $ 55 million, Thiel assembled an empire. He retooled a hedge fund called Clarium into a vehicle to make large, counterintuitive bets on global macro trends, seeding it with $ 10 million of his own money. In 2003, Thiel registered a company called Palantir with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2004, he would found it in earnest. The company would take antifraud technology from PayPal and apply it to intelligence gathering—fighting terrorism, predicting crime, providing military insights. It would take money from the venture capital arm of the CIA and soon take on almost every other arm of the government as clients.”

 

“You rush in to stamp out the sparks and end up fanning them into flames. This is the risk.”

 

“For all the claims that what Peter had done was personal and unethical and wrong, that he had made the world a worse place and horribly wronged a group of journalists, something surprising happened: Media actually did change. Because they knew they needed to.”

 

“The Count of Monte Cristo would put it better: “What a fool I was not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!” Ah, but what dangerous business this is. This artificial hardening is a dangerous crossroads, a bargain with our primal forces that not everyone escapes or can emerge from with clean hands. William James knew that every man is “ready to be savage in some cause.” The distinction, he said, between good people and bad people is “the choice of the cause.”

 

“Peter and a team of conspirators and a judge and a jury in Florida had spoken. They said: We don’t want to live in a world where the media can publish someone having sex—even if it’s just the “highlights”—simply because that person has talked about his sex life in public”

 

“We live in a world where only people like Peter Thiel can pull something so intentional and long-term off—and it’s not because, as Gawker has tried to make it seem, he’s rich. It’s because he’s one of the few who believes it can be done.”

 

“There is a moment in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim, mentioning offhandedly that he is the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. The idea staggers Gatsby’s idealistic young friend. Of course, Carraway knew the series had been thrown. But “if I had thought of it at all,” he says, “I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain.” It was unbelievable to him then, as it is to us now, that a single person could have been responsible for changing the outcome of an event watched by some fifty million people. In real life, the 1919 World Series was fixed not by Wolfsheim, but with great skill and audacity by Arnold Rothstein, a Jewish gangster. A young lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army named Dwight Eisenhower eagerly followed the game as the scores came in via telegram, and like everyone else, never suspected a thing. He would remark years later that the revelation of the conspiracy that had thrown the series produced a profound change in his perspective about the world; it taught him never to trust in first appearances.”

 

“The essayist and investor Paul Graham, a peer and rival of Peter Thiel’s, has charted the trajectory of a start-up, with all its ups and downs. After the initial bump of media attention, the rush of excitement from the unexpected success, Graham says that the founders enter a phase where the novelty begins to wear off, and they quickly descend from their early euphoria into what he calls the “trough of sorrow.” A start-up launches with its investments, gets a few press hits, and then smacks right into reality. Many companies never make it out of this ditch. “The problem with the Silicon Valley,” as Jim Barksdale, the former CEO and president of Netscape, once put it, “is that we tend to confuse a clear view with a short distance.” Here, too, like the founders of a start-up, the conspirators have smacked into reality. The reality of the legal system. The defensive bulwark of the First Amendment. The reality of the odds. They have discovered the difference between a good plan and how far they’ll need to travel to fulfill it. They have trouble even serving Denton with papers. Harder has to request a 120-day extension just to wrap his head around Gawker’s financial and corporate structure. This is going to be harder than they thought. It always is. To say that in 2013 all the rush and excitement present on those courthouse steps several months earlier had dissipated would be a preposterous understatement. If a conspiracy, by its inherent desperation and disadvantaged position, is that long struggle in a dark hallway, here is the point where one considers simply sitting down and sobbing in despair, not even sure what direction to go. Is this even possible? Are we wrong? Machiavelli wrote that fortune—misfortune in fact—aims herself where “dikes and dams have not been made to contain her.” Clausewitz said that battle plans were great but ultimately subject to “friction”—delays, confusion, mistakes, and complications. What is friction? Friction is when you’re Pericles and you lay out a brilliant plan to defend Athens against Sparta and then your city is hit by the plague.”

 

“The line attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is that culture eats strategy. It’s a truism that applies as much to conspiracies as it does to businesses. It doesn’t matter how great your plan is, it doesn’t matter who your people are, if what binds them all together is weak or toxic, so, too, will be the outcome—if you even get that far. But if the ties that bind you together are strong, if you have a sense of purpose and mission, you can withstand great trials.”

 

My Take

Conspiracy was a captivating page turner.  Even though you know how it ends, the book still manages to create a great deal of suspense and wonder as to how Thiel and Hogan are going to pull off a legal win.  While I had previously read Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, I really preferred Conspiracy.  Holiday takes himself a bit too seriously at time, but he still manages to weave a compelling tale.

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370. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Doris Kearns Goodwin

Genre:  Non Fiction, Biography, Politics, History

916 pages, published September 26, 2006

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

Written by acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals showcases the political genius of Abraham Lincoln.  The book focuses on Lincoln’s appointment of former rivals for the Republican nomination William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates to his cabinet.  From his unlikely winning of the Republican nomination as an obscure one-term congressman and prairie lawyer to his management of  the Civil War and passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln prevailed over more prominent and accomplished men, but harnessed their talents to preserve the Union and win the war.

Quotes 

““Tolstoy went on to observe,”This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.  Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country – bigger than all the Presidents together.  We are still too near to his greatness,’ (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, ‘but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.’”

 

“With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”

 

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”

 

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

 

“Having hope,” writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, “means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks.” Hope is “more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right”; it is “believing you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals.”

 

“An adult friend of Lincoln’s: “Life was to him a school.”

 

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” he wrote. “I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”

 

“The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his string of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that “he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.”

 

“In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant’s behavior, however, they had concluded that his drinking did not affect his unmatched ability to plan, execute, and win battles. A memorable story circulated that when a delegation brought further rumors of Grant’s drinking to the president, Lincoln declared that if he could find the brand of whiskey Grant used, he would promptly distribute it to the rest of his generals!”

 

“This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing.”

 

“In order to “win a man to your cause,” Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, “the great high road to his reason.”

 

“Mental health, contemporary psychiatrists tell us, consists of the ability to adapt to the inevitable stresses and misfortunes of life. It does not mean freedom from anxiety and depression, but only the ability to cope with these afflictions in a healthy way.”

 

“It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, “he observed, “that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations of the whole earth, to carry successfully through the experiment… That men are capable of self-government.”  

My Take

Team of Rivals helps you to understand why Abraham Lincoln is such a mythic figure in American history, but also reveals his most human qualities so that you have a better understanding of the man behind the legend.  A canny politician, an empathetic humanist and a righteous force of good, Lincoln was the man that the moment demanded and America is a better country because of his presidency.

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