Favorite Books of 2020

Previously: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

This year I read 140 books, edging out my personal record of 135. Thank you, pandemic! You can view my 2020 book list on Goodreads. Each year I blog about my favorite books, an idea I got from the incomparable Aaron Swartz.

This year my favorite books were overwhelmingly non-fiction. At least 20 of the books I read this year were fantastic, but that would make for too long a blog post. So, without further ado, here are my...

Top 10 Favorite Books Read in 2020

1) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This book has lived on my nightstand for five years and I finally finished it off in 2020. It's every poem Whitman ever wrote, and, frankly, he could have edited out half of them and still been in good shape. A few of the poems are, of course, ground-breaking and transcendent. A few are outstanding, but many others are just catalogues of things he sees: “O mighty train! O verdant pasture! O virtuous milkmaid! O toiling stevedore!” and so on. Still, Whitman truly loves America and part of the pleasure of reading this book was simply to time-travel to this bustling new post-civil war country full of promise, progress, and inspiration.

2) Rhetoric by Aristotle. This book is amazingly prescient and fun to read in an election year. Aristotle says that emotion can often change voters’ minds more than reason. He outlines the various emotions that politicians can appeal to in order to bend the public to their will. Politicians, for instance, should appeal to the young by promising them the world and exaggerating the importance of youth to society. Meanwhile, says Aristotle, politicians can appeal to older voters by playing to their cynicism and distrust, for instance, by promising to clear out corruption. Aristotle refers to the existence of professional speechwriters in Athens, which I didn’t realize popped into existence at the very moment of the birth of democracy. Nifty stuff.

3) The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. This massive tome covers pretty much every month of Warren Buffett's life. It presents tremendous insight into his business acumen and wealth-building, as well as incredibly specific details about his personal life. There are any number of brutally stressful financial situations he became involved with, from rescuing Salomon Brothers from fraud in the early 90s, to saving Coca Cola from severe mismanagement. Along the way, he attracted fascinating friends from Katherine Graham to Bill Gates and rubbed elbows with celebrities from Bono to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The book is a study in character and Buffett's incredible rationality, intellect, and homespun charm shine through on every page.

4) Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow. This is a fantastic gumshoe thriller that happens to be true. It’s incredibly cinematic. Farrow was followed by spies and goons as he tried to land the Harvey Weinstein story, even as he was fired by NBC for rocking the boat. Against all odds, Ronan triumphed and created a cultural-changing moment in our history. Just an astonishing and gripping tale.

5) Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. A really enjoyable book. Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because he didn't support slavery or the Mexican-American war. His civil disobedience went on to inspire personages no less than Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

6) The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. A wonderfully clear-headed and rational book. So fresh, it's as if it was written yesterday, rather than 250 years ago. Paine was a deist who didn't believe the Bible had a divine origin. He believed that all religious books were written by man. Paine pointed out the myriad logical inconsistencies in the bible, the evidence of multiple authorship, and the staggering amounts of genocide and otherwise deplorable behavior contained therein.

Paine also made an interesting case for Europe not interfering with the French Revolution or making attempts to restore the monarchy. It’s interesting that Paine maintained this stance even after he was imprisoned by the French mob.

I also read Paine’s Common Sense this year. It’s a book that helped to galvanize the American revolution, and contains some pretty in depth discussion of government and politics. I also read Paine’s Rights of Man and, to my surprise, did not enjoy it very much at all. Rights of Man has not aged well, given the horrors of the French Revolution, and it quickly becomes clear why Paine was so often banished, imprisoned, or generally reviled in his own time. His vitriol undermines his credibility. Rights of Man is, in my opinion, a tedious and somewhat wrong-headed attack on Edmund Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France. It's sort of astonishing how Paine can be so right in The Crisis, and in Common Sense, and then so utterly wrong about the French Revolution. I’d like to think that once the French mob imprisoned Paine for a while, he began to see Burke’s point about the tyranny of the mob.

7) City of Fortune by Roger Crowley. A fascinating history of the rise and fall of the Venetian empire. It’s an incredible testimony to the power of democracy and capitalism, that a tiny island like Venice can ever have transformed itself into a global power. Venice conquering Istanbul in the fourth crusade is one of the more astonishing tales in history. Similarly, the story of Venice striking back against their Genovese besiegers in the Venice-Genoa Wars is one of the best lessons in Italian military history. I also read Conquerors by Roger Crowley this year and he vividly tells a similar story of unlikely conquest — how the Portuguese discovered trade routes with India and built a wealthy empire.

8) No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer. I would put this book up there with Drive and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as among the best business books in the genre. Hastings takes a first principles approach to running a company and he uses logic and research to overturn many outdated assumptions. Netflix quickly fires any under-performing employees and does everything in its power to keep good employees. The Netflix culture preaches “Freedom and Responsibility;” employees choose their own vacation time, sign their own contracts without approvals, decide their own travel and meal expense policies, and are trained to give their fellow employees painfully honest feedback. Netflix doesn’t pay bonuses and provides convincing evidence of how bonuses – at least in certain industries – stifle innovation and experimentation. This is a fascinating book and a slap across the face to traditional corporate culture.

9) The Age of Napoleon by Will & Ariel Durant. An extremely detailed portrait of an era and an overwhelming condemnation of the French Revolution.

10) The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester. Surprisingly heartwarming stories about the advent and rise of precision engineering, from the dawn of the industrial revolution to the age of the transistor. It never occurred to me that the very idea to make parts interchangeable – as in musket triggers or lock cylinders – was a giant leap forward for humankind. Some of the inventors we owe so much to became terrifically wealthy while others toiled in obscurity and are much forgotten by history. Frank Whittle’s twelve-year struggle to fight British bureaucratic ineptitude and create the jet engine brought tears to my eyes. Engineers are rarely recognized by society, but without precision engineering there would be no industrial revolution and we would enjoy none of the many wonders of modern life.