- Seb Falk, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science. I really enjoyed this one. It draws a straight line of innovation in math and astronomy through the middle ages into the Renaissance. People in the past are always smarter than you think they were. If you ever wondered how people actually did arithmatic with Roman numerals, this is the book for you.
- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake. This book has not aged well, despite and especially because of the pandemic.
- Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. One of my favorite books of 2020. Either the story of a man whose relentless operational excellence and hard work ran the nation or the story of a man with no credentials whose country club tennis partner happened to be George Bush that ran the nation. Or both.
- William N. Thorndike, The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success. Necessarily surface level, but an excellent narrative introduction to the concepts of capital allocation and the value of looking at cash flow versus reported earnings.
- Mark Robinchaux, Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business. Very inside baseball and uncritical of its subject, but I enjoyed it. Again on the theme of capital allocation and cash flow versus reported earnings.
- Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom. An engaging polemic and history of how technological innovation happens in the real world.
- Michael Kulikowski, The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy. A bit inside baseball, even for me.
- Stuart Ritchie, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth. Incentives rule everything.
- Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. Liu is Ted Chiang’s English translator. Beautifully written and creative.