Books read during 2019

Continuing the tradition (started last year) of posting the list of books I read during the past year. This year I have added my subjective rating of each book.

1. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuvall Noah Harari. Some thought provoking chapters looking at the technological and political predictions for the future. ??????????
2. Churchill - Andrew Roberts. A lengthy read which provides some interesting insights into a great leader. I found it interesting that he had been part of the Anglo Boer War, where he was captured and then escaped from his jail in Pretoria (I don’t recall my school history books mentioning this). ??????????
3. Sapiens - Yuvall Noah Harari. His first book where he looks at the history of man. Written in a very readable style. I found a subsequent visit to the British Museum in London to be so much more enjoyable in the context of what I learnt from this book. ????????
4. The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy - Michael Lewis. ??
5. Becoming - Michelle Obama. I enjoyed this book, both learning about her background and her perspective of Barack and his presidency. ????????
6. The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds - Michael Lewis. A book about Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky who pioneered behavioural economics. It details their many experiments and research projects where they deal with the illusions of the mind which bias our decisions. Kahneman is the author of the widely acclaimed book Thinking, Fast and Slow - which is on my to read list. ????????
7. Camino Island - John Grisham. Some light beach reading. Not typical Grisham legal/courtroom thriller - it follows the theft of some manuscripts and the plan to recover these. Ending is somewhat predictable. ????
8. The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan. A history of the world seen from an eastern perspective. Helps in understanding why the Middle East is such a volatile region. ????????
9. Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Shows us how to stop trying to predict everything ? and take advantage of uncertainty. ??????
10. Disgrace -JM Cotzee [2003 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Winner of the Booker Prize]. I had this book unread on my book shelf for more than 10 years but picked it up to take on this year’s summer holiday. Not an easy read - much of the book is set in the harsh realities of rural life in post apartheid SA. ??????????
11. War of the Worlds - HG Wells. A classic. ????????
12. The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo. I read this book before Prof Zimbardo came to dinner (which privilige I had won at a charity auction). He is the professor who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in 1971. This book deals with the question of why good people do bad things using his work on the SPE and The Abu Ghraib prison case. A little long but really brought to life discussing it over dinner with him. ??????
13. The Four: Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - Scott Galloway. A good summary of the four companies which have defined the digital age in the past decade or so. The author makes the case of what is wrong with these companies. Interesting read and I started following Galloway on LinkedIn and dipping into his podcasts where he is very outspoken on some of of the other tech companies. ??????????
14. The Time Machine -HG Wells. Another classic which I had not read. ????????
15. Talking with Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell. I like Gladwell’s books and his style of using stories to challenge shared assumptions. In this book he looks at why we have difficulty understanding strangers and knowing who to trust. ????????
16. The Invisible Man - HG Wells ????????
17. Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell. Set in 1930s London about a man who revolts against money.  ????????
18. The 100 Year Life - Lynda Galton and Andrew Scott. Gone is the three stage life of learn, work and retire. We (our kids) will need to constantly reinvent themselves. ??
19. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyron. This non fiction recount of the blood diagnostic start up by Elisabeth Holmes read like a thriller. Two things struck me from this book that seemingly experienced and sophisticated start up investors could be duped for so long by a fraud which was perpetrated in a culture of fear, bullying and secrecy and how the legal system was used to keep it going.??????
20. Innovators - Walter Issacson. I had previously read and enjoyed the author's biography of Steve Jobs. This is a history of the people that played key roles in the development of computers and the internet. Whilst the history starts during the industrial revolution with the likes of Babbage, what struck me most is that the story of the personal computer from the 1970s and onwards has taken place during my life time and the realisation of how far we have progressed in a relatively short period of time.??????
21. Of mice and men - John Steinbeck. Another classic which I read as a result of my daughter reading it at school. ??????????

All the best for 2020 and happy reading!