My 2020 in books

Hammurabi ruled ancient Babylon from about 1792-1750 BC. A basalt stele pillar posted on the middle of the town displays 'Hammurabi's code' - the first known law of the land for all its citizens to read (still available there intact for you to visit and take a selfie!). One of the inscriptions says "If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction sound, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, the builder shall be put to death". He brought in crude accountability, 'skin in the game', or rather put the neck of the builder (merchant) on the line for the consumer's benefit. This is the first book from the acclaimed author Nassim Nicholas Taleb that I read and for the most part of 2020, I decided to spend time reading his other books. Angel philosopher Naval calls Taleb the author of books that will be read by people for another 1000 years to come! In summary, Skin in the game means that - You Do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they Do, and how much of their neck they are putting on the line while saying whatever they are saying.

If Taleb had written about Anti-fragility, black swan events after 2020, I guess a lot of people would have thought of it as a natural outcome of thoughts after a once in century pandemic. The beauty is, Taleb wrote these and theoretically derived all of this almost a decade back. The impact of 'highly improbable' events on our life can result in catastrophe (Covid death) or windfall (Zoom stocks after Covid). Antifragile is the opposite of fragile, which means that the more you attack it, the stronger it gets and by building antifragile systems we can thrive in uncertainty. His books are written in a way that normal mortals like me can appreciate the concepts like 'via negtiva', 'facta-non-verba', Lindy's effect, Fat Tony's rules, and many others. However, there are complex mathematical derivations also given in case you wonder how these are proven. Taleb is also kind enough to mention in some of the paragraphs, that 'you can skip this as this is technical'.??

The Psychology of Money is a 2020 release and I had pre-booked! People often ask me how do I pick and choose books to read. I don't really have a definite answer to it. It's like someone who is a foodie knows where to eat next or a few favorite recipes they like to try, it is what they think about and looks around all the time unknowingly (like someone who prefers Pizza will hear about a new Pizza coming up and will definitely try it!). I heard about the upcoming book of Morgan Housel from some folks on Twitter and thought that's interesting - because I like behavioral economics. Packed with wisdom on money, wealth, and happiness this book is easy to read and absorb. Wealth and investments are more behavioral learning-based than pure economics or mathematics. None of the analytical aspects matter if you don't understand the psychological side of money. Secondly, Time is a critical variable to earning wealth- 96% of Buffet's net worth came after his 50th birthday - he was investing from the age of 10. If you like money?? and want an easy to read and meaningful book, this is it!

Matt Ridley's 'The Rational Optimist' examines the journey of human civilization from the stone age to the current and tells us how human conditions are getting better. He asserts that the collective intelligence of humans, how they work together, ideas merge, trade and exchanges happen will make our future only better than what we have today. However, there have been always bleak predictions about the human future and survival- be it population explosion or diseases that will wipe out humanity -Ridley confronts them with optimism and the ability of the human to perform at the time of the dire need at a capacity that exceeds beyond expectation.

Everything about his arguments for being a rational optimist for the human future is reasonable until the part where he goes on about his not so 'rational' optimism on climate change, pandemics, and poverty in Africa. This was written in 2010 and exactly after 10 years- we are dealing with a worldwide pandemic. Bill Gates called these flawed theories in 2010 and we can't agree more.

Safi R. Bahcall is an American physicist and technologist. Loonshots are "neglected project, widely dismissed, its champion written off as unhinged." It is a book about history, science, and technology and Safi is a brilliant storyteller. He articulates how 'new ideas' are fragile and the inventors need careful handling and protection from the well-established soldiers who run your business. All throughout history, we have examples of great ideas being dismissed by big organizations and governments - digital cameras, Radar, cancer drugs, etc. Things that can change your industry overnight are often neglected as crazy ideas by some who fail to see the faint possibilities. Safi argues for a dynamic equilibrium to be maintained where artists who dream up ideas can exist and thrive among the soldiers who execute. A fascinating read.

D. Michael Abrashoff served the U.S. Navy and was a captain of one of the best-awarded warships USS Benfold. When he took over the ship he realized that he had to improve his leadership skills.

He recollects an incident in 1994 when A sailor had fallen asleep while standing watch. This is an offense because people can get killed if you are not alert. He thought, this was an open-and-shut case—if you are asleep on watch, you are guilty. So he sends the sailor to the captain for punishment, without any further investigation. The captain asked the sailor why he had fallen asleep on watch. The sailor said he had been up all night cleaning a dirty workspace. Why did he have to stay up to clean it? Because the chief told him it had to be done by 8 A.m. 'Chief, why didn't you give him more time to get it done?" 'Because the division officer told me it had to be done. "The Exec office told me to get it done by 8 A.m." - which was Abrashoff himself! So, the learning is -sometimes the problem is 'you'. See-through the eyes of your crew, listen aggressively, and create a purpose.

"When your Why is big enough, you will find your How"

This is a companion book for Sinek's blockbuster book "Start with Why". The process to discover your Why has multiple steps starting with sharing your stories, identifying themes and drafting a Why statement. If you have read the Start with Why, this may seem like a stretched out version.

Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief:

"When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create"

In this book, Brad takes us through the decision-making process while dealing with the challenges of our times - things like cybercrimes, privacy issues, hackers backed by countries, social media responsibilities, etc. What happens when countries turn foes and target companies like Microsoft that operate worldwide? What will happen when a hostile government demands data that is stored in another country or belong to a foreign citizen? For many years, organizations have been trying to defend themselves from cyber attacks, but when you have advance information of an attack should they do preemptive strikes to dismantle the threat? A well-written book and a must-read for all those who want to understand the big bad world of cyber threats and the challenges and responsibilities of organizations to protect and defend their customers.

Overthinking! We have been there, with so many choices and options the decision making becomes difficult with strange 'what-if' pattern of thoughts. Once I started reading this, I had this realization that 'Overthinking' apparently is more common in females than males, 99% of the reviewers of this book are also a woman and the book cover is Pink??! But, I can relate to everything in this book, I see myself going through this pattern sometimes. My strong belief is that women being emotionally smarter, have identified this as a problem and a lot of men are still not there yet. Anyway, I read diverse perspectives and this opened up a lot of new strategies to understand how I should think and also to understand why some folks take longer to decide.

Nancy Duarte is a leading authority in presentations and story telling. The book talks about the power of visual stories to persuade the audience and strategies to curate the content for more impact. The book analyzes some of the famous speeches, idea creation process and more importantly - delivering the message to the audience. You can read this book free online here.

Astrophysics for people in a hurry is a small book that gives us a lot of insights into the world of stars and planets and also our own history. Why are all the planets in spherical shape, do you know that just in our Milky way there are a 100 billion stars like Sun. This book will also help you to bring you back to our tiny earth and our split second existence here in the larger scheme of things!

Visual intelligence- a trait that is learned by CEO's, Marketers, FBI agents and even doctors. We miss to see so many things that are right in front of us, sometimes we also wonder why others don't see things the way we are seeing. In many instances the details and patterns tells a different story than what appears it to be. What we do not see, we loose. The book tell us how to sharpen our perception and change our lives- a must read for Product Managers as well.

This is a collection of scientific articles. From quantum physics to evolution and to artificial intelligence, the topics vary to cater to anyone curious about the latest and speculative world of scientific research. Why did I pick this, that is again a good question - I think the world that we live in is unexplained yet and I am still curious to know how things are developing on that side.

This is another modern-day classic in the personal finance arena. Many of the readers, especially the young and earning folks who read this have mentioned the tremendous impact of this book on the way they live their life.

In a nutshell, the path to prosperity and happiness has not changed much from ancient times to now. Do I find this book life-changing? maybe not. But in times like this when consumerism is going overboard to make you spend on things that you don't really need, this kind of book will help in bringing in an equilibrium of thought.

To summarize,

15 books


4639 pages


Average book length of 309 pages


Longest is 504 pages and shortest was 194 pages


Topics: Statistics and probabilities, Economics, Astrophysics, Innovation, Story telling, Leadership, Art, Information security, Finance, Behavioral science

• List of books I read in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017
• I am currently reading "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions"
• This is my wish list of what I want to read next! (Not in any order or preference)

Thank you!