My 2021 Recommended Books List

I was nervous compiling this list. I read more books that I can write about. I don’t want to write too much in one post, but I do want to feature books that expanded my perspective and that you may find valuable. So, here’s my 2021 list with a short summary about each book. I hope you find this interesting and that you also suggest books for me (and others) to read. I ended last year’s post https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-2020-books-i-recommend-list-gil-yehuda/ with a promise to read the following four books. Let's start with those.

1.?Accelerate https://itrevolution.com/accelerate-book/ I’m very glad I read this book and I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the software industry. The book explains, in detailed steps, with a significant amount of supporting data, how to design a highly-functional technology organization. You will learn how an organization’s culture and specific biases lead to success or failure. You will see where your organization fits on the spectrum, and what you can do to move it toward success. You will want to inject this book into every IT senior manager who tells you “but we’ve always done it that way here.”

2.?Invisible Women https://carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible-women/ I found this to be a very thoughtful and provocative book. I strongly recommend reading it. Consumer products, safety testing, government policies, and society’s infrastructure is largely designed with a tacit assumption that males are the default human. Yet reality has us living in a world where about half of us are not male. The book details the implications. This is far more profound than “why don’t women’s clothing have pockets?” Be prepared for a carefully researched and powerful book. It is important and eye opening. Note: if you liked this book, you'll like Weapons of Math Destruction (reviewed in last year’s blog post).

3.?Parable of the Sower https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries I mentioned I was going to read some Afrofuturism by Octavia Butler, who was an inspiration for adrienne maree brown (author of Emergent Strategy, reviewed last year). Butler is an excellent writer and the story is well told. It’s rather dramatic with a “one step forward, two steps back” cadence. The book’s hero is a young Black woman. You will admire for her character strength and deep humanity. She faces a broken world in need of people who can reliably help one another. It is important to have representation of young Black female heroes in science fiction, and Butler’s hero fills an important gap. It’s a very good book.

4.?The Most Human Human https://brianchristian.org/the-most-human-human You may be aware of the Turing test – the test to see if a computer can fool a person to think they are speaking with a real human, not a computer. Computer scientists have been working for decades to perfect algorithms that respond to people in the most human-like manner. This book turns the tables and asks what makes human-like conversation so human-like? The author participates in the annual Turing test competition where competitors bring their chatbots to compete against each other and against real people. The bot that fools the most people will earn the award for being the most human-like, but the human contestants have an award of their own too. The book details the author’s preparation in his attempt to win the award for the most human human. This is a truly delightful book. Note: he also wrote https://brianchristian.org/algorithms-to-live-by/ which is truly fantastic too.

The following six books are of the best I read this year. Accelerate, mentioned above, and these, really impressed me and helped me see things differently.

5.?Mine! https://www.minethebook.com/ was the most enjoyable book I read this year. The premise is fascinating and by the end of the book you will understand something you probably never knew: Ownership is much more complicated and ambiguous than you ever thought. The authors detail 6 fundamental rules of ownership and then show how they conflict and create chaos. Some of their examples are fun, some are extremely serious.

Consider the situation where you are seated on an airplane, and you open your tray-table table to work on your laptop. Just then, the person in the seat in front of you leans back and closes your laptop. Who “owns” that wedge of air that is above your knees? Is that part of your purchased seat space? Or is that part of the seat’s function that the person in front of you purchased? What if you were the one leaning back? What if you had a seat that can’t lean back? Why don’t airlines solve this? Or consider your claim that you own your home and yard. You rightfully purchased it from the people who lived there before you – but if you go back a few generations you face that uncomfortable realization that in almost every plot of land on the globe, someone took land from someone else with force. Depending on where you live in the world, that might have been a few hundred years ago, or perhaps just a few decades ago. That’s where “your house” sits. What about holding a place in line? What if you leave and return – do you get to keep your place? What is “your place” in that context?

I was hoping for more details related to digital good and the complexities of intellectual property. They mention it and that part particularly interests me. I hope for a follow up since that topic gets just as complicated and interesting too. Bottom line, this book provides ample context for you to get a very good sense that ownership is a social construct that we can manipulate to create surprising outcomes. It was the best book I read this year.

6.?Upstream https://heathbrothers.com/books/upstream/ Upstream is a fantastic book. It’s such a powerful and simple concept: explore the systemic reasons for failures and fix them before the failures happen. Yet, there are so many reasons we fail to do just that. The book starts with a parable. Two people walking by a river see a child drowning and jump in to save her. Once onshore they see another child in the river, drowning, and they jump in to save her too. Then it happens again. One jumps in and the other runs along the banks. The first one yells “Where are you going? We need to save this kid!” The other yells back “I’m going upstream to stop the person who is throwing these kids into the river.” The book is about identifying situational awareness and getting the bearings to see how to best solve issues. It is also about how we tend to value heroics rather than good plans – thus providing ample incentive to ignore solving problems upstream. This book is superbly practical. I strongly recommend any business leader to read it and be inspired by it.

7.?Find your Red Thread https://tamsenwebster.com/book/ I wrote about this book recently in this blog post https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/looking-red-threads-gil-yehuda/ In summary: if you give presentations or tell stories as part of your work, read this book. The author has worked with many speakers and distilled a simple and effective formula for telling a great story. Read it, follow it. Note: I credit Josh Bernoff (author of the must-read https://withoutbullshit.com/ blog) for posting about this book, as well as the next one. Read anything he recommends reading. See: https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/find-your-red-thread-is-the-best-book-youll-ever-read-on-ideas-and-impact and https://withoutbullshit.com/blog/the-most-important-book-you-will-read-this-year-our-common-ground-by-diane-hessan

8.?Our Common Ground https://dianehessan.com/our-common-ground I tend to avoid political discussions in public forums. I have opinions, I just don’t think the public forum allows for effective dialog. So how do you expand your views and understand people’s views about complicated topics? Enter Diane Hessan. She is one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met. It hard to describe just how much I admire her and appreciate her book. She is an amazing professional who has the right approach to a very challenging problem: she listens and shows you how to listen. I’m a fan. Ok, now I’m blushing.

Let’s talk about the book: Everyone will tell you that our nation is divided. It is. But what if you asked people to tell you what they think? You might find that people have more in common than you think. Hessan wrote about her findings, as a professional listener (she’s the former CEO of a market research firm) in a set of columns in the Boston Globe. In this book, she highlights her insights, punctuated by data and content she gathered from spending four years listening to people who have all sorts of views. You will not agree with everyone she interviews. That’s not the point of the book. You will learn about perspectives and differing priorities. You’ll learn how two people can see the same thing and see very different parts of it. That is the point.

To be clear, she’s not apolitical, nor is she the “why can’t we all get along” character (recently spoofed by Chris Evans’ cameo in “Don’t Look Up” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFeWf2w2bFw). She approaches this project thoughtfully. The social divide that marked the 2016-2020 era in the US will be studied. I hope this book gets included in the reading materials. I recommend you read it.

9.?Working in Public https://nayafia.substack.com/p/22-working-in-public This one is close to my heart since it details some very important elements of what I deal with in my day-job. Those of you who are familiar with open source (if you read my blog, you probably are), will know that I’m involved. Nadia Eghbal’s book is fantastic. She does an excellent job of detailing how people and communities work on open source, what it looks like when it works well, and how things can fall apart too. If you liked this, you’d like How Open Source ate Software by Gordon Haff and The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler.

10.?The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy https://itrevolution.com/delicate-art-of-bureaucracy/ I just finished reading this and I’m of mixed mind. It’s a good book. I don’t love how it’s written, but that’s a stylistic opinion. I was unsure if I’d like the topic and message. I’m still unsure. But it’s a good book and one that I think I’m going to recommend others to read too.

The premise: we hate bureaucracy but we need bureaucracy. We need to find a way to create good bureaucracy and eliminate the bad type. This guide shows how. Bureaucracy has become a very significant part of my work life. I read this book hoping to develop a productive relationship with it. It’s a struggle. Yet, this is the best book I’ve found so far that addresses it directly and carefully. It makes my top list, not because I loved reading it. But because it was important that I read it. You might find it important to read too.

I read more books this year too; books worth reading and recommending. But this post is getting long. So I’ll be short on details; if I can help myself. Here's a list of other books that kept me inside and informed.

11.?Factfulness https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/ This book is there to remind you about how many things are working well. It’s rather hopeful and extremely well written. You should read it, especially during a global pandemic. You’ll see the world with a brighter perspective and learn that things are not as they were.

12.?Origin Story https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/david-christian/origin-story/9780316392006/ This is an incredibly ambitious book that attempts, and amazingly succeeds, at telling you the origin story of everything. So if you want to know how everything began, read this book.

13.?1491 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/ speaking of origin stories, I picked up this fascinating book and really enjoyed it. We all know that “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue… and set his feet upon new sand.” In elementary schools across the US children learned that “we” “discovered” America – and discovered that other people were living here, but since those other people were not European, they didn’t quite count. This book sets out to tell what things were like before Columbus. The focus includes both North and South American continents. The author spends time addressing what to call these people (Native Americans, Indians, their specific nation/tribal names, etc.) and addresses many theories about various cultures and eras. I learned a ton and I think you will too. The author does a lot of myth debunking. At the end of the book you’ll realize there are a lot of cultures, a lot of regions, a lot of eras, and a lot of debates. It’s worth reading.

14.?Noise https://readnoise.com/ This is an astonishingly good book about the ways people make mistakes in judgement and data. The heart of the book is statistics, but the flow makes it readable and worthwhile. Do you want to be smarter? Read books like this one.

15.?How Charts Lie https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324001560 I love books like this. I’ve read a few and this one does not disappoint. Read this and the next time you see a chart on TV or a newspaper, you’ll be much more attuned to how it might be conveying misinformation. Do charts lie? Yes they do. This book tells you how to catch the lies.

16.?The Hour between Dog and Wolf https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311090/the-hour-between-dog-and-wolf-by-john-coates/ One day while recommending books with colleagues, someone recommended this book and I’m glad she did. The book is about the emotional chemistry that takes place while being a Wall Street trader. It’s about brain chemicals, emotions, and the financial meltdown of 2008. I thought it was fascinating.

17.?The Death of Expertise https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of-expertise-9780190469412?cc=us&lang=en& This is a great read about the nature of expertise and it’s continued demise. It started with Rene Descartes I guess, but it has come to a head with Wikipedia and WebMD. If you lived in the 16th century you knew that everything you know was revealed to you by experts – usually members of the clergy or your overlords. They received knowledge and you accepted it because they were experts, and you were not. Descartes told us to trust your own senses. By the 18th century, and certainly by the end of the 20th century people in progressive societies were taught to “look inside yourself” and “speak your own truths.” Where does that leave the experts? This book speaks to the questions that make being an expert in anything extremely challenging in a world where your Facebook friends seemingly have just as much expertise in politics, immunology, economics, and world affairs as the world experts.

18.?Fuzz https://maryroach.net/fuzz.html and now for something different. I adore Mary Roach. I will read just about anything she writes even if I’m not interested in the topic. She’s a fantastic writer who makes me laugh while informing me of things I never knew about. This book is about the intersection of human laws and nature – specifically when nature breaks the laws. What happens if a bear steals your food? What about a tree branch that falls on your car? What are the best and worst ways to deal with deer who seem to like staring at headlights instead of running away? What do people in the Department of Fish and Wildlife do all day? This is a book about mountain lion poop and how the military devised ways to get rid of pesky birds that like flying into fighter jets. She is hilarious and informative. Read her books, this one being her latest is a ton of fun too.

19.?The Body: A Guide for Occupants https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/239783/the-body-by-bill-bryson/ Are you a person? You probably have a body with lots of interesting body parts. You probably don’t know that much about many of those parts. Read this book and you’ll learn a ton about blood, lungs, brains, skin, and even the parts we don’t talk as much about on LinkedIn. You should know about those parts too. This book is a fun read and very informative.

20.?She Has Her Mother’s Laugh https://carlzimmer.com/books/she-has-her-mothers-laugh/ since you are a person (we just established that), you might want to know a bit more about genetics. I enjoyed reading this and I think you will too.

21.?Ask Your Developer https://www.askyourdeveloper.com/ back to business with this one. Lawson tells us why his company, Twilio, is amazing. He’s the CEO and get to brag. If you liked The Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst, you’ll like this book. If you like Upstream (listed above), you’ll like this book. I liked it too. In it, he describes how he created a culture that learns and grows by asking his developers and engineers, rather than telling them. There is a ton you can learn from this book if you are a business leader that wants to grow a great company.

22.?Rules of Civility https://www.amortowles.com/rules-of-civility-about-the-book/ Amor Towles is master writer. I read A Gentleman in Moscow last year and figured I’d follow up with this book. Honestly, I thought Gentleman was a better book. But Rules was quite good too. Its a novel, it's about change and love. Read either of these two books, you'll enjoy the art of amazing writing and storytelling.

23.?The Christmas Gift https://funkenovels.com/ I'm including this in honor of a colleague who just published her first novel. Becca is an extremely talented AI expert and all around professional I worked with at Yahoo a few years ago. She wrote a very charming and sweet book that I’m happy to list on the list of books I read and recommend this year. I’ll be honest, this is the only item I have at home that is Christmas themed. But I’m all about expanding my perspectives. This was a thoughtfully crafted and easy to enjoy book with a very nice message about family.

24.?Pride and Prejudice Manga edition. https://www.mangaclassics.com/pride-and-prejudice Speaking of expanding my perspectives, I end this list with this most delightful exploration into the odd combination of Jane Austen and manga. I followed up the book with a movie marathon. We watched the 2005 version with Keira Knightly, the 1995 version with Colin Firth, as well as the 1980 TV series version. Why Manga? Why not! It’s a fantastic visual style that allows the illustrator to convey what words might fail to convey. It was a ton of fun to read. That said, I don’t see myself reading too many graphic novels, but occasionally if I come across a great one (perhaps your recommendation), I’d love to enjoy it. Oh, do you know the classic story? It's about a young woman with a head on her shoulders who wants to fall in love. Being a family of sisters their fate rests on them marrying well (by that, I mean into money). Failing a good marriage, they may be doomed to poverty. But what about love? Lizzy meets a man who seems overly gruff and full of pride. He seems to be quite rude too. But perhaps he's just awkward and misunderstood.

What about next year? I have two Russell Shorto books on my list. I enjoyed reading Amsterdam a few years ago and I just started Revolution Song https://www.russellshorto.com/book/revolution-song with The Island at the Center of the World https://www.russellshorto.com/book/the-island-at-the-center-of-the-world queued up afterwards. I have some other books on my list, but would love to hear from you about the books that made this year interesting for you. Please share below. If you thought this list was interesting, please let me know by liking or sharing this post.