The best books I read in 2021
Martin Boer
Senior Director, Regulatory Affairs at The Institute of International Finance (IIF)
As we near the end of the 2021, it is time to do some final accounting on this year's reading. Here are my top picks among the 27 books I enjoyed (see the full list below) during what was once again a surreal, part motivating but also challenging year.
Many of the books I read this year were quite excellent, and life's too short to read mediocre books, but I would say my favorite was: "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration" by Isabel Wilkerson and published in 2010. It is a beautifully told story about the Great Migration, where almost six million Black Americans moved from the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West from approximately 1915 to 1970. It is a tremendous work of scholarship; authoritative, well-written, often very painful and troubling to digest, and goes far to explain the challenges and paradoxes of what is the United States today.
Another phenomenal, but very different book is "Why Fish Don't Exist A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life" (2020) by NPR's Lulu Miller. It is in parts an autobiography, a scientific treatise, and a memoir. One of the most interesting and quirky books I have come across in years. The story begins quite straightforward by surveying the life of a famous and controversial taxonomist - David Starr Jordan (founding President of Stanford University) - and his feat of discovering one fifth of the world's fish. But the book then transforms and morphs into many other directions, none of them expected, before positing the very notion that "fish" is a manmade construct that has no basis in the natural world - there are "fish" that have more in common with mammals, amphibians or birds than they do with other "fish"; as such, often our intutiions can be wrong, we need to keep an openess to life, and "fish" don't exist. Thanks to Vanessa for giving me this book.
Rounding out my top three would be "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" (1990), ?Daniel Yergin's definitive history of the global petroleum industry from the 1850s through the modern ear. I started this tome once before, during my first trip to the Middle East, but did not finish. Earlier this year, while living on a Norwegian fjord, I made an effort to re-read and finish the book, and found it to be a grand and sweeping history that shows how oil has played a critical role - or the critical role - in the world economy, the outcome of wars, and even the destiny of mankind itself. Yergin is a master story-teller and the chapters move from Pennsylvania to Russia, to South America to the Middle East with lots of colorful characters and incredible adventures.
Books read this year, in order of publication date:
Executive Director | Head of Regulatory Engagement, Corporate Third Party Oversight
2 年Great list, #s 2 & 8 some of my all time favorites
How was This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, Martin?
VP, Cyber and Tech Policy & Partnerships, EMEA
2 年The Prize is on my Christmas list…!