Quit

Everybody knows we're supposed to persevere when things aren't going our way. "If you're going through hell, keep going," says Winston Churchill. That attitude can help when you really need to get something done. But applied in the wrong context, it can cost us a lot too. In Quit, Annie Duke argues that we overvalue things like grit, and as a result don't walk away enough.

No One Wins Alone

I really enjoyed Mark Messier's book No One Wins Alone. As a fan of the Edmonton Oilers growing up, the book brought back a lot of memories, and provided a view of what it was like on the inside.

Hammond Power

I recently sold all my shares of Hammon Power (HPS.A). I have no beef with the company: it has done extraordinarily well. It's simply a case of price catching up with value.

Trade Wars are Class Wars

Massive trade deficits and surpluses are often caused by financial repression. That is, some artificial mechanism is keeping wages or spending down in some country, causing exports to rise relative to imports in that country. As such, trade wars are not really conflicts between countries, but between classes within those countries. So argue the authors in the excellent book Trade Wars are Class Wars.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

The government, the media and society at large take a lot of stuff for granted in forming their policies and opinions. The problem is that a lot of it is wrong. In Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell refutes a lot of the "conventional wisdom".

Chip War

Over the last several decades, silicon computer chips have shifted from being parts used by fringe, nerdy, hobbyist groups to becoming integrated into almost everything we do. This is even more the case in the military. Where once bombs had to be launched by the dozens to even have a limited chance of hitting a target, today's precision-guided (thanks to onboard chips that make mammoth calculations) missiles are neccessary to win wars. Chips have become a matter of national security. Chip War makes this case to the reader, and provides details on the industry's evolution, with a focus on the countries that play a role in shaping this industry.

The Alice Network

Helping The Allies fight back against the Nazis was a vast network of spies embedded in the territories occupied by the Germans. With many of the men either dead or fighting on the front lines, a lot of this spy work was done by women. The Alice Network is a novel about one node of a spy network that actually existed.