Joseph Walker

Thinking, Fast and Slow

July 19, 2018 by Joe Walker

Author: Daniel Kahneman Published: 2010 (418 pages) Started reading: 15.January.2017 Finished reading: 12.April.2017 Brief description Thinking, Fast and Slow is a collection of Daniel Kahneman’s life’s work, which is immense. Kahneman is the Nobel Prize-winning Israeli psychologist who helped kickstart the field of behavioural economics, changed the way we think about human rationality, and, for the better part of 30 years, worked in partnership with the late Amos Tversky to deliver some of the most original psychological insights of the 20th […]

Categories: Psychology

Animal Liberation

January 14, 2017 by Joe Walker

Author: Peter Singer Published: originally, 1975; updated edition, 2009 (248 pages) Started reading: 9.January.2017 Finished reading: 14.January.2017 Brief description I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance as I write this. Few omnivores could read Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement, from page 1 to page 248, then refuse to overhaul their diet. The (apparent) convenience and tastiness of animal meat remain appealing to me. But our author, the Melbourne-born Princeton professor Peter Singer, argues that indulging our palates is a poor reason to continue […]

Categories: Animal rights, Philosophy

A Few Lessons For Investors And Managers From Warren E. Buffet

January 9, 2017 by Joe Walker

Author: Peter Bevelin Published: 2012 (81 pages) Started reading: 25.December.2016 Finished reading: 9.January.2017 Brief description A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers from Warren E. Buffett by Peter Bevelin is a collection of thoughts from one of history’s most successful investors (“one of”, because, on certain metrics, some have considered Carl Icahn to be better). A prominent theme accompanying nearly every line is that successful investing needs supreme mental discipline. Buffet’s allegedly superhuman rationality is what sets him apart from most other investors. Admittedly, […]

Categories: Business, Investing

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Meditations

December 25, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: Marcus Aurelius Published: This edition, 2003 (170 pages) Started reading: 12.December.2016 Finished reading: 25.December.2016 Brief description An emperor’s personal exhortations to himself, Meditations was written by Marcus Aurelius, who served as the ruler of the Roman Empire from A.D. 161 until his death in 180. The real Marcus wasn’t strangled by Joaquin Pheonix (like in The Gladiator) but fell ill during a military campaign against the Germans, leaving the throne to his (somewhat of a disappointment of a) son, Commodus (i.e. Joaquin). […]

Categories: History, Philosophy

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Man’s Search For Meaning

December 7, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: Viktor Frankl Published: original, 1946; this version, 2006 (165 pages) Started reading: 4.December.2016 Finished reading: 7.December.2016 Brief description One of the most enduringly insightful descriptions of, and reflections about, the Holocaust must surely be Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, first published just one year after the Second World War ended. Viktor Frankl was a distinguished, young psychiatrist working in Vienna in the 1930s. A precocious teenager, he was mentored by none other than Sigmund Freud, whose methods of psychoanalysis Frankl went on to counter-offer […]

Categories: History, Philosophy, Psychology

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The Hard Thing About Hard Things

December 4, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: Ben Horowitz Published: 2014 (282 pages) Started reading: 30.November.2016 Finished reading: 4.December.2016 Brief description The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers is essentially a management book for founder/CEOs. It’s also probably the best in that sub-genre. Management books tend to be written by management consultants and academics who study companies that are in their heyday (not at war) and who tend at any rate not to have personal experience as wartime or peacetime CEOs. But […]

Categories: Entrepreneurship, Management

Why I Write

December 1, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: George Orwell Published: Penguin Books, 2005 (120 pages) Started reading: 27.November.2016 Finished reading: 30.November.2016 Brief description George Orwell is most famous for the books Animal Farm and 1984. Yet many of his essays are also political and literary works of lasting repute. Why I Write is a small, enjoyable Penguin compilation of four of these essays. Why I Write (1946) Orwell writes about what propels him as a writer. He lists four, usually concurrent, motives for authors: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical […]

Categories: History, Literature, Politics

Antifragile

November 26, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb Published: Original, 2012; this version, 2014 (426 pages) Started reading: 30.October.2016 Finished reading: 26.November.2016 Brief description Antifragile is the answer to the question of how to live in a world we do not understand. Stoicism is an antifragile philosophy. The common law is an antifragile legal system. Genes are antifragile. City-states are antifragile. Meditation – anapana, vipassana, transcendental – is an antifragile practice, because stressors such as outside noise or an unquiet mind strengthen the meditators […]

Categories: Epistemology, Philosophy

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Vagabonding

October 29, 2016 by Joe Walker

Author: Rolf Potts Published: original version 2002, this version 2016 (209 pages) Started reading: 9.October.2016 Finished reading: 29.October.2016 Brief description Finishing Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel today makes it 20 days since I completed my last book. The rhythm of one-per-week may have been slightly disrupted. Vagabonding, by travel writer Rolf Potts, calls for long-term travel with an open-minded outlook. Tim Ferriss highly recommended it in The 4-Hour Workweek, and also hosted Potts on his […]

Categories: Personal development, Travel

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