Book

Summary As was the fashion in 1759, Adam Smith endeavors to explain what we call right and wrong, as well as why we arrive at these conclusions. The cornerstone of his theory is based on the concept of sympathy. Smith posits that, just as humans are endowed with the sense of sight, they are also equipped with a sense of sympathy. The brief definition of sympathy is the ability for one human to “enter into” the experience of another. This “entering in” does not perfectly mirror the original experience, but critically, it is perceived through the lens of an impartial spectator. This impartiality forms the foundation of all morality. ...

Deserves its place in classic American literature. It also deserves to be read in high school as it walks the balance of respecting norms and traditions while maintaining a personal responsibility to rise above them when they fall short of our ideals. Thus, the reader is left neither a dupe nor Anarchist, but responsible for their own sphere as well as their ‘place’ in society.

Summary I remember coming across the Wikipedia summary for this book after Baudrillard did an analysis in his bewildering Simulacra and Simulation, which read: It follows a group of car-crash fetishists who, inspired by the famous crashes of celebrities, become sexually aroused by staging and participating in car accidents. At the time, I thought it was a strange summary, maybe a typo or something—after all, it doesn’t make any sense! So I, in my naivete, tucked this away in the “read later” list. I’ve read the book and can confirm the above sentence is a valid summary. ...

I was expecting this to be a collection of stories, but it was more about the actual mentality of survivors themselves. Overall, really entertaining read, but I wouldn’t rely too heavily on the advice inside it other than general rules of thumb. The one thing about survival stories is everyone is unique, and so advice that is good in one situation may get you killed in others.

Summary Rosenberg sets out to ‘prove’ through Neuroscience that the way we understand our past, present, and future might not be based on a misunderstanding. In what is sure to ruffle the feathers of academics of every stripe, Rosenberg uses various studies as a lever to overturn several common theories of mind. For the uninitiated, a theory of mind is an explanatory framework whose purpose is to explain the mind to itself. Most common theories of mind rely on the iconic duo of desire and action. Charles is crying because he can’t get an ice cream cone. In the previous sentence, we are met with Charles’ desire and the action that results from the desire, a cause and an effect. Rosenberg then uses this as a jumping-off point to argue that this core assumption that almost all theories of mind make is flawed. ...

Summary This book follows the careers of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, focusing on the second half of FDR’s administration from 1940 to 1945. By this time, Franklin had been the U.S. President for nearly two full terms. During those two terms, he had transformed the federal government to an almost unrecognizable extent, implementing many policies we now take for granted, like Social Security, the FDIC, the SEC, and the 40-hour workweek. These policies were part of a larger platform known as the “New Deal,” which was essentially a labor reform agenda that emerged during the Great Depression. ...

Summary The Federalist Papers are a collection of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of the Constitution drafted in 1787, over a decade after the Declaration of Independence. With the benefit of hindsight, historical events and structures can often seem predetermined, obscuring the many decisions that had to be made along the way. The journey of the United States from independence to forming a federal government was not a straight path. The land won by the Revolutionary War consisted of 13 colonies, newly rebranded as “states.” Each state had adopted its own constitution shortly after rebelling against the British crown. These individual states were loosely united during the Revolutionary War under the Articles of Confederation, which defined a weak central government and functioned more like a treaty than a true organizing principle. This absence of centralized energy resulted in many inefficiencies during both war and peace. It may seem obvious now, but for the governors of these separate states, the idea of surrendering autonomy and assuming shared responsibility with neighboring states was far from intuitive. Thus, the framers faced an uphill battle in convincing all 13 states that it was in their best interest to form a federal government. This debate can be seen as an early manifestation of the enduring tension between “big government” and “small government.” Even though the federal government of that time was far more limited than it is today, it still represented a form of “big government” that had to contend with many of the same critiques leveled by libertarians today. The framers’ greatest inspiration was their nearly obsessive desire to construct a government that would, by its very design, prevent the rise of a dictator. “It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” – Alexander Hamilton One of the key principles was that it should be the structure of the government itself that prevents abuse of power, not merely the laws it creates. This is why so much of The Federalist Papers is devoted to discussing which responsibilities should fall to the legislative, judicial, or executive branches. It was also part of the rationale behind making the Constitution difficult to amend, as the framers hoped to limit the extent to which any bad actor could consolidate power. ...

Summary McCullough gives a fairly detailed account of the first year of the American Revolution against the British. Focusing largely on George Washington, this book is more interested in the military maneuvers of both sides without getting too bogged down in the political philosophy of the moment. The first year of America’s Revolution was a dark one, but by its end several close calls set the stage for surprise attack by Washington which reinvigorated a fledgling nation’s resistance and would be forever memorialized by the famous “Crossing the Delaware” painting. ...

Summary Adam Smith lays out one of the first exhaustive accounts of how a complex, developed economy functions. Published in 1776 during some “difficulties” in the relationship between Britain and one of its colonies, Smith makes the case for fundamental economic concepts like free markets and the division of labor. The first book, by far my favorite, presents the fundamentals of Smith’s concepts of value, wages, and labor. One of his key observations concerns the transport of goods. He argues that without the capacity of water to transport heavy items easily, civilization itself would have been greatly hampered. This insight helps explain why civilizations emerged near bodies of water that were easily navigable, most notably in the Mediterranean. It is always fascinating to observe how the limitations imposed by an environment affect the systems that find ways to thrive within those given constraints. ...

Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest emperors Rome ever produced, wrote a series of notes to himself. It is believed that these notes were never meant to be published but were part of his personal practice of self-improvement and philosophical reflection. Scattered with exhortations to not bend beneath the pressures of life, the reader is presented with a picture of life as something to be endured: “Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds.” ...