"The Little Book of Common Sense Investing"

By John Bogle, patron saint
of do-it-yourself investors

I have a lot of respect for Vanguard founder John Bogle. Unlike every other financial services company at the time, Vanguard was set up to operate at cost, rather than to extract profits from account holders to funnel to its executives and shareholders. Vanguard's customers are its owners; it's a mutually-owned mutual fund company. If Bogle hadn't given up ownership of Vanguard, he'd probably appear in every Forbes List of Very Rich People ever published, and the rest of us would be that much worse off in retirement.

"The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" details Bogle's philosophy when it comes to investing in the stock market. It boils down to a few simple ideas: in aggregate, investors are the market, so in aggregate we can't beat the market. Costs matter; the returns you get are exactly what you don't pay for. Diversify as much as possible. And you can't buy past performance¹, so don't try to time the market!

"Legend of the Galactic Heroes" Vol. 1

Politics...in...spaaaaaace!

"Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Dawn" (LOGH) is the first volume of the English translation of (in my opinion) the greatest TV show ever made. The author Yoshiki Tanaka is known for his historical writing style, which comes through clearly in the novelization. Though it's set centuries in the future, "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" explores issues that are incredibly relevant today, such as the problems with various forms of government, the tension between regressive religious doctrines and the modern economy, terrorism, when war is justified, and much more.

"Gratitude"

The cover art looks
like a stylized sunset.

Last February, beloved neurologist and author Oliver Sacks wrote a New York Times op-ed ("My own life") about his thoughts upon being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and learning that he could expect to live for only a few more months. "Gratitude" is a collection of this and three other essays on aging, the search for meaning, and dying with grace.

"The Education of Little Tree"

Truly a story, at any rate

"The Education of Little Tree" is a coming-of-age story set during the Great Depression. After his parents' death, the young Forrest "Little Tree" Carter moves in with his Cherokee grandparents in the mountains of Tennessee and learns the importance of self-reliance and understanding others. But the book is not what it seems – though allegedly autobiographical, it is actually a work of fiction written by the infamous Asa Earl Carter.

Minor spoilers below.

Future historians, rock & roll, narratives

The record that just might go gold galactically

The New York Times magazine recently published a fun article about which iconic rock artists might still be remembered 300 years hence, but also about how it's not facts but narratives that shape history. Here's an excerpt for flavor:

I have no data on this, but I would assert that if we were to ask the entire population of the United States to name every composer of marching music they could think of, 98 percent of the populace would name either one person ([John Philip] Sousa) or no one at all. There’s just no separation between the awareness of this person and the awareness of this music, and it’s hard to believe that will ever change.

Now, the reason this happened — or at least the explanation we’ve decided to accept — is that Sousa was simply the best at this art. He composed 136 marches over a span of six decades and is regularly described as the most famous musician of his era. The story of his life and career has been shoehorned into the U.S. education curriculum at a fundamental level. (I first learned of Sousa in fourth grade, a year before we memorized the state capitals.) And this, it seems, is how mainstream musical memory works. As the timeline moves forward, tangential artists in any field fade from the collective radar, until only one person remains; the significance of that individual is then exaggerated, until the genre and the person become interchangeable.

I'd say it doesn't stop with musical memory, though: this is how almost all memory works.

"The Great Depression: A Diary"

Diaries are always so serious

Benjamin Roth's diary is a month-by-month account of one of the U.S.'s most socially and financially turbulent eras. The contagion began in the equity markets, as investors discovered assets they'd thought a bargain were worthless. As the economy cratered, unemployment spread; mortgages went into default; millions lost their homes¹. Banks failed – and in many cases, illegal activity and insider kickbacks gave them the final push over the edge. Radicalism was on the rise. Some thought they were witnessing the death of capitalism.

This book's subject is the Great Depression, of course, but doesn't it sound eerily similar to 2007-2009? That's ultimately why I picked up "The Great Depression: A Diary": to see what lessons the past holds for the present.

For the first time in my personal business life I am witnessing a major financial crisis. I am anxious to learn the lessons of this depression. To the man past middle life it spells tragedy and disaster but to those of us in the middle thirties it may be a great school of experience out of which some worthwhile lesson might be salvaged.

—Benjamin Roth, June 5, 1931