Book-Summaries

The reasons behind our portfolios and investment choices reveal a lot more about us than we might initially think. Half of all US mutual fund portfolio managers do not invest a cent of their own money in their funds, according to Morningstar. " How Doctors Die” showed the degree to which doctors choose different end-of-life treatments for themselves than they recommend for their patients. This book does the same for financial money managers. “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

One Man’s View of the World is a book written in 2012 by Lee Kuan Yew. Lee Kuan Yew is one of the most impressive leaders of the 21st century. In 1965, Singapore was dejected from Malaysia for not being Malay enough. In only a few decades, Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.

Sum: Forty Tales From The Afterlives is a collection of 40 short stories, describing what could happen in our afterlives. Here are my key takeaways from the book.

The book Magicians of the God is an interesting thesis around a lost civilization. Wikipedia has a scathing review calling the author, Graham Hancock, a pseudo-historian. However, the book has some insightful ideas.

The Bed of Procrustes is a short book consisting of quotes by Taleb. Unlike his other books, this book is mostly a collection of quotes. Procrustes used to stretch/amputate his guests who wouldn’t fit on his bed. Similarly, when our minds need to reduce information, we are more likely to try to squeeze a phenomenon into the Procrustean bed of a crisp and known category (amputating the unknown), rather than suspend categorization, and make it tangible. That’s the central theme of this book.

The book summarizes the teachings of John from the course CS190 that he teaches at Stanford. Good system designers get to spend a larger fraction of time in the design phase. Poor designers spend most of their time chasing bugs in complicated and brittle code.

The story of the rise and fall of the biggest foreign investor in Russia.

The book is a great read about how money and wealth are acquired, preserved, and lost. And that too not because of the market but because of the individual’s psychology.

Another great read in the Incerto series by Taleb. The core idea is that certain systems benefit from uncertainty. And our goal should be to make all systems antifragile, so that, they can benefit from uncertainty.

Digital Minimalism is a philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time on a few carefully selected activities that support the things you value.