2025

• Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman
  This book makes two important contributions: First, it gives a quantitative sense of the sheer scale of American manufacturing output and the incredible pace of conversion to wartime production in the early years of World War Two. This is particularly true during lend-lease, before the U.S. officially entered the war, which created a demand pull that likely gave the U.S. several critical years of head start in ramping production before entering the war officially, an example that perhaps has modern day parallels… Second, it introduces the idea that private industry leaders can play a critical role in supporting U.S. national power, that creating a company can be a noble, patriotic undertaking, which is part of the books new popularity in Silicon Valley and El Segundo.
  Despite this, it also comes with several shortcomings that makes this one of the few books I chose to read that I also rate as 4 stars. The first is just lack of editorial oversight: there are fairly obvious numerical errors and a few typos, which undercut the books authoritativeness. But worse is that this book carries such an overt idealogical message against unions and Keynesian government intervention. Frankly, I am not unsympathetic to the authors position. But they are presented with such forceful bias without evidence, oftentimes slandering stand in characters, that the book leans a little too close to polemic rather than a novel historical investigation. Though perhaps that is why it has been so successful as an idealogical contribution!
• The Diffusion of Military Power by Michael Horowitz
  As an institutionalist, I very much enjoyed Horowitz’s contribution to how militaries adopt technology innovation as dictated by organizational capacity and financial intensity. Rationalist IR theories assume technology adoption is seamless and based on state level competition, rather than technologies being contextual and complex, and disruption as something contingent on organization and capital as much as competition.
  Formatting wise, this is an academic published book. The introduction contains the key theory + 4 chapters of case studies (battleship, suicide warfare, aircraft carrier, nuclear weapons) demonstrating how organizational+financial intensity dictate how militaries adopt innovation. As someone still learning more about military history, I enjoyed each case study in its own right though others may find the introduction sufficient
• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
  A delightful read where GK Chesterton walks through his thoughtful journey to faith. He walks through each philosophical or ethical encounter where he finds the answers the "wisdom" of this world offers as lacking, only to turn and find himself face to face with the Christian faith.
  
  It is also striking that a book written over a 100 years ago is still so relevant today. So much of the discourse today, from nationalism to effective altruism, are addressed by Chesterton in this little book and are just as compelling, at least to me, today. Truly there is nothing new under the sun!
  
  Orthodoxy is also filled with pithy quotes and scathing remarks that make for an entertaining read.
• Babel by R.F. Kuang
  As always with fantasy fiction, I can never seem to put it down and exit the world building - finished this book in 36 hours!
  
  The magic that animates this world and the character's stories is the tension between languages, between cultures, between worlds of understanding. To see the same tensions I've felt in small ways in my American immigrant experience weaved into the fantasy magic of a book was a unique experience and is part of the power of the book itself. I also enjoyed the thoroughly researched linguistics (including seeing chinese language woven into a book!) and depth of familiarity with Oxford.
  
  As much as I enjoyed the book, I also found myself at the end unsure of the author's message. A novel set in the 18th century that depicted the deeply extractive and exploitative nature of colonialism in a new way, but seems to draw on figures familiar to a modern day reader to advocate for the same prescription today? A deeply sophisticated world building that collapsed to traditional leftist revolutionary messaging ultimately blunted some of the magic of the book for me.
• Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform by Jeffrey Birnbaum
  An incredibly in-depth account of how the 1986 tax reform bill came to pass. As always, what strikes me is how contingent history is on personalities and idiosyncrasies, from the staff, to the administration officials, to the elected members.
  Particularly relevant as Inflation Reduction Act defense is playing out in real time today. Also interesting to see the unique coalitional politics of tax reform (mainline democrats fighting for middle class with supply-side people elevated by Reagan interested in cutting taxes) paired with a unique, but not impossibly novel, compromise of budget-neutral reform.
• Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word by Walter J. Ong
  4 years ago, an anon commenter recommended this book on my still niche substack. 4 years later, I finally got around to reading it (after many others recommended it as well)
  
  Ong gives an incredible anthology of what a truly oral culture is like, which is often hard for literary creatures to imagine.
  
  It was particularly timely to read it while also going through apologetics again and thinking about the historicity of the gospel texts, which are literary residues of early oral Christian traditions.
• The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
  Finally got around to this recommended apologetics classic. The interview/narratives style was fairly engaging and definitely an all star list of interviewees - I definitely learned a few new nuggets of info!
  
  Unfortunately (and I expected this going in), the style was a bit too pop/casual, in a way that felt not only verbose to me, but I think also diminished the narrators perceived neutrality on the question.
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  A friend recently asked me what Brothers Karamazov is about. In a word: life. Within its pages, you’ll find every kind of person you’ve ever met, their thoughts and character rendered with remarkable depth.
  Indeed, is was striking to follow along the characters and encounter a passage where I saw my own thoughts written out on the page, precisely detailed in Dostoevsky unique stream of consciousness style.
  
  Recommending a book like this is challenging—not because it isn’t brilliant, but because its brilliance is hard to articulate. It’s famously long, and its purpose isn’t easily distilled. This isn’t a book you read for the plot or a clear moral message; it’s as ambiguous and multifaceted as life itself.
  
  Ultimately, I’d describe it like this: if you want to read a book about life in all its messy, profound complexity, there’s none better than The Brothers Karamazov.
  
  Thanks to KY for suggesting it and reading it with me.
  
  

2024

• A Defense Of Prejudice And Other Essays by John Grier Hibben
  A provocative series of essays, all thematically focused on describing a specific mindset and way of seeing the world. The perspectives in these essays draw from a unique mix of christian convictions, forceful agency, and drive for progress - a spirit mostly relegated to history and absent from writing today.
  
  + the added benefit that comes from reading anything written in a different time, both in learning how to orient around different uses of certain words e.g. "prejudice", "superfluous", and in helping contextualize some seemingly newfound present claims that in reality echo claims that have been made by every generation
• Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel
  Given I previously read Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story and Caro's LBJ, Vogel's biography felt like a light breeze!
  
  A rich history of a generational leader who set China on its trajectory today. Many of Deng's core convictions - science&technology as key drivers of economic development, which is the party's justification, policy experimentation and experience as ground truth, and the central importance of the party to the nation - are still true of China's policymaking today. Finally read this book after seeing it recommended from a variety of sources and was not disappointed!
  
  More thoughts to come in the substack!
• Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
  first new CS lewis book for me in a while! And a particularly memorable read, as I got to do a book club with my sister while reading it.
  
  This retelling of Cupid and Psyche in many ways feels like truly like the novel that encapsulates the archetypes and convictions that appear the most often across CS Lewis's writing (as opposed to Narnia, which feels more diffuse and scattered):
  - the possessive love which suffocates and crushes
  - the hidden nature of faith, which elides secular "wisdom" (without diminishing the value of that wisdom!), but faith that provides a weighty substance that is able to bear all things
  - the weight of glory we all hold - what we do with this immense glory either turns us into gods or demons
• DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, 1977-1994: A Summary History by Terrence R. Jack M. Fehner
  If you’re not reading niche government histories with org charts what are you even doing??
  
  A somewhat dry but still interesting history of how the mission, culture, and organization of the agency that is now the department of energy came to be.
  
  Thanks to MF and KY for getting this for me!
• The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan Yew
  an incredibly detailed look into 20th century singapore and how decolonialism unfolded in this unique part of the indopacific. LKY was truly a remarkable, generational leader and helped
  
  some notable highlights about LKY:
  - while clearly a liberal socialist, he was very aware of the dangers of communism and presented a first-person account how their cells operated (oftentimes with chinese middle and high schoolers) and how he dealt with them
  - the difficulty of pulling together a multi-ethnic coalition, especially in the midst of decolonization (and how those ethnic tensions ultimately split them away from malaysia)
  - the long tail influence of british education on colonial leaders and LKYs double-world experience in UK for school and as a native Singaporean who was able to understand both of the worlds he walked in
  - while somewhat skimmed over in the book, LKY builds a political party machine that is still dominant today. a world class exercise in institution building
  - how the turmoil of malaysian unification, decolonization, and communist unrest, along with LKY childhood experience of japanese occupation, shaped LKY and Singapore's approach to media control and policing
• Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  Another classic exploration of the human condition, with the unique realism that russian authors bring. Some themes that came to mind:
  - the rage and frustration that impotence, lack of agency, and lack of peerage can foment in an individual
  - the subjugation of the intellect to irrational emotion and all the vices of human nature
  
  Someone could probably write an equivalent narrative today for a certain group of individuals convinced of the superiority of rationalism as an epistemic for action. Truly nothing is new under the sun!
  
  Thanks to KY for the thoughtful christmas gift!

2023

• Master of the Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #3) by Robert A. Caro
  This was a paradoxically difficult book to read. While the bureaucratic intrigues and maneuvers were a well-paced and immersive narrative, reading about LBJ's life and how he "won" in politics increasingly leaves me cynical and with a bad taste in my mouth about DC.
  
  The benefit of reading biographies is they add strands of color to historical narratives. Seeing how LBJ intersected with what I knew of the histories of FDR's legacy in public power, Eisenhower, civil rights, and the fillibuster, added another dimension of understanding to popularly held versions of those stories.
  
  Ultimately, LBJ's story captures a tension that we still discuss today: is it better to be idealistic or is it better to be effective? Many of LBJ's liberal counterparts spent decades fighting for civil liberties and never won. LBJ, a man of ruthless ambition and truly no moral direction, was the one who bent the south to his will and passed the first civil rights bill (albeit a weakened one, that took another decade to remedy). But my hope stems from the belief that we are not bound by past stories and that it is possible to be effective, clear-eyed about the compromises needed to make change, and still hold convictions of what is right and worthy of our efforts.
  
• Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush
  An authentic first person account of how many of the political personas during WWII shaped and crafted defense funding and science policy. While many know Bush for his Endless Frontier memo, the opinionated policy paper that designed our current science funding infrastructure, I think his autobiography reveals the more personal virtues requisite in a leader: humility, trust, and communication. An insightful read into a leader, teacher, and mentor. Kudos to stripe press for bringing another lost classic back to print
• Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy J. Keller
  Another Tim keller classic (and the first book I’ve read on kindle!) and a timely reminder on what truly matters, as I think about what’s next for me job-wise
• Making Climate Policy Work by Danny Cullenward
  A great interdisciplinary and grounded analysis of why economically optimal policies are not necessarily the ones that pass or actually work in practice. While economists like to think of markets as abstract platonic entities, in reality markets are a push and pull of institutions with different incentives and power structures, particularly in imperfect liberal democracies like ours. Unfortunately, there have been entire national environmentalist advocacy groups who have made economically justifiable but politically impractical policies their entire platform for how to solve climate change. This book, written by real policy practitioners, is a much needed remedy.
• The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference by Theodore Rockwell
  I haven't been getting a lot of sleep the past couple weeks and part of it is because I couldn't put this book down at night. It is an incredible historical overview of a time when it felt like we could do anything, where one office in the US government, led by one man, was singlehandedly inventing new materials and then building from scratch the industry needed to mass produce incredible technologies, like nuclear reactors and submarines. Ultimately, it is the story of a man who, through sheer conviction and force of will, brought these things into existence and the philosophy that guided him. Seeing Rickover's incredible determination in every page and the bureaucratic imagination he used to accomplish his goals inspires higher vision in one can accomplish and many lessons for how to operate effectively in bureaucracy. Some quick notes on what stood out to me about rickover (stay tuned for longer reflections!):
  - demanding perfection, even when placed in seemingly menial positions e.g. when he was in charge of all the electronic components that went into naval vessels, he reorganized the entire office and made the navy's electrical wiring much more efficient, practicing the same principles he would later use at Naval Reactors.
  - education as the means to reform minds: a constant focus on building new schools, new ways of teaching and ensuring that what mattered was taught, both in sub school and in nuclear reactors. 80% of his testimony to congress on three mile island talked about the importance of training. While others focused on money or regulatory structures and authority, Rickover focused on how to create institutions for proper training.
  - radical responsibility: he made sure everyone underneath him knew exactly what they were responsible for and made sure everyone above him, especially congressional appropriators, knew that he would take responsibility for what happened under his command. Even under the navy's practice of constantly rotating officers (a terrible practice they continue to this day) and a host of other incentive misalignments, he stayed with naval reactors for the majority of his career and refused to leave, because he held himself responsible and knew that no one else would.
  - setting a higher vision: I don't know how but Rickover seemed to always have a higher vision for what could be and worked to manifest that. He almost singlehandedly crafted the US nuclear industry and built competent institutions that last to this day, quietly building and operating nuclear reactors while the civilian side has faltered.
  
  Maybe I'm diluting my recommendations because I give most books I read 5 stars (I'd like to think its a sign of good taste!) but I can't recommend this book enough for anyone who wants to see what it takes to build new technologies and build institutions that endure.
• 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19 by Ben S. Bernanke
  I always dismissed money, particularly macro/monetary policy, as too complicated for me and something best left for others, who had a greater direct interest. In reading this book, I finally decided to take a first step towards understanding how central banks drive monetary policy and by extension, affect the economy and trade.
  
  I found bernanke’s historical overview of the fed reserve and light comparisons to other central banks to be a good primer on the topic - exactly what I was looking for!
  
  Several themes stood out to me:
  - the Fed as an underrated example of competent state capacity, with distinctly non partisan processes but one that exercises considerable power. All the same, it still reports to Congress and it’s statutory authority is relatively limited compared to it’s peers because of our relative mistrust of the states role in markets
  - the Fed as a canonical example of an institution that relies on its credibility and guidance as part of its power, particularly as lower neutral interest rates limit its monetary tools to recover from recessions. There are few other institutions for whom written communication (in the form of forward guidance) has as much power to shape markets.
  - the Fed ultimately as one with broad, but limited specificity in its powers. Interest rates are powerful but non discriminatory. There is still much “juice” left to squeeze in fiscal policy - particularly of interest to me are housing policy (and it’s disinflationary possibilities) and a shift away from gas prices as a driver of energy cost
• The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Bridging the Gap) by Rush Doshi
  Another book that falls into my favorite genre of “thesis turned into book form”, Doshi provides a clear historical argument for the China hawk position. I mostly read this book as an introduction to how to think about geopolitics: how states signal intent, how states build coalitions, and one plausible interpretation of china’s actions and statements over the past several decades framed as a grand strategy. For that purpose, this book was eminently useful, as the years long culmination of research of one of the eminent China hawk scholars of the decade.
  I don’t necessarily agree with Doshi’s framing categorically (though I certainly found it intriguing and persuasive) and would recommend future readers read this book with a critical eye.
  
  Unrelatedly, this book was also a great way to learn some niche chinese idioms and phrases!
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin
  Yergin gives an incredibly detailed overview of the history of energy infrastructure, as well as the people behind it. As a friend once told me, “you cannot understand a subject until you understand it’s history”. Just so, we cannot understand the full scope and degree of the clean energy transition, and it’s geopolitical implications, until we understood what it took to get to where we are today.
  One clear theme for me from Yergins overview is that energy, and energy prices, are like interest rates - they are the foundation that shapes the entire economy that runs on top of it. The littered remains of false starts like the first EVs by Ford, biofuels, and climate tech 1.0 all tell the story of energy prices that unexpectedly changed. Similarly, players and technologies behind the clean energy transition will also reshape how energy prices fluctuate and who controls them.
• Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #2) by Robert A. Caro
  For me, this book somewhat unexpectedly is the story of a self-made man in Texas, who loved the land and shied away from public office, but who ended up, by dint of his unimpeachable integrity and love of state, as one of the most sucessful political leaders in Texas history, serving as Speaker of the Texas House, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor. His name was Coke Stevenson.
  
  Stevenson's path collides with Lyndon Johnson's in the 1948 Senate Election in Texas, as Johnson seized his last remaining opportunity to climb up the ladder to the Presidency. Caro carefully details every day of the election campaigning and the subsequent aftermath of the election controversy. The picture that emerges from the pages of this book is a stark contrast between the traditional form of small-town campaigning which suited Stevenson's quiet nature and Johnson's introduction of poll-driven, media-saturated campaigning, along with aggressive "attack politics"; between a man of conviction and ideals who believed in the informed voter versus one ultimately driven by deep childhood insecurity and ruthless pragmatism.
  
  Despite Johnson's incredible campaign expenditures and ad saturation, he still lost to Stevenson in the end and resorted to blatant election fraud, which crossed even the loose moral boundaries of Texas politics in the 20th century. In the end, Johnson won his senate seat by stalling out legal proceedings to uncover the fraudulent vote count, but this "dark mark" on his legacy was one of many small cuts to the veneration and trust placed in the office of the presidency.
  
  Caro's book provides an incredible review of the tactics used by power-hungry men (and those who choose to aid them) and provides useful context for today's world of American politics.
• Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel
  Work sits in a strange place among today's conversations. For some, like the technologist, it is something to be automated and done away with. For the new brand of policy entrepeneurs in DC, it is instrumentalized into broader concerns of economic security and international dependence.
  
  Terkel's ethnography of the everyday worker in the 1980's elides such simple narratives. The stories of work recorded in this book convey the grinding nature of manual work in factories, the racial tensions that stretched into every job and home, and the resentment of being disrespected daily as a worker. But these stories also show America during a time of growing unionization, which gave workers a greater voice and provided the basic dignities of work, securing many of the protections we take for granted today. There are also many jobs in this book that no longer exist today and yet the world still spins on. For me, "Working" captures the essence and form of reading: to step, briefly, into someone else's world and time and ground ourselves in the stories of others.
• A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy by James R. Holmes
  Exactly what was promised: a very brief and introductory overview to the theory of naval grand strategy. Useful for someone like me, with absolutely no background in military history or strategy, but interested in a book-format summary of how the canonical thinkers construct naval strategy frameworks.

2022

• Justice: A Reader by Michael J. Sandel
  Finished 80%. Pretty good mix of ancient/classics with modern day applications (eg affirmative action), though I was surprised sandal started with utilitarianism. Still need to finish kants works, but overall a good reader to help see the progression of ideas over time
• The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich by David Cayley
  A broad ranging interview with Ivan Illich: catholic priest, philosopher, dissident, and most importantly, friend. Touches on many different aspects of illichs work(though I think he would object to me even calling what he does and writes as “work”), including his views on the body, systematized medicine and education, technology and disembodiment, and the root of the Christian calling. Perhaps one of the most influential Christian books I have read yet, and what a mysterious grace that I would finish reading his thoughts on the very meaning of the word became flesh on the day of Christ’s incarnation.
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
  A great history of how zoning and WWII federal housing financing was used to segregate and economically disadvantage African Americans. In particular, the book includes the Bay Area and outlines different communities history of racial segregation during the 1950’s that are still visible today in their land use and housing. Lots of interesting glimpses into the role of unions in desegregation or segregation and the complicity of the federal government for large parts of the 20th century in job discrimination.
• Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis by Katherine Levine Einstein
  Researchers from Boston University present a mix of quantitative data and qualitative case studies focused around Massachusetts on how local zoning boards are a battleground for building more housing. "Neighborhood Defenders" often use a mix of threatened or realized lawsuits and regulations to impose delay and extra cost on developers, particularly around multi-family housing. Would recommend for anyone looking to learn more about the permitting and regulatory challenges that are a significant cause of the housing shortage!
• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by Carlota Pérez
  Perez's insight into technological development is that innovation does not seamlessly integrate with our society. Instead, each technological leap forward requires a Kuhnian paradigm shift, a disruptive shift in how we regulate the novel technology and associated financial instruments that develop. In particular, Perez's conceptually distinguishes between production capital and financial capital, which alternatively drive resistance to new technologies and speculation in new technologies.
  
  Maybe I read this book when I was too tired, but I felt like most of the book was repeating itself. Conveniantly though, each chapter is <12 pages, which made it easy to progressively read every day.
• Games: Agency As Art (Thinking Art) by C. Thi Nguyen
  It's almost a truism at this point to say that the "gamification" of our lives, at work, on social media, is a problem. But Nguyen provides serious foundational work in this delightful read by starting not with diagnosing our modern malaise but with more basic questions like "what is a game" and "what do we actually do when we play a game". His basic thesis is that games are a vehicle for exploring different modes of agency and the rest of the book explores the personal, the aesthetic and briefly, the real-world implications of that, oftentimes by introducing and discussing a variety of games: board games, card games, party games, etc. A brief but enjoyable read that provided the infinite value of a new perspective and new language for how to understand the world (and many new games to try!)
• Christian Theology by Millard J. Erickson
  I read this textbook for Gordon Conwells introductory theology classes, TH501 and TH502. Erickson provided good organizing questions and frameworks for organizing different theological topics and provides the conservative, evangelical answer to most topics
• Christian Theology: An Introduction by Alister E. McGrath
  I read this textbook for Gordon conwells introductory theology classes, TH501 and TH502. McGrath provides a good overview of different theological topics, particularly from a historical perspective.
• Majority World Theology: Christian Doctrine in Global Context by Gene L. Green
  I read sections of this textbook for Gordon conwells introductory theology classes TH501 and TH502. Interesting overview of how non-western cultures interact with Christian theology and global trends in theology
• The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
  Fukuyama's "End of History" is often the archetypal reference of the boundless democratic optimism that permeated the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the USSR. In reality, Fukuyama's work is far more nuanced than its commentators give him credit for and I found this book edifying, both as a useful historical artifact and for its thoughtful exegesis (and prediction) of liberalism and its discontentments.
  
  End of History's first two sections hypothesize a linear progression to history, which Fukuyama connects to the seemingly linear progression of modern science. This section does carry perhaps the characteristic optimism which may seem unrelatable to us now, but offers both a useful timestamp of the political attitudes of the 90's and some prototypical hints of the now-trending progress studies. Importantly, Fukuyama introduces Hegel's historical dialectic as a setup for the following sections.
  
  The last 3 sections cover the second half of the title, the "Last Man". It seems many commentators forgot to read this part of the book or even the second half of the title. Here Fukuyama draws on Hegel and Nietzsche, warning that universal, egalitarian liberalism will lead to its own discontentment. In particular, economic neoliberalism reduces all of us to utilitarian, rational maximalizing machines and erases any conception of honor, glory, community, virtue, which Fukuyama calls Thymos. In this way, he foreshadows and complements work like David Graeber's book on the alienation of modern debt and Michael Sandal's communitarian philosophy. Liberalism provides no outlet for passion, no solution for the politics of recognition, and collapses and privatizes moral meaning. Fukuyama's prescient warnings in this book provide useful explanatory power and conceptual framing for the rising tides of far-right extremeism that threaten democracies worldwide today.
• The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #1) by Robert A. Caro
  Caro redefines the biography genre with this 750 page epic on Lyndon B Johnson’s childhood and early career, the first in the still unfinished series of 5 books. It’s an incredibly thoroughly researched book on one man’s unadulterated thirst for power. That someone so lacking in moral conviction could rise to the highest power in the nation, using deception, flattery, and political entreé seems to be an indictment of our democracy. Scattered throughout the book were several men (they were all men) who did have conviction and ethics, but were either soundly defeated at polls by LBJ’s machine, deceived by Johnson , or ended their careers poor and broken. Overall, a brutally clear picture of what happens in politics and how one man played the game.
  
  Book pacing:
  First 1/4 was LBJ’s family background
  Middle half was college/Congressional secretary
  Last 1/4 I finished in one day, covered LBJ’s time in house and senate run. The book really picks up the pace and each page is full of political intrigue (feat FDR) and tax fraud
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
  A less pithy subtitle could have been “an Anthropologist tells economists what they missed”.
  
  This book is chock-full of cultural studies and descriptions of societies as they span the ages. Personally, I’ve always found one of the greatest nuggets of discovery in reading is appreciating just how different things could have been, what our communities and world could look like, so this book was superbly engaging for me.
  
  One thing that did occasionally bother me is, well, Graeber talks a lot about “Debt” in this book, when perhaps there were other ways to conceptualize things. More broadly, it felt like this was, well, a book written for economists. Nothing is more jarring than reading “we’re all communists to our friends”. The point Graeber is trying to convey with this is actually nuanced and substantive, it just is mind cramping to get past the blatant economic description of something that captures rich relational depth. But I guess that was Graebers whole point: that our communities and relationships have always, from the beginning, been permeated by “debt” (though I personally wouldn’t call it that), and that is the appropriate starting point to understand the history of monetary and fiscal economics.
  
  One interesting theme throughout the book is the idea that humans are commodified (into slaves), when they are ripped from their community contexts, when they are unknown. Given the extent to which that happens today, as young people cleave themselves from home and family to go to college, and then spread out in a diaspora in search of opportunity, the question needs to be asked: whom are we slaves to?
  
  RIP David Graeber
• Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means by Pamela Herd
  Good overview of administrative burdens, an often under considered or maliciously used dimension of policy making and implementation. Also happened to be a good overview of different federal programs like social security, voting, Medicaid and SNAP
• Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers by Donald Fairbairn
  A refreshing examination of the early church fathers and how they conceptualized the Holy Trinity, a challenging theological topic that is under discussed in many churches today. The book provides strong implications for the importance of appreciating the relational nature of the Trinity and how this reframes how we think about sin, salvation, justification, and other conceptions that we’ve modernized and perhaps lost some of the original meaning.
  Studying theology in general is giving me a greater appreciation for how ideas are shaped and molded over time, and how we see these concepts and conceptions diffuse into other streams of thought (and of course, theology is also shaped by concurrent ideas of the time as well)
• Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion) by Jonathan Tran
  A compelling argument for the limits of identitarian antiracism. Jonathan Tran covers two Asian American communities, one from the Mississippi delta community in the 1900’s and the other in modern day SF. For me, it was an unusual combination of grace-driven theology and insightful writing on how economic structures use racial identities for exploitation
• The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
  A compelling vision of what Christian hospitality, what it means to truly and literally love your neighbor, actually looks like in a family and a church.
  The book is all the more interesting as the author charts their journey from a difficult childhood, to being an active part of the LGBTQ community and an English professor, to end up marrying a pastor and being a part of a conservative PCA complementarian church in North Carolina.
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
  I never fully appreciated the role food plays as an anchor for the often displacing experience of being a second generation immigrant kid growing up in America. Certainly a book that made me reflect more on my upbringing, as well as the definite, undeniable future where my parents age and grow sick. Given my current incompetence at cooking, what will connect me to them when they are gone?
• Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  So glad I finally got to read this classic. Lots of great insight about Christian community and the dangers that come with any social group. Filled with lots of applicable counsel!
  
  Translation was a little challenging to understand sometimes though.