Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke & The Biggest Bluff - Maria Konnikova
At least three times, I've listened to this two-hour interview on The Knowledge Project with Annie Duke. I've never played poker for money and probably never will, but her approach to decision making and meta-rationality blew my mind and got me onto Thinking In Bets and subsequently to Maria Konnikova's book, The Biggest Bluff. If I had the stones, I'd like to write a long-form review that does them both justice. In the meantime, their thesis goes like this: the quality of outcomes comes from both skill and luck. We can't do anything about luck, by definition. We can improve our skills in decision-making, and poker is a good model and laboratory. With any hand, the worst player with duces can beat the best player with aces. But, over time, skill will emerge (as long as you don't go bust). We have to focus on the process, the quality of our thinking and divorce it from the outcome.
Duke and Konnikova are the best guides because they both did graduate studies in psychology at Ivy League universities and, undoubtedly, because they're women in a 99 percent male world. I can't help but believe that they were more observant and keen to pick up oddities that men might have taken for granted. While their subject matter is similar, their books are near perfect complements. Thinking in Bets is more theoretical and abstract but still highly engaging. The Biggest Bluff, on the other hand, chronicles Konnikova's journey from poker neophyte to champion. She enlists the help of veteran Eric Seidel, whom both authors venerate for his truth-seeking approach to the game, as well as a mental performance coach. Her transformation isn't so much about learning poker (it's a relatively easy game to learn) but about herself and the conditions under which she makes good and poor decisions. I highly recommend both to everyone.
A Little History of the World - E.H. Gombrich
A highly readable survey of world history, but it's really a history of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, and Europe. Gombrich is a European art historian, so one must forgive him for focusing on the Greek and Roman periods and not paying much attention to India, Africa, and Asia. We write what we know, and every writer has to decide what to leave in and what to toss out. There's another problem that Gombrich identifies that cuts to the heart of the problem of history. Historians don't just write what they know but write about periods and events for which artifacts, records, or witnesses exist. The economics joke about the drunk man looking for his keys underneath the lamppost because "that's where the light is" holds doubly true for historians. In some circumstances, economists can generate data and run experiments; historians cannot. All that to say, Gombrich's reader is an excellent primer on Western Civilization but probably will be unsatisfying if you're interested in India, China, South America, or Africa.
The Lessons of History - Will and Ariel Durant
"Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed"
That passage from the introduction pretty much tells you what the book is about. In this meta-study of history broken into major themes like race, economics, war, and religion, the Durants make a sweeping attempt with each topic to distill the most important lessons from history into essay-length chapters. This is the peak of intellectual hubris and the academic equivalent of trying to climb Mt. Everest without equipment while walking past the frozen bodies of failed historians that litter the approach to the summit. It's overambitious, but it works and is absolutely thought-provoking. 
Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"Those who have been enthralled by the witchery of flying will know what I mean - and I do not speak of the men who, among other sports, enjoy taking a turn in a plane. I speak of those who fly professionally and have sacrificed much to their craft."
