Here is what I read this week. Some of the articles/posts may require a subscription to read them. I also share my recommended reads on Pocket for anyone who wants to follow along there.

Books

Finished

• The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945-1953 by Jeffrey Frank. This was interesting, but not nearly as engaging a read as McCullough’s Truman. The focus of Frank’s book was on Truman’s years as president, but I think there is some context lost in understanding some of his behavior and decisions without seeing the life that led up to the presidency.
• The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz. This was a fun read that toured mathematics in the same way it is typically taught to us in school, begin with arithmetic and working up through algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, statistics and number theory.

In Progress

• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H. W. Brands. I’ve read several biographies of FDR and always find them entertaining. This one is no different. It is in-depth and covers some areas of his life that I haven’t seen covered in depth in some of the other bios I’ve read.

Articles/posts

• Moonlighting as a Tow Boat by Melanie Novak (blog, 4/10/2022). I need to find some kind of exercise I really enjoy.
• Baseball’s Next Battle: Making the Game Exciting Again by Jared Diamond (Wall Street Journal, 4/7/2022) #sports/baseball
• Major League Baseball’s Respect Problem by Andy Kessler (Wall Street Journal, 4/10/2022) #sports/baseball
• To Sell is Human (book review) by Mike Dariano (The Waiter’s Pad, 4/11/2022)
• A 4-Year Degree Isn’t Quite the Job Requirement It Used to Be by Steve Lohr (NY Times, 4/8/2022)
• How to write great copy by Mike Dariano (Waiter’s Pad, 4/13/2022)
• Let’s Erase This Unwritten Rule by Joe Posnanski (JoeBlogs, 4/13/2022). I grew up with baseball and its unwritten rules went mostly unquestioned by me until this great piece by Posnanski. #sports/baseball
• Bill Gates: We Must Develop Drugs Much Faster in the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates (NY Times, 4/15/2022)
• Back from the dead? Elusive ivory-billed woodpecker not extinct, researchers say by Oliver Milman (Guardian, 4/13/2022)
• The Kids Are Right About Email, Too by Margaret Renki (NY Times, 4/4/2022)
• Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid by Jonathan Haidt (The Atlantic, May 2022). All about how social media has fractured our society. It is rather bleak, but my own observations would seem to confirm a lot of what this piece is saying. #longreads
• Drag & Drop Blocks and Create Notionesque Tables by Eleanor Konik (Obsidian Roundup, 4/16/2022)

Any recommendations for books, articles or posts I should read? Let me know in the comments?

Written on April 16, 2022.