Hello, buddies, bibliophiles, bureaucrats, Batswanas, and other groups starting with ‘b.’
2023 was a depressing year. F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” If so, many of us have been lonelier than Mike Pence when he eats out with a woman who is not his wife.
But, yes, 2023 would have been far worse if not for the following books that kept me thinking and chortling throughout the year. For the sixth consecutive year, I am reviewing five of the best non-fiction books I read between January 1 and December 31. (You can find my 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 reviews here, here, here, here, and here.)
And similar to last year, I will review my five favorites in five sentences apiece. But I do warn my students that I will lie to them sometimes because they should be skeptical of authority and especially of me.
You, my readers, should do the same. Count my sentences and call bullshit, if you must.
Or even better, read these books and let me know what you think.
Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, Lis Smith
As a successful yet unorthodox political strategist to some of the nation’s most famous politicians, Lis Smith pulls back the curtain to reveal the quirks of people strange enough to run for office and the practical strategies it takes to win.
Smith does it with raw honesty (though mostly when it serves her), rowdy stories, and snarky observations that entertain and expose political truths. She calls Bill DeBlasio a “gross unshowered guy,” Roger Stone a “cold-cold sociopath,” and Pete Buttigieg a skilled politician because he understands that effective campaigning, in this age of echo chambers, requires wrestling with pigs on their home fields. This is why we saw him on Fox News so often.
A key takeaway from Any Given Tuesday is that purity tests are best reserved for Catholic priests and drug dealers. They have no place in workable politics. As Smith points out, liberal politicians who don’t parrot the progressive agenda are too often labeled as feeble, enemies or even secret Republicans. But if they think a West Virginia Democratic Senator is bad, they are in for a rude surprise when they see the GOP alternative.
Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard, Bo Seo
“Good Arguments” by Bo Seo is a memoir that traces his journey from a Korean immigrant in Australia to a two-time world champion debater at Harvard College. It is also a lovely tribute to the beauty of debate and a practical toolkit for arguing well, which is why the coaching staff assigned it to the Gallaudet debate team for winter reading.
Seo challenges the popular notion that all kinds of arguments signal failure. He highlights the crucial role of good arguments guided by debate skills, such as topic analysis, argument construction, rebuttal, logic, and rhetoric, in fostering healthy individuals, relationships, and societies.
Although sometimes a bit scattered, the book shines with a favorite anecdote about a champion debater defeating an AI system, showing why evidence alone cannot persuade. In contrast to chess and Jeopardy, both conquered by AI, rhetoric is distinctly and marveously human.
In a world where so many citizens are isolated, confused, angry and manipulated, Seo sees debate education as civic education, contending, “Good arguments are not only what good democracies do but what they are.”
As much as I enjoy arguing, I have to agree.
Surely You’re joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard Feynman
It is telling that one of the greatest physicists, professors and characters of all time tells nothing but entertaining stories in his autobiography. Here are some of my favorite lines and anecdotes:
- “When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: “We *know* all that!” “Oh,” I say, “you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you’ve had four years of biology.” They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.”
- “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
- “Anything can happen, in spite of what you’re pretty sure should happen.”
- “That’s the trouble with not being in your own field: You don’t take it seriously.”
- “I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson
In his latest biographical masterpiece, Walter Isaacson takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through the life and mind, the strengths and vulnerabilities, and the wild dichotomies of the world’s richest man.
Isaacson covers Musk’s childhood as a deeply afflicted South African with undiagnosed Asperger’s, enduring severe bullying in school and verbal abuse from a perverted, sociopathic father. A key question raised in the book is whether Elon the Man results from Elon the Child.
I think so.
Throughout the book, Musk comes across — sometimes simultaneously — as brilliant and blockheaded, light and dark, intense and goofy, deliberate and impulsive, cold and deeply emotional. His willingness to challenge entrenched dogmas using first principles — doubting everything, boiling problems down to basics, then reasoning back up — is how he realized rocket materials cost only 2% of a launch, which led him to build SpaceX from scratch and cut launch costs by almost tenfold.
In a jaw-dropping moment, Isaacson reveals Musk secretly cut off Starlink service to block a Ukrainian drone strike in Crimea. Watching Netanyahu court Musk like Romeo wooing Juliet, it’s chilling to see an unstable, unelected man wield such power over global affairs. Musk’s mania for risk and chaos, and his view of humans (and facts) as expendable, made me wonder whether decent, well-adjusted people really do finish last in politics and business — and if so, whether it’s foolish to expect them to save the world.
By the end, Musk is both dazzling visionary and someone who treats compassion like spoiled milk in the fridge. What happens when his plans to save humanity by colonizing Mars collide with his inability to inspire people’s hearts? Isaacson leaves you asking if it’s possible to separate the triumph from the ugliness. Is Musk a hero with tragic flaws or a villain propelled by circumstance, SAT scores, and bravado?
It’s up to us to decide.
So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game, Rick Reilly
As a kid, I’d sprint to the mailbox on Thursdays for the latest Sports Illustrated and flip straight to Rick Reilly’s back page column. Then I got old, and so did his writing — and I quit golf for a while. This book, though, restored my faith in Reilly’s wit and insight and my love for the game.
Some favorite stories: playing 18 of the world’s most unforgettable holes, like a green in Indonesia where monkeys are the hazard; a Mexican green reachable by ATV or boat depending on the tide; and a U-turn par 5 in Colorado. Also, reuniting with his father through golf, trying to break the lowest recorded score on a course with 100 mulligans, and speed golf where you win by the lowest combination of strokes and minutes.
After finishing, I understood exactly what Paige Spiranac meant: “Golf is my therapy — and also why I need therapy.”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann
You and I could never have been sailors in the 1700s.
Phil, Alan Shipneck
Phil was the highest-paid athlete in the world in 2022; unfortunately, it was not his flop shots that got him there.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Colin Woodard
The peculiarities and problems of the United States of America are more clearly understood if we understand it as the United Eleven Nations of America.
The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, David Shenk
Chess is life in miniature.
Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis’ Fortress Prison, Ben McIntyre
Do not underestimate human ingenuity and audacity.
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What about you? Have you read these books? If so, what did you think? Do you have a book to recommend? If so, let me know.
Until next time, wishing you a peaceful and hopeful 2024.
Brendan Stern 
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