Our Recommended Summer Reading List (Part II) - Plus, Some Great TV Shows!
July 2, 2024
As we promised in Part 1 of our Recommended Summer Reading Lists last month, here is our follow-up list of more books we’ve been plowing through this summer. Plus, there are a few shows we’ve become addicted to that we wanted to suggest to you. We would love to hear what you are reading (or watching) this summer - send us your recommendations. And we hope you enjoy this list!
At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China by Edward Wong (Viking Press 2024, 45 pages)
Wong is a diplomatic correspondent and former Beijing Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He is also the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Washington, D.C. His father had, before escaping to the US, served in the People’s Liberation Army but rarely spoke of life in China. Wong, when he became the Times Beijing Bureau Chief, decided to investigate his father’s mysterious past and, in so doing, learned and decided to write about what his family had endured and what the nation had experienced. It is a fascinating and highly insightful chronicle of the extraordinary changes China has undergone - and is still undergoing.
Moscow X by David McCloskey (W.W. Norton, 2023, 464 pages)
If you are looking for a ripping good spy novel, Moscow X is the book to read. McCloskey is a former CIA analyst who wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior US government officials. He then went to McKinsey, focusing on national security, aerospace, and transportation clients on a range of strategic and operational issues. Armed with these rich experiences, McCloskey gives us a fantastic, fast-moving yarn of global espionage, the vicious internal politics of Putin’s Kremlin, the lives of Moscow’s super-wealthy, and the never-ending shadow war between the US and Russia. And if you like this one, try McCloskey’s earlier novel, Damascus Station (which I couldn’t put down, either).
No Trade is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers by Robert Lighthizer ( Broadside Books, 2023, 364 pages)
With the presidential elections fast approaching, understanding the thinking of Donald Trump’s foreign and trade policy is important. Lighthizer, previously Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative who oversaw the implementation of the tariff regime on China (which President Biden has essentially kept in place) as well as negotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement, presents a crisp overview of what drives not just Trump’s but the current Republican view of free trade - essentially, there is no free trade and the US gives away too much. Lighthizer is no rube to Washington politics and policy, having previously served as Deputy U.S Trade Representative in the Reagan Administration, as an important congressional staffer focused on trade, and as a highly successful lawyer at one of the US’ biggest law firms. This is an excellent tutorial for understanding what is proving to be, in many ways, a rough Washington consensus on the future of globalization. And keep in mind: If Trump wins, Lighthizer is being widely touted as his likely Treasury Secretary.
Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Matthew C. Klein & Michael Pettit (Yale University Press, 2020, 288 pages)
This one is not new, but it was highly recommended by a friend of mine, who I consider a genius on trade and geoeconomic issues. The author’s premise is trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, “but they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees.” The authors go deep to understand how trade decisions are made, researching policy decisions in China, Europe, and the US over the last 30 years. The book is well-researched, provocative, and - following on the above book by Robert Lighthizer - is highly complementary and necessary to understanding how global trade policy is being rethought and reformulated.
The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder (One Signal Publishers, 2024, 370 pages)
Almost three years ago, the U.S. Congress approved the spending of almost $1 trillion via the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Bill - all highly dependent on accessing and using “critical minerals.” On a global scale, it is arguably the largest single driver of geopolitical tensions literally everywhere in the world. Everyone talks about critical minerals. But to be honest, I find most people really do not understand what is at stake and what it takes to get those minerals that are powering electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices. Scheyder takes us, via this well-written and well-researched book, to school us on it all. This book is the perfect companion to the 2022 blockbuster “Chip Wars: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.”
The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation by Victor David Hanson (Basic Books, 2024, 334 pages)
Military historian Victor David Hanson looks at a series of sieges and sackings in history to show how societies can and have been obliterated and that war is indeed hell and can wipe out a city, a race, a nation, or a culture.
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella (Random House, 2009, 304 pages)
This is an old one but one of my very favorites. If you are a hunter of fisherman, you probably know who Steve Rinella is - a chef, an outspoken conservationist, and a hunter and fisherman. In 2005, he won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. While that is all fascinating, what makes this book a true masterpiece is his deeply researched extraordinary history of the buffalo in America going back 14,000 years. I was blown away by what I learned and I promise it will give a deeper love for our environment and for one of the most majestic animals still walking the face of North America.
Television Recommendations
Clarkson’s Farm (Amazon Prime - 3 seasons and more coming)
I am blessed to live on a small farm - Open Door Farm - outside Washington, D.C. My wife is the farmer, and she’s quite good at it, raising sheep, chickens (Swedish Isebars), Turkeys (Heritage), Guinea Fowl (which eat almost 300 ticks a day!), horses, German Shepards, and Burmese cats. Growing up, I was rarely exposed to animals in general, and I cannot remember even stepping foot on a farm. It has been the greatest experience, thanks to my wife, being around all these animals. But I am most amazed by how little friends, associates, and business colleagues have been exposed to farm life, too. We are all the sad victims of a tech-dominant world with too many apps. Recently, I was asked to speak before a major midwestern farming organization, and in prepping for the event, I asked the coordinator (an agro-economist) what he thought was the best way for folks to learn about farming. Without missing a beat, he said, “Watch Clarkson’s Farm!” He was so right. Starring Jeremy Clarkson (best known for his long-running show “Top Gear”), it is a wonderfully funny, real, and massively enlightening way to learn how farming actually works - from raising livestock to growing agriculture. It shows episode after episode, the massive challenges farmers face getting food onto our tables - something we all take too much for granted.
Manhunt (Apple TV+)
We all periodically hear the complaint the US is going through the worst times in our history. Wrong. Watch this magnificently acted, historically accurate 7-part mini-series on the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators responsible for assassinating President Abraham Lincoln, the attempted simultaneous murder of Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of War Edward Stanton just five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered in Appomattox. If you watch this show, you will be given a fantastic lesson on what was the most truly perilous time in our democracy. And you will learn a lot about a truly great but largely forgotten American hero, Secretary of War Stanton. Stanton, deeply devoted to Lincoln and his vision for reunifying the country, personally oversaw the manhunt - often racing about the countryside with a Union Calvary unit, interrogating suspects and collaborators, all while overseeing the implementation of Lincoln’s plans for integrating freed slaves into American society - plans which were vigorously opposed by Lincoln’s successor, President Andrew Johnson.
I love history but was amazed at how little I actually knew about the true extent of the assassination plan: The role of the Bank of Montreal, of wealthy businessmen in New York, of the Confederate Secret Service, and the direct knowledge and approval of the plans by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. And how all of them were attempting to reignite the Civil War.
But the biggest surprise for me? I won’t ruin it for you, but just say make sure you watch the very end of the last episode to see the extraordinary thing Stanton did to stay in power so he could ensure Lincoln’s vision was put in place. This is a superb series.
Tokyo Vice (Max - 2 seasons - not clear if there will be another season)
It is an edgy, gritty, and always thrilling dramatization of the real-life story of American Jake Adelstein, who went to Tokyo and became a crime-beat reporter at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper. The viewer is plunged into the complex, tradition-bound world of the Yakuza, Japan’s transnational organized crime syndicates, as Adelstein endures intense threats to himself, his friends, and even his family back in the US as he writes about the powerful, sprawling Japanese mobs. Maybe best of all is the acting of legendary actor Ken Watanabe. The real-life Adelstein wrote his memoirs “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” in 2009, which I hope to read later this summer.
