The Wake by Linden MacIntyre

This book’s full title is The Wake: The deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami. I have read a lot of history, but I must admit I have read little about Newfoundland. This book was an eye opener into some of the history of the Island. This is a vivid and heartbreaking story from this island. It was well written and interesting to read. Of course, like a lot of other people, I saw the play, Come from Away.

This book is about ghastly stores from Newfoundland of a tsunami, rescue at sea, and cancer from mining, with awful and uncaring government that was falling apart and an American false savior by the name of Walter Seibert. I had heard about the rescue at sea of American sailors in 1942. However, all the other stories were new to me.

There is a great review on Words Pages Books by the website’s owner Monika. There is a brief review on TLS by Nathan Greenfield. There is another review on The Girly Book Club by Michaela Keegan. There is a short written interview of Linden MacIntyre on Zoomer.

On Bookshelf there is a short interview with Linden MacIntyre about this book. There is also a short video about the 1929 Tsunami at Burin Peninsula. Linden MacIntyre gives a Key Note speech at St. Francis Xavier. Linden MacIntyre talks on Fifth Estate . Linden MacIntyre talks on CBC.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

The Great Rupture by Viktor Shvets

This book’s full title is The Great Rupture: Three Empires, Four Turning Points, and the Future of Humanity. Do we need to be Free? He has a web site here that you can explore. You can explore the major themes of the book. If you find this interesting, you might want to get the book to read.

The site Book Authority list this book as one of the 16 Best New Economic Development Books To Read In 2021. The site The Capital Spectator features this book and other economic books.

This book is rather depressing in the end as he thinks that we do not need to be free. The West will end up like China. 1984 here we come. We here in Canada, the US and EU all seem to be going left and socialist. However, Margaret Thatcher was right. Socialism only last as long as there is other people’s money to spend. Politian’s are all talking about taxing the rich to pay for all our desires. This will end badly.

Only the Nordic counties have a form of socialism that works. But everyone pays a large part of their earnings. The Nordics are also quite capitalistic. They have little in the way of corruption. On the other hand, Canada, US, and EU are filled with extractive elites. We also have huge tech companies that are sucking every last bit of data they can from us to monetize.

He thinks that AI will make it possible to control markets better than a free market system or capitalism. I worked with computers my whole adult life and any AI so far is just algorithms. Any AI will take process to a logical conclusion. AI will never think that just because they can do something should they? AI with Algorithms will never question their answers as to whether they make any sense. They could come up with stupid answers and never know that. Stupid answers are something a human can easily recognize. At least we are good at that. However, under communism people would not dare say anything the party thought up was stupid, so we may have that problem with AI. Sounds like this is what is happening in China currently.

Of course, the future is going to be different than the past. It has always been that way. I understand where he is going because of the changes our current technology is making in our lives. However, he paints a very bleak picture of our future and I do not believe that. However, we should be thinking about the future and how we will handle and adapt to a future of technology that is coming. Trying to deny new technology has not worked in the past and will not work now.

He paints a good picture of the past history and how we ended up where we are. Why certain countries are ahead. This will give you a great economic view of why the west is currently ahead. This book is well worth reading for this coverage of the past. The future is harder to know. We are going ahead to a very different future. He wonders if non-western cultures are better suited to our coming future. It is an interesting question. Whatever happens, we are certainly in for turmoil and disruptions with the new technology coming in the future.

There is a good review of this book on African Eye Report. There is a post on this book by John Aidan Byrne on GRIPT. This includes a review of the book and a podcast interview with Viktor Shvets. Alan Kohler at Eureka Report interviews Viktor Shvets. This is a podcast, plus also they show the full podcast in print. On the John Tread Gold website there is an review of this book and a interview podcast with Viktor Shvets.

There is an interview with Viktor Shvets by Gareth Vaughan on Interest. This is a good interview and Viktor Shvets views of the future is not so bleak. Viktor Shvets is interviewed on BNN. This is from August 2019. Viktor Shvets is part of the Macquarie Group, a Sydney-based investment bank. He is Managing Director at Macquarie Securities in Hong Kong. On Hamilton Wealth Partners Viktor Shvets speaks about his book through the Though Leaders Series.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

Seeking Virtue in Finance by JC de Swaan

This book’s full title is Seeking Virtue in Finance: Contributing to Society in a Conflicted Industry. He is talking about how finance professionals can be ambitious but still do good for our society. At the Princeton Ed site, you can get a list of articles by JC de Swaan. The link is here. However, you cannot read a lot unless you have a subscription to the particular journal that he wrote in.

JC de Swaan talks about his four pillars of ethics in finance. They are that you should serve customers faithfully, do not extract value from others (or the rest of society), treat colleagues with dignity and as much as possible apply your skills and resources to the collective interest. He said he looked for people to talk about who we could relate to that were self-interested and successful but individuals who were able to balance their self-interest and the collective interest.

Part of the book is on outstanding people in finance. It is interesting to read about people who are outstanding in finance and can motivate others to follow their lead. He comments that none are perfect, but you are also dealing with people and people are never perfect. He talks a lot about Jack Bogle who start Vanguard. Vanguard is a mutual company which deals in passive investments. Their products are ETFs. Clients believe that they are being treat well and they are.

Another person he talks about is Jack Welch the CEO of General Electric who said that shareholder value is the result not a strategy. He said your constituencies are your employees, your customers, and your product. I make my living by investment and I do believe that for long term success, a company needs to treat both customers and employees well and also produce something that people want.

One thing I look at when investigating companies, is the diversity of the Board of Directors. I look at how many females there are and how many minorities there are on the board. I figure that if having more females on boards improve the company’s performance, so should having minorities. Perhaps I should also look at top management also. JC de Swaan quotes McKinsey that looked at diversity of top management in UK, US, Canada, and Latin America. What they found was that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity were 21% more likely to outperform and that companies in the top quartile of ethnic and cultural diversity were 33% more likely to outperform.

There is a review of this book on Bokus. The review is in English, but most of the site is not. If you into podcasts, there is one on New Books Network stie. The interview of JC de Swaan by Daniel Peris starts just after 1 minute.

Tiger Gao and Roopa Venkatraman interview Jean-Christopher de Swaan on Policy Punchline about this book. JC de Swaan does a video lecture for Center for Public Policy & Financer. Knut Rostad interviews JC de Swaan for the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard. JC Swaan said at the end of the interview that the next thing for the industry might be checklists.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

Heart, Breath, Mind by Leah Lagos

This book’s full title is Heart, Breath, Mind: Train Your Heart to Conquer Stress and Achieve Success. I got this book to review and I will do that. The book is designed to take 10 weeks to finish, but I obviously can review it in a shorter time frame, but probably also get some benefit from reading the book. It reminds me of a book I read in the past of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky .

I did not do the 10 weeks breathing exercises that is at the heart of this book. It seems like an intriguing way to help people manage stress. I do not have much stress at the moment even with the lockdown. I am fortunate in some ways that my son lives with me. At least I had company in the first part of the lockdown and now we can, in Ontario, go out somewhat with friends.

I did start on diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing. This seems like a good thing to do. I had heard about this before and it is not new, but I had not practiced it. She talks on how training your body to handle stress can help people with problems sleeping to athlete’s performance levels. She tells a lot of stories about how she has helped people with in terms of lowing stress so they can perform or live better.

If you are suffering because of stress, it would be worth the while to get this book and engage in her 10 week course. It is a detailed plan. She also suggests some different apps you can get to help you, but you do not need these as you could follow her plan and use the worksheets she provides. Her way could be a powerful tool to improve your life.

There are few reviews of this book. You will find a couple at Good Reads. You will also find some on Amazon when you scroll to the bottom of the page. The books publisher is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Leah Lagos teams with Jaspal Ricky Singh to do a short at TED-Ed Talk. In this book, Leah Lagos recommends watching Kelly McGonigal on TED Talk. The title of this TED Talk is “How to Make Stress Your Friend”. There is also a short video on this book on YouTube. There is also a good description of what Dr. Lagos does at Goop.

If you like podcasts there is some choice. Listen to Dr Lagos on MixCloud There is another podcase on the subject of HRV at Elite HRV.

Jeff Halevy interviews Leah Lagos on YouTube at Workout from Within. Nunzio Presta interviews Leah Lagos via YouTube. This is a longer interview of some 17 minutes, but is well worth listening to. NBC did a news video about Leah Lagos helping an Olympic Rower on YouTube.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

The Mosquito by Timothy Winegard

This book’s full title is The Mosquito, A Human History of our Deadliest Predator. This is an interesting read of history though diseases we got from the mosquito. I had known about malaria and other diseases hitting North America, especially the 13 colonies. I had no idea that the early explorers bought malaria from Africa. I also did not know that Europe had malaria in the past.

The author is from Canada and is living in the US. Like a lot of history done in North America and generally in Europe, this book only looks at some European, but mainly American history. When I say American, I mean North and South America. But also, a great deal of the book deals with the US history. Nothing is said about Asia and mosquitos and very little about Arica and the mosquitos.

There is a review of this book on the CBC site. There is a podcast interview of Timothy Winegard on this site. Katie Wudel at Los Angeles Times reviews this book. She ends with the quote. “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. … It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Lulu Garcia-Navarro on NPR interviews Timothy Winegard and the transcript is given on their site. Ghost Reader on YouTube give a review of this book.

Timothy Winegard is interviewed on The Agenda. Timothy Winegard speaks at Colorado Mesa University. The Q & A portion starts at 40 minutes. There is an interview on Your Morning of Timothy Winegard. This is short at just over 5 minutes. And for Canadians, Timothy Winegard wrote a book called For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War. He talks about this in a video at Books. Our treatment of our Indians has been astonishingly bad. I had no idea they were not considered citizens in the past.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

The Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman

This book’s full title is The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, The Coming Crisis of the 2020’s and the Triumph Beyond. George Friedman believes in cycles. A lot of historians do as do some people in finance. I think that they have good reasons to do so. It is not that are cycles are the same. Sometimes there are similarities and sometimes not.

George Friedman talks about America reinvesting itself. It has done so in the past and will do so in the future. I believe this also. When you think of the conflict with China, this is the one thing that stands out. America can reinvest itself. China has cycles too, but they all involve having an emperor. Mao was an emperor as is the current president of China Xi Jinping. China has a deep long history. China has often fallen apart and put itself back together again. However, it always has an emperor.

I find George Friedman an original thinker and I enjoyed reading his book. I believe in historical cycles but it can be debated if Friedman has gotten it right by his cycles. The US is certainly polarized at the present and I believe that the US will reinvent itself. I have no idea how this will happen. In any event, George Friedman is always an interesting read. So read this if you want an interesting take on what is happening in the US.

I am not surprised that there are a lot of critical reviews of this book. At the present time it seems that American cannot agree on anything. I live in Canada and we also have a lot of the same problems in agreeing, especially politically. It is not just discord. People just seem to hate and feel people who think differently, especially politically are on the evil side. It is too bad this has occurred. The problem with this is that people are shut up. This is why the voting for Trump was not noted. You can shut people up, but the vote is secret.

Glenn Altschuler on Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a rather critical view of this book. There is another critical review by David Wineberg at San Francisco. There is a less critical, but interesting review at Kirkus Reviews. A blogger on Deviant Art give a full review of this book. Some of it is critical and some not. Andrew Sheng at The Edge Markets also does an interesting and full review of this book..

The last video in this list is the most interesting with an interview by Jim Falk even though it is the longest one. George Friedman gives a short speech at Sweeney Agency. The shorten free interview podcast on Financial Sense give a good sense of what this book is about. Chief Economist Bart van Ark of the Conference Board’ interviews George Friedman. This last video is where George Friedman is interviewed by Jim Falk for World Affairs Council of Dallas, Fort Worth.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.

Feeding the People by Rebecca Earle

This book’s full title is Feeding the People, The politics of the Potato. This is an interesting look at history through the lens of the potato. There are stories that it was the elite that introduced the potato in different parts of the world. They can make great stories. However, Rebecca Earle disputes this and talks about how it was the ordinary people that adopted the potatoes in different parts of the world.

I have been reading a lot of history through a number of lenses and different angles recently. Others I have recently reviewed is history through the lens of music and the mosquito. This is another view of history. This is story telling through food, especially the potato. So, this is potato and history.

Potatoes rank fourth in value with regards to foods. It is behind wheat, maize, and rice in volume. It is the fifth most valuable crop. Rebecca Earle talks about how lots of ordinary people accepted and adapted to the potato long before they drew the attention of the elite.

It is interesting that the governments at one time got very interested in what their people were eating. This started in Britain at the time of Boer War (1899) because the government found 40% to 60% of the people too malnourished for recruitment for the war. Britain also found the same problem going into WWI (1914). With the Enlightenment, people thought there was a relationship between the health and vigor of the population and the wealth and power of the state.

Rebecca Earle talks about the potato through different periods of time after it becoming available to Europe in the 16th Century. Mostly it was regarded as a good nutritious food, but not always. Elites sometimes thought of the potato as a source of excellent nutrition for the poor and at other times thought of potato eaters as lazy.

Some reviewers have criticized what they call her formulistic writing, but personally, I found the book interesting and the history of the potato fascinating. Unfortunately, I cannot give links to reviews because the papers where they are, are locking anyone out who is not a subscriber. Potatoes were unknow outside the Andes before the 16th century. Now they are everywhere.

I like to hear authors speak about their books. However, I could not find any video by Rebecca Earle. I did find some essays by her and some reviews of her essays and book. See the links below. If you like her essays, you can go on and get the book. It is an easy and interesting read.

How the Humble Potato Fuelled The Rise of Liberal Capitalism by Rebecca Earle is an essay that she wrote. It is an interesting essay and well worth the read. A review of this essay by Carissa Chew is on the Retrospect Journal. You can read another essay of Rebecca Earle at The Conversation. It is entitled Beyond porridge: pigeon in a kettle and other prison-cell cuisine.

Oliver Wiseman reviews this book and one on coffee at The Critic. Diego Arguedas Ortiz at BBC gives a history of the potatoes and mentions Rebecca Earle. There is a review of this book also at Potato Grower. The reviewer says the book is potato centric with recipes woven throughout.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.