Books I read in 2024

It was another busy first half of the year, so it took me longer to write my 2024 book list. Other than reading, I spent a chunk of my time learning and experimenting with the AI tools and using them to simplify my own daily usage. And also wondering what a future workplace would look like. But that's for a separate post.

After 1177 BC: The survival of Civilizations, by Eric Cline. This book is the sequel of the earlier book by Eric Cline - "1177 BC: The year the civilization collapsed". It follows the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean world through the four centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse, asking why some societies perished while others adapted and thrived. Cline reframes the “First Dark Age” as a period of resilience and reinvention: as palace economies fell and long-distance trade faltered, new actors and systems emerged—the Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians—alongside transformative innovations such as widespread iron use and the alphabet. The narrative moves region by region to show uneven outcomes—some polities failed to adjust and disappeared; others reconfigured their economies, networks, and political orders to fit the new constraints, laying groundwork for the Greek resurgence by 776 B.C.. I loved how this book offered a lens for the present: complex systems absorb shocks through adaptation, redundancy, and decentralization, and societies that diversify and learn can turn collapse into a pivot rather than an end. This book seems very relevant in the age of change that we are living in; and offers lessons to individuals, communities, and nations on how to adapt to change.

Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track, by Will Larson. I would recommend this book to any senior (or even entry-level) technical individual-contributor and their manager. The book lays out what senior individual-contributor leadership actually looks like once one is past the senior level: not more code, but durable influence across roadmaps, quality, and cross-team outcomes. Larson frames four archetypes: the Tech Lead (owning execution and cohesive delivery across a team), the Architect (shaping systems over time and holding the long-term line on quality), the Solver ( parachuting into ambiguous, high-stakes problems and making them tractable), and the Right Hand (a trusted partner to an executive, amplifying org-wide priorities). Operating at staff means working on what matters (stack-ranking leverage), writing and socializing engineering strategy, guarding technical quality without being a blocker, and creating space for others to do their best work. A recurring theme is that title-chasing is less effective than doing the work at scope; the title tends to follow when your impact becomes undeniable and visible to the calibration process. The author used to maintain their web page and a podcast (last episode is from 2021). On my favorite topic of coding, this was a fun line: “Most do, some don’t, but almost everyone codes less than what they have ever done at their peak”. I remain convinced that coding is the best way to stay connected to reality, even as the primary coding language moves from C/C++ to Java to Python to English.  

Je devais être impératrice: Mémoires de la dernière princesse héritière d'Autriche-Hongrie, by Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. This was part of European royalty rabbit hole last year. It started with the Netflix series Die Kaiserin (The Empress), about Empress Elizabeth ("Sisi"), who was the Empress of Austria-Hungary from 1854-1898. Then, that led me to watching a two part German series: "The Crown Prince", about her son and Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary who died in a suicide pact with his mistress. It also merged with my fifth year of learning French: I can now read simple books in French, albeit a little slowly. This book ("I should have become Empress") is the memoirs of the wife of Rudolf, Princess Stéphanie of Belgium and the Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary. The first part of the book described her life as the daughter of Leopold II of Belgium, and a member of the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the same house as present King Charles II of England (renamed to Windsor now to pacify the anti-German sentiment in the first World War). The narrative turned from melancholy to tragedy and the realization that the world that she had been raised for was slowly disappearing around her.

Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity by James S Valliant and CW Fahy. This is a controversial book. It advances a provocative thesis: early Christianity’s public shape was decisively molded under the Flavian dynasty (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian), aligning Christian symbols and narratives with Roman imperial propaganda to pacify and unify a volatile post–Jewish War world.  The authors lean heavily on numismatics—imperial coinage motifs like the dolphin-and-anchor, victory palms, and personified virtues—arguing these migrate into early Christian iconography visible in catacombs and later ecclesiastical art, signaling a deliberate convergence. They argue that as the imperial cult sacralized emperors and empire, Christianity synthesized comparable themes—peace after conquest, submission to authorities, a universal mission—recasting them in a theologically acceptable register that served order as much as faith. Whether or not one accepts every linkage, the book’s core contribution is reframing Christian emergence as a political-theological settlement: a faith whose surviving public form was shaped, in part, by Rome’s need for stability and a universalizing narrative that could sanctify it.

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. I got this book recommended by my friend's high schooler daughter who was researching languages and working on a conlanging project. This is probably the most fascinating book I read this year. The book describes how languages evolve, with examples. He also explains how ancient languages look more complex and structured than later ones: how languages lose their strict structure and complexity through usage and change. The chapter on metaphors was fascinating, where he describes how metaphors become the standard way to describe abstract things. For example, the English word "decide" derives from a Latin verb (decidere) that means "to cut off". Turns out that is true in German (entscheiden), Greek (diaireo), Swahili, Basque, Indonesian, Ancient Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Chinese have the same pattern. Reading this book reminded me how a recent study says that teenage girls have led language innovation for centuries.

The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz. A classmate recommended this book to me when we were discussing scenario planning for an uncertain world. The book teaches scenario planning as a disciplined way to make better decisions under deep uncertainty. The method starts by surfacing the focal issue or decision—what you must choose or design for—so scenarios are built to inform an actual choice rather than abstract speculation. There are case examples (e.g., Shell, EPA, market entrants) that show how scenarios can reframe capital bets, policy positions, and innovation agendas by distinguishing what’s truly locked in from what remains malleable. Schwartz argues that scenario planning builds organizational resilience: it teaches teams to ask better questions, hold multiple futures in mind, and make choices that remain sound as the environment shifts. I ended up using this book in my staff book club at work.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip E Tetlock and Dan Gardner. This was another book under the forecasting theme. The book distills the lessons from Good Judgement Project's forecasting tournaments: a small group of "superforecasters" that consistently outperform typical experts and prediction markets. The book combines elements of psychology, behavioral economics (e.g. Kahneman-Taversky's research), math, statistics (e.g. Laplace and Bayes'), military strategy, (Helmuth von Moltke and Carl von Clausewitz) and brain teasers by Enrico Fermi. 

Demanding More: Why Diversity and Inclusion Don't Happen and What You Can Do About It, by Sheree Atchison. I read this book before extending an invitation to the author to speak at my leadership offsite last year. I felt that this was a different diversity book, where the author speaks through her personal experience as a woman in science and tech. Sheree talks about bringing DEI as an integral part of product making (to ensure that every customer's needs are represented) and organization building (job design, perf review and promotion process, pay equity audits, using middle management as leverage points). Atcheson integrates her own story with interviews and data, emphasizing that culture change comes from operational choices—what’s measured, who is sponsored, how decisions are made—not from slogans. 

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book was on my wishlist for many years. This was a slow read as the author went through the details of the lives and careers of the rivals before explaining how they worked in Lincoln's cabinet.

1001 Days: Memoirs of an Empress, Farah Pahlavi. I found this book at the reception of our local Persian restaurant and started reading it while waiting for my takeout order. This is the memoirs of the Farah, the second wife of Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. It was, like the memoirs of Crown Princess Stéphanie, a story of a world that does not exist anymore.

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by L. David Marquet. This book was recommended by a team member and I got the chance to incorporate ideas from this in a Senior Manager workshop for the team last year. This book is based on the author’s real-life experience as a U.S. Navy submarine captain. Marquet was sent to command the submarine USS Santa Fe, which was known for its poor morale, performance, and low retention. The turning point came when he gave an impossible order, and the crew tried to follow it without question. Marquet decided to switch to a "leader-leader" model—empowering every member of the crew to take responsibility, make decisions, and act as leaders in their own right. Over time, this bottom-up approach transformed the Santa Fe: performance, morale, and retention soared, and a remarkable number of officers went on to become submarine commanders themselves. The book has a lot of actionable principles and real-world examples illustrating how any organization can benefit from empowering people at every level. 

Divan e Hafez - Farsi and English : Ghazalyat This is a selection of poems by Hafez, the 14th century Persian poet. The translations are good, but Hafez and Tagore's works remind us that deep poetry is best understood in the original language. Like Tagore's poems, Hafez's poem addresses both the divine and the lover: 

                        "Esgh-e-to nahal-e-heyrat aamad
                         Vasl-e-to kamal-e-heyrat aamad
                         Bas gharq-e-haal-o-vasl kaakhir
                         Ham bar sar haal-e-heyrat aamad"

The translation from the book: "Your love, a sapling of bewilderment has come; union with you, the pinnacle of amazement has come. Deeply immersed in the state of union, at last; still, atop the state of bewilderment, it has come to pass".

The English Constitution (Oxford World's Classics), by Walter Bagehot. This book was on my wishlist for a few years and felt like an appropriate read before the 2024 US elections. Parts of this book reminded me of John K. Galbraith's American Capitalism, the concept of countervailing power that I had read a few years earlier. Bagehot explains the evolution of the English system that merged the legislative and the executive power in the Cabinet, with the Prime Minister at the head; and how the Cabinet navigates the House of Lords and of course, the Sovereign. This also reminded me Anthony Jay's quote about the differences between the British and the American system. "The essential difference between the British and American governmental systems is that the British system, which doesn't really work, was arrived at by accident. The British government has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce. The official Opposition, currently the Tories and Liberal Democrats, are merely the opposition in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence. Thus, as in most bureaucracies, many people can say no but almost nobody can say yes.

The Americans, starting from scratch, foolishly copied this situation, called it the Separation of Powers and enshrined it in their Constitution. Their legislative body (Congress) has very little executive power. The Executive (The White House) has no legislative power. The Supreme Court can rule any legislation unconstitutional - hence, the same sort of gridlock. The only difference is that American gridlock is more public than British gridlock. Though it is also true that most of Congress is theatre in the same way that The House of Commons is theatre."

Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals, by Heinrich Heine. This was to round up my poetry reading for the year. It is a great collection of Heinrich Heine's poems, but the collection didn't include my favorite: Nachtgedaken. There is almost a Mirza Ghalib-like quality in his poems (for example, from "Wenn ich an deinem Hause"):

                    „Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
                    Bekannt im deutschen Land;
                    Nennt man die besten Namen,
                    So wird auch der meine genannt.
                    Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
                    Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
                    Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,

                    So wird auch der meine genannt.“

Even the sadness: (from Die Lorelei):

                     „Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
                      Dass ich so traurig bin;
                      Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
                      Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.“ 

The collection included "Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen". 

My previous book lists:

2023    2022     2021    2020    2019     2018     2017     2016    2015    2014    2008    2007

The US led liberal world order: where is it headed?

(I had started writing this in late 2021, but never finished the last 5%. I decided to put in a few hours this Sunday, almost four years later, to complete it)

In an earlier post, I looked at how world orders changed over the last 400 years, and how we entered the US led unipolar liberal world order after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here, I am trying to analyze where it is headed.

The basic framework of the liberal world order rests on the following tenets:

1. Individual rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion; and "no taxation without representation".
2. Separation of church and state: the state not establishing a religion and not favoring one religion over another. 
3. Free enterprise: the rights of a business to set prices (without collusion) and to invest according to their interests. This also implicitly promised "free movement of goods, capital, and labor" and free trade among nations. 
4. Minority and civil rights and the commitment to the universal declaration of human rights. 

Although the philosophical principles of this order were laid early in the 17th and 18th century, and gave birth to the revolutionary republics like the US and France, it wasn't until 1945 that it became the accepted principle of the nations west of the iron curtain. Well, the UK still had the Church of England, but it slowly turned into a social organization, not a religious one. And when the iron curtain fell in the collapse of 1989-1991, the world assumed that the liberal order had triumphed. Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History. The US and the West thought that by the wave of a magic wand, the rest of the world will become copies of the western democracies. They thought that even the people of communist China, after tasting capitalism, will clamor for democracy. Well, that didn't happen.

That triumph, and the inability of the Western nations and leaders to understand the underpinnings of their successful system, their military, economic, and political over-reaches had sowed the seeds of the challenges that the liberal world order faces now. This was accompanied by two "once in 500-year” events (a) the return of China and India to their pre-existing position (pre-1805) in the global economic order, and (b) the internet.

The US and NATO led-unipolar world, the rise of India and China, the birth and growth of the internet, and a border-free, single-currency European Union brought about a few over-reaches of the system.

1. Earlier, the ideas and news that used to become mainstream were vetted through a hierarchical system. It was hard for a rogue idea to become mainstream. The internet and social media changed that. Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from falsehood, so it became easier to pursue polarized politics backed by questionable claims under the guise of "free speech". The internet and freedom of speech also enabled religious radicalization and indoctrination.
2. Secularism extended into godlessness, or denial of religion. Although every bit of early liberal writing derived the individual's rights from the divine, over time, the western liberals, bit by bit, drove religion out of public discourse. 
3. Inconsistent application of the free enterprise tenet led to the belief that the system is designed to socialize the risks, a lack of skin in the game. The bailouts and the bonuses handed to the very people who triggered the 2008 financial crisis was further evidence of the collusion between business and government. "The system is rigged", some said.
4. Immigration and manufacturing in low-wage countries helped keep inflation in check, but it came at social and economic costs. The middle class in the liberal economies stopped feeling financially secure. It is hard to pursue a global free trade regime with countries with one-tenth the labor costs, and still expect the same standard of living. 
5. Civil liberties over-extended to social justice, and then to woke-ism and cancel culture to a point where even traditionally liberal publications like the Economist, or traditional liberal commentators like Bill Maher have started pushing back.
6. Globalization of the liberal world order took a few new forms. 
• The Washington DC fantasy that it had a god-given duty to impose democracy around the world, and it had a right to depose dictators it didn't like, but only the ones without nuclear weapons (Saddam, Ghaddafi). There was no Soviet Union to balance misadventures, and China was still too weak. The experiments to build liberal democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Arab world failed.
• The expansion of NATO and the European Union to the Russian border. 
• The urban-financial integration that not only integrated the major US cities (NYC, Boston, DC, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco) and the elite universities into a mono-culture, it also brought European and Asian cities (London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taiwan, Tokyo, even Shanghai and Beijing) and universities in the mix. Suddenly, the distinction between the Capitol and the districts of the Hunger Games didn't feel that unreal. 

All of this generated pushback from individuals, communities, and nations who did not benefit from the globalization of the liberal world order.

After the collapse of communism, the liberal world order has been great for the college educated, urban or suburban elite who were able to take advantage of the economic expansion to build a good life. It lifted hundreds of millions of people in Asia out of poverty. But the blue collar workers in the western liberal democracies and the uneducated or the under-educated in rest of the world did end up getting the short end of the deal. And, after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, where they had the right to vote, they expressed their dissatisfaction at the polls. 

(Source: The American Prospect, using data provided by Branko Milanovic)

In June 2016, I was in the UK and watched the Brexit campaign very closely. Two things, a few days before the vote, convinced me that Leave would win. In a radio program, a caller outside London called in to say "how is it that I can't afford a flat in London, but the foreigners who have been here for just a few years can?". The other was when my driver, who was himself a Kosovo-Albanian refuge said "Oh, yes, there are too many refuges here". In my visit to France, our driver-cum-tour-guide in Cannes said "I hope the British leave, and I hope the French also have a leave election so that we can leave too". A friend of mine who worked at an investment bank in London, who, obviously was a Remainer said, "I don't know if I will have the time to go and vote". The Brexit results gave an early indication that Donald Trump had a chance in November. 

Over the years, the populists and nationalists won elections in Italy, Brazil, India, Poland, Hungary, Philippines, and consolidated power in Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and China. Hungary's president openly talked about the emergence of the "illiberal democracy". It was clear that the working class were demanding a system that works for them, through the ballot box. It was also clear that after the great recession, immigration issues (legal and illegal), and the rise of China as a manufacturing hub; the working middle class in the west were not satisfied with their political, economic, and social situation.

The response to the over-reach of the liberal order in the west has been two forms of populism: 

1) Left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Jeremy Corbyn. They tended to blame capitalism and big businesses for the situation and advocated for a centralized redistributive state. 

2) Right-wing populism, or Trumpism. They tended to blame immigration and free-trade, and wanted to advocate for a "nation first" solution by bringing back manufacturing jobs and closing borders.

The centrist, even where they are, or were in power (like Joe Biden in the US, or Macron in France) lead a fragile coalition of left-wing populists and some center-rightist, but have a hard time getting anything done. 

So, is the liberal world order over? Globally, I think it was over on August 15, 2021 when the US & its allies admitted that they didn't have any more reason to stay in Afghanistan, and left the country to status quo ante, handing it back to the Taliban. This, along with what we have seen in Iraq has demonstrated that liberal democracy isn't universal, and an effort to impose it top-down ignoring national history and politics is futile. The rise of China, the Russian reconquest of Crimea, and the rise of openly illiberal regimes in Hungary and Turkey is showing that there are other ways to govern. I am very skeptical of US willingness of sending their own citizens in another foreign war, be it in Ukraine, or in the South China Sea. The best we can expect is the US selling military equipment, a new lend-lease perhaps, but with more strings attached.

In the US and the west, I think the institutions (local government, courts, police) are still strong enough and will prevent a slide to either outright fascism or communism, but the political system has to re-invent itself to deliver what the voting public wants. Deng Xiaoping famously said, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Similarly, in the west, the voters will end up saying that ideology doesn't really matter if the political system can deliver progress, peace, and prosperity. 

The first six weeks of the second Trump administration is indication that the United States is not willing to lead and maintain this liberal global world order, unless there is some direct economic benefit to the United States. Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, in his first interview as Secretary of State, talked about returning back to a multi-polar world. It is still unclear if a new world order will became a new "Great Game" with little to no rules, or if there will be an effort, similar to 1815 (Congress of Vienna) or even 1945 (United Nations and Bretton Woods) to write down the rules of the game and to secure commitment from the major players to play by the rules.