The 3 Books to Read in May: Quarantine Edition

This is the inaugural version of “The 3 Books to Read in ______.” At the beginning of each month I intend to put out a reading list of sorts, to share some of the good books I have been reading lately. Quarantining appears to be slightly dissipating, but nonetheless it would be smart if we continued to do our best and stay inside when possible. One of the best indoor activities, besides puzzling, is sitting down with a good book. Reading a book can take you to an entirely different world, and most importantly it can help distract you from everything that is going on in the world right now. I love to learn about new things, or about different people’s lives, so I tend to read mostly non-fiction books exclusively. Knowing that, most of the books on my list of monthly reads will be non-fiction. I like to think there is a good amount of variation in the kind of non-fiction titles to keep things interesting. Every now and then, I may have my wife suggest some books she has been reading, because she tends to have a nice variety of non-fiction and fiction reads. Without further ado, the following titles are what I recommend in May. I hope you enjoy!

I can say with confidence that Bad Blood is one of the best books I have ever read. This is such a truly astounding story of fraud within what was one of the most promising startups in Silicon Valley. Often referred to as a “unicorn” by investors, Theranos went from being valued at nearly $10 billion, to $0 within a few years. HBO released a documentary that chronicles the events in a similar fashion as the book. You can find the documentary, The Investor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, on Hulu. To give you a quick gist of the storyline, I will summarize it for you. Elizabeth Holmes’ company, Theranos, could purportedly analyze a tiny droplet of your blood in a machine they dubbed “Edison.” This tiny droplet of blood was supposed to be able to test for upwards of 250 different types of diseases, conditions, etc. This obviously sounds like revolutionary technology, right? The problem was that the machines could really only do a handful of tests, and even those were inaccurate most of the time. That didn’t stop Holmes from partnering with Walgreens and pushing these machines out to the public. Carreyrou does an absolutely astounding job of chronicling the entire story of Theranos in the gripping, and nearly impossible to stop reading, 368 pages. The book won multiple awards in 2018 and was regularly featured in different media outlet’s best-selling lists. I really cannot recommend Bad Blood enough, and you will see why by the time you’re done reading it. There is so much of it that is flat out unbelievable, and frustrating to read at the same time.

The financial crisis of 2008 was one of the greatest economic disasters America has ever seen since the Great Depression. Too Big to Fail does an astounding job of telling the story of how the 2008 financial crisis occurred, why the crisis occurred, how executives at the biggest banks in America navigated the crisis, and how the United States federal government ultimately decided who was too big to fail, and who was not. The amount of detail that Sorkin goes into to describe each and every event, it makes you feel like you are fly on the wall during the biggest and most important meetings during the crisis. By the end of the 624 pages you may be furious with your local banking institution, but you may also have a new appreciation for how the US Treasury and the Fed handled the crisis. I had little, to no clue about what all went on during the crisis, but after reading Too Big to Fail, I felt like I knew every little detail. I don’t think you will be able to find better behind the scenes, event by event reporting anywhere else. I recommend this particular book right now because America is in the middle of another period of economic uncertainty, and I believe it is important to get a firm grasp on how America handles the economy internally. 12 years later Henry Paulson, the US Treasury secretary through the crisis, looks like a hero for the decisions he made. The scale of the economic peril during covid-19 isn’t quite yet what the 2008 financial crisis looked like, but how will history look back at how Steven Mnuchin handled the crisis? There is also a movie based on this book that is on Amazon Prime. It has the same title, Too Big to Fail, but I don’t believe the movie does justice to how truly fabulous the book is.

Just Mercy is the story of attorney Bryan Stevenson, and his journey with his client Walter McMillian. The book gives a detailed account of how Stevenson became such an important human rights advocate, and exactly how much injustice goes on within the US criminal justice system. As a white male from a middle-class family, I seldomly had reason to think about injustices occurring within the US justice and prison systems, but this book was truly an eye opener. This book may be a slightly uncomfortable read, but it is the reality of what is going on in the United States. There is an embarrassingly large amount of prejudice that goes on within our justice system against African Americans, the mentally handicapped, and the poor. Just Mercy gives multiple examples of cases that Stevenson has worked on that were obvious miscarriages of justice against all of those people. I truly believe that this book should be read in every high school classroom, and I hope you decide to read it yourself. Maybe if more people have their eyes opened to what is going on, one day it will get better. It is likely that you may have seen that there was a theatrical version of this book that recently had a pretty large release, but I am one of THOSE people that thinks reading the book before you watch the movie version is always a great idea.