War

 I just concluded War (Bob Woodward, 2024, 448 pages), and it is an absolutely great book.

This is my first time reading Bob Woodward, whom I have known a little bit because of the Watergate case, in which his work was fundamental. I think it is also impressive that he is now 81 years old and keep writing such great pieces as this book War.

Something else that is also a “first timer” for me in relation to this book is the fact that it talks about some fresh history. I hadn’t before read books that summarizes and expands on stories that are almost still evolving, when the book is printed. For someone that has been fascinated by politics, and have been an avid reader of news like me, it is very interesting to contemplate facts that I have recently closely followed, but now by the perspective of many of the main characters themselves.

For this book is based in over four hundred interviews with staff and advisors for Biden, Trump, Kamala Harris, Zelensky, Netanyahu, etc. All the main figures behind-the-scenes of the most critical events of our recent world history. And it brings some new pieces of information that would be almost impossible to get otherwise.

For example, how the Biden’s administration failure in Afghanistan exit informed the strategy for leading and containing Russian invasion strategy. Or how the US intelligence managed to get all details for the Russian plans six months before February 22^nd 2022. Or how Zelensky and other European leaders first failed to acknowledge those intel details. Or how Trump kept his discourse of stolen election after the January 6^th, to later be nudged to refocus his rhetoric towards the 2024 presidential campaign. Or how Trump had several private calls with Putin after leaving the presidency. Or how Biden and Jake Sullivan acted when the intel revealed a 50% chance of nuclear bombing by the Russians in the Autumn of 2022. And more. Much more.

If international relations and politics are something for you, there will be zero regrets in taking your hands on this book as soon as possible. It won’t help us poor mortals influencing things in any way, but it you give a glimpse over intentions and who to trust and not trust with regards to our common global destiny. Highly recommendable title.

Fooled by Randomness

I concluded recently Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005, 368 pages). And I think it is really interesting and thought-provoking.

This book, which I had never heard of before, showed up on my radar during a couple other readings related to financial investments. But actually, the topics in it transcend finance and markets, although Nassim is himself a renowned investor. The discussions in the book are probably relevant to all of us, in any sort of career.

For, although Nassim may sound pretentious and even arrogant at times, what he covers is some basic flaws in the human perception of probabilistic, statistics, and randomness. And I think he does a great job in that.

The relevance of the topic, and here already inspired by the book, is because we humans basically have a brain that was adapted to a different world than that of randomness. And, yet, randomness plays a huge role in what happens in our current world.

For example, the fluctuations in price for any given stock, in any given day, bring most likely no significance. It is typically noise. Larger variations of the price, however, may indicate some significant change in one or more of the intrinsic aspects of the company or market in case.

Likewise, fluctuations in the general market over time typically fool lots of players, who rapidly create and tell each other stories about how price levels are as they are when, in fact, there is no logical explanation behind. Once in a while, a new crash/correction happens, and it makes clear that many of narratives floating around were baseless.

But this is just one aspect of this title. There are many other interesting reflections on math, statistics, biases, psychology and evolution. All around this topic of how easily we get fooled into taking noise for signal. I think all of us can learn something, or a lot, from this book. Highly recommendable.