Wounded Tigris By Leon McCarron

This book is not something you can read and forget. Leon and his small team travel down the entire Tigris River. They start in Turkey, go through all of Iraq, and end in the marshes.

I picked it up, thinking it would be an interesting adventure with a heavy dose of history. Instead, I got an utterly fascinating account of the river, its ecosystem, the heavy impact of pollution and water management, and the cultural impact of all these changes on the people who live alongside it.

Longer thoughts here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb

So far Ive asked around 1,200 readers for their 3 fav reads of the year. Here are the nonfiction results so far: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/nonfiction

You can share yours too if you want :)

Without a doubt "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing.

Read it, read it now.

It's the kind of book that you once you read, you'll never forget. 4.8 stars with 23k reviews on Amazon. Similar survival story vibes as books like "Into Thin Air" or "Into the Wild" but just on another level. It follows the story of a journey to Antarctica in 1914 that goes wrong and ends up with the ship trapped in ice for many months, and follows the crews absolutely insane attempts at survival.

I am waiting for time to forget enough of it so that I can read it again.

If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004.

More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.

The good life: lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness by Waldinger and Schultz (directors of the Harvard study).

Religion : what it is, how it works, and why it matters by Christian Smith and Strange rites: new religions for a godless world by Tara Burton. While many think that religion is in decline, the non-material/supernatural things that people believe in has actually shifted. Related, The warfare between science and religion : the idea that wouldn't die, a series of essays; the conflict thesis bunk, both historically and presently.

The origins of Canadian and American political differences by Jason Kaufman, two seemingly-the-same neighbouring countries that have had different development paths when it comes to culture and government. (I'm Canadian.)

Speaking of government: Civil resistance: what everyone needs to know by Erica Chenoweth. Seems violence/force is generally a bad way to effect change in society.

The week: a history of the unnatural rhythms that made us who we are by David Henkin. Seems that while seven days has been around for a long while, making it a really 'hard' structure/schedule around it is a more recent phenomenon than you'd expect.

If you have kids, Karen Le Billon's French kids eat everything (and yours can, too) and Getting to YUM: the 7 secrets of raising eager eaters, her husband is French and she lived there for a year and found many things done better there than US/CA. See also The happiest kids in the world: how Dutch parents help their kids and themselves by doing less by Acosta and Hutchison.

Flying blind: the 737 MAX tragedy and the fall of Boeing by Peter Robison is an HN favourite. While we get a lot of engineer vs MBA comments, I think the bigger problem (associated with the MBA-types) is financialization, i.e., returns over everything else. Having non-engineers/MBAs can be 'fine' also long as trying to squeeze blood/money from a stone at the cost of everything else.

Some philosophy with Alasdair C. MacIntyre: After Virtue is a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

Culture of Flowers by Jack Goodie. An anthropology book that compares the culture of Flowers across civilizations. "No flowers in Africa" to China being most gifted place in terms of flowers. Variability across Europe and Muslim civilizations etc etc.

As an Indian, I found how civilizations treat luxury (flowers) and necessity fascinating. Apparently Europe had a culture of garlands before the banquet culture. India is still predominantly garlands expect for a few highly westernised places. Muslim treatment or rather rejection of flowers in mosque but giving the world spectacle of flower gardens was very fascinating.

The book is not going to win any prize for prose or even coherence structure.

I really enjoyed reading "The Blue Machine: How The Ocean Works".

It turns out the Ocean is fascinating, and I learned something crazy:

"Between 1950 and 1973, world fish harvest trippled, but the amount of fish directly consumed by humans stayed the same. The rest went into fishmeal, as a supplemental food for livestock, and this became an essential ingredient for modern industrial farming".

I didn't realize that fishmeal was a primary input to modern animal agriculture. Global fish stocks collapsed not only because people ate fish, but also because of animal agriculture in general. It's fascinating how it's all connected.

Also, sea turtles cry 8 litres of tears an hour.

Needless to say, this book ended up as a permanent fixture on my bookshelf.