2016: My Year in Books

As an unrepentant bibliophile, I often think of my level of happiness with a year by the quantity and quality of the books I managed to read. On that score, 2016 was a reasonably good year (not the best I have had but well far from the worst). Here are the books I read (/ remembered reading) and what I found most memorable and exciting about them

History Books

If I have anything close to an “intellectual first love”, it would be history – not too difficult to figure out the roots of this urge since I have a historian father. I read a number of interesting books (some released in 2016 and others released earlier)

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones. Really interesting book about the royal family who ruled England for over 300 hours (starting in 1154 with Henry II, until 1485, when Richard III died). The book takes readers through 300+ years of medieval English history told through what is essentially a family saga that started with the drowning of a prince  in the English Channel as his drunken crew attempted to cross from Normandy to England while thoroughly drunk. This triggered a 12^th century version of the constitutional crisis as the drowned prince was the only son of Henry I and on his death, the attempts by his daughter Matilda to establish her reign was thwarted. Matilda’s son (Henry II) finally managed to secure the kingdom in his own right and launched a dynasty that proceeded to rule for 300+ years and gained and lost different bits of the current British Isles and France. The book covers such historical figures such as Richard the Lionheart and events such as the early innings of the 100 year war. Overall, great introduction to medieval English and French history

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Ian Mortimer. Continuing the medieval English theme is the book on the life of one of the greatest Plantangent kings, Edward III. Medieval societies were much simpler than our current age and facets of life were more fused back in the day. It would take a couple more centuries before business, civil administration and the military will split into distinct areas of human endeavor. Reading this account of this monarch who ruled England for 50 years is like reading an engaging account of someone who was the greatest military general, most important civil administrator and richest businessman all at the same time. This often misunderstood figure probably oversaw the height of English influence in the medieval period, a sharp reversal from his father’s ill-fated reign - his father (Edward II) was deposed by his wife (Edward III’s mother) and her lover (Roger Mortimer).

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownworth. After earlier reading a highly entertaining history of the Bryzantine empire by the same author (https://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014_07_01_archive.html), I was excited to discover this book. History buffs all over the world easily associate the Normans, a group of Scandinavians (“Norse-man”) who had earlier settled in the area of France they came to give their name to (Normandy), with the conquest of England in 1066. What is probably not as well appreciated is the central role that the Normans played in Europe more broadly. Groups of Normans settled in and heavily influenced nations as diverse as England, Ireland, France, Italy and Cyprus. I was particularly impressed by the kings produced by the Normans in the Kingdom of Sicily and with one in particular, Frederick II who became Holy Roman Emperor and whose talents were so numerous he came to be widely known as Stupor Mundi (the wonder of the world).

After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton. Interesting narrative history of the origins of the Sunni-Shia split. Even-handed portrait that puts the schism in a solid historical context. Longer review here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/after-prophet-epic-story-of-shia-sunni.html

Conquerors: How Portugal seized the Indian Ocean and forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley. If you have ever wondered why so much of the world speaks Portuguese, then this book introduces you to the coalface of the pioneering efforts to forge that empire. The book provides gripping narrative accounts of the pain endured and inflicted by these pioneering Portuguese sailors and explorers in the 15^th and 16^th century in places as far afield as present-day Angola and India.

The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Paul Strathern. History of one of the most powerful banking families (perhaps only rivaled by the Rothschild’s). Tells the story of how a family, in the course of a few generations, parlayed a small banking operation in Florence into a much larger fortune that bought control of a city, ensured entry into titled high nobility and also bought a few papal crowns (including two members of the family who became popes). A longer review is here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016_05_01_archive.html

The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Think of a dysfunctional family with a spotty track record of governing ability but with monopoly autocratic power over a vast empire, then you have the Romanovs. This was the royal family that reigned over Russia for 300 years before the Bolsheviks made it impossible for them to keep reigning. Simon Sebag Montefiore as usual delivers a sweeping history that is both gripping in its narrative and rich in historical detail. A longer review is here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/review-of-romanovs-1613-1918-by-simon.html

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph Ellis. If you think the American constitution (in operation since 1789) was arrived at organically by the delegates to the constitutional convention, or even more bizarrely, something that was divinely inspired in some late-18^th century version of Moses receiving the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, then you really need to read this book by Joseph Ellis (a noted scholar and author of the early American republic). The author argues that the shape the American constitution took was the deliberate and sometimes slightly manipulative work done by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison who served as President, Treasury Secretary, Chief Justice and Congressman in the first government under this constitution. All four men had witnessed the shortcomings of the previous confederacy arrangement (which was still favored by several leaders, including Jefferson) and were resolved to birth a more cohesive, federal arrangement.

Current Affairs

I not only spend my spare time reading about people who are long dead or events that are long past. I sometimes also read about current issues or recent history.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer. The one sentence description of this book is that it is about the efforts of librarians in Timbuktu to spirit away hundreds of thousands of valuable ancient Islamic manuscripts during the occupation of Timbkuktu and Northern Mali by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2012. However, that will be a gross simplification of the author’s efforts to describe the cultural richness of Timbuktu in its 14^th / 15^th century heyday, the concerted global effort in the1970s and 1980s to track down and preserve these beautiful ancient manuscripts and finally the painstaking and very dangerous task of smuggling the manuscripts out of the various libraries in the city before the invading Al-Qaeda forces could get to destroying them as they had destroyed other global cultural patrimonies. The author also provides a good insight into the poor governance, shifting tribe loyalties, economic desolation and civil wars that have shaped the Sahel and made it such a fertile soil for germinating extremism.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J D Vance. Why is Donald Trump president-elect? Simple, he won the presidential election in enough states to get over 270 pledged delegates threshold to the Electoral College that actually elects US presidents. Well…yeah, but why did a neophyte politician dominate a sizable Republican field and then went on to puncture the shibboleth of a Blue Wall for the democrats that ran through the rust belt (winning states not carried by a Republican since Reagan). And why did his message of “Make America Great Again” resonate with so many voters? While we will never fully get the answers to this questions, this great book (released before the election) does a good job of explaining why this pithy if somewhat silly slogan resonated with a huge swath of people who treated it as their cri de couer and then subsequently turned out in large numbers to deliver a primal scream of an election result. This book does a great job of introducing readers to the deprivation experienced by many communities in the Appalachian region of the US from a viewpoint that is both non-condescending and informed. This is a viewpoint that only “a member of the tribe” and a “local boy made good” is capable and qualified to have.

Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change by Allister Sparks. How did a vicious system of apartheid come to an end in 1994 without the massive upheavals widely predicted by many experts? Apartheid crumbled with much less violence and much quicker than outside observers predicted just a few years earlier. Some people credit divine providence and some others credit the almost-saintly regard in which Nelson Mandela was held. Well, both views may well be true but they are very incomplete. For to take both viewpoints (all due to divine grace or all due to Mr. Mandela) is to ignore the concerted and broad human agency that delivered the transition from apartheid to universal suffrage. The author chronicles the many years of clandestine meetings and negotiations between then enemies in places as diverse as London, Lausanne and the South African wilderness to hammer out a resolution to a system that both the oppressed and oppressor had come to accept could not continue. Reading the book I was struck by the deep patriotism and love of country exhibited by both sides, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party led by De Klerk and the ANC led by Nelson Mandela. Neither party was willing to watch the country they love burn or go to the dogs so they were willing to compromise. The result is a constitutional democracy, which for all its warts, is a thing that many of us Africans should be proud of and eager to emulate. Majority rule is entrenched but minority (including sexual minority) rights are strongly protected and the judiciary is indeed independent. The result of the many clandestine meetings in the 80s and 90s detailed in the book is the current situation in which very few people are as happy as a clam but not that many are driven to violent desperation. While this doesn’t sound romantic, it is as good as one could have wished for starting from the dark days of apartheid and something the cast of characters in Mr. Sparks’ book can be proud of midwifing.

Travelogues / Unclassified

These books probably shouldn’t be in this category. I just put them in this Travelogues section because their authors are best known as travel writers.

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple. Book on the Fist Anglo-Afghan war (1839 to 1841) that ended in a humiliating defeat for the British. The book highlighted the challenges the British faced in establishing order over a country with a tough, unforgiving terrain and deeply fractured tribal loyalties. Reading the book, I was reminded by the saying attributed to the Roman Poet Horace, Mutato Nomine De Te Fabula Narratur (“change but the name, and the story is told of yourself”). One could easily have changed the date on many of the stories / intrigues the author described to the 2000s and the stories will still fit as a glove. It seems over 150+ years, the outside world’s understanding of Afghanistan had not changed materially -  the more things change the more they remain the same.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester. I decided to read this book after earlier reading a great book about the pioneers who physically united the vast continent that is the United States through linkages such as roads, railways, canals etc. (review here: https://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014_02_01_archive.html). This book is basically a biography of the Atlantic Ocean. While it may seem silly to describe a body of water in biographical terms, it is perhaps apt to do so since the Atlantic is a living, breathing thing  - the Atlantic was born some 100 million+ years ago when the plates of the super-continents shifted, the ocean also continues to grow every year as ice caps melt and temperatures rise and the ocean will someday die in the very distant future. The book provides a rich account of man’s interaction with this vast body of water from pre-historic times to the modern age. It describes in vivid fashion, our attempts to cross it (by boat, by air and by submarine cable), the wars we have fought on it and how it has come to define coastal communities from Lagos to Newfoundland and Tierra del Fuego. One sad thing that struck me is the sheer amount of pollution that the Atlantic has endured ranging from the tailpipe emissions from the numerous ships and planes that cross it daily to plastic waste and even nuclear waste! (until 1993 many countries adopted the Atlantic Ocean as a dumping ground for nuclear waste)

Economics / Business

Like many people lacking the nourishing security of a trust fund, I must work for my bread and the way I earn my keep is to work as a private equity investor. This makes reading books about economics and business a necessity (if only to not be terrible at my job). However, I was lucky that none of the business books I read this year felt like a chore. 

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma. This is a very accessible book on the guidelines (he lists ten) for accessing the economic growth potential of countries. The author has unique credibility as he does not only have academic economic training, he is also a markets practitioner in his role as Global Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. So this is not an ivory-tower type, this is someone who has to find a way to make money for clients like the rest of us. I had two very important takeaways. One is the dampener that slowing population growth (or even aging) will put on economic growth. Major economies all over the world are facing a marked decline in the growth of the working age population (China’s working age population shrank last year) and this will be a major headwind on economic growth globally. The second key takeaway for me is the importance of the reform cycle to economic growth in emerging markets. Many emerging markets are poor partly because institutions are weak and economies are often badly managed but fixing these issues are politically costly and most politicians will rather not reform. However, when such countries are pushed to the wall (global recession, commodity price bust etc.) they bite the bullet and make needed changes. This reform cycle provides a tailwind for economic growth and supports asset prices for a while until the leaders get comfortable / complacent, stay too long and start doing silly things. At this stage, these countries get set for another bust and the cycle starts again when a reformer shows up again. This boom-bust cycle makes it critical to get the timing right in emerging markets if one is to escape unscathed.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon. Interesting book about the extraordinary productivity revolution that was seen in the closing decades of the 19^th century and the first seven decades of the 20^th. The upshot of the book is that the period in America (and much of the world) between 1870 and 1970 was an exceptional time in human history for economic growth and most of that was attributable to the rapid increase in productivity. At the beginning of the period, the fastest way most people could have travelled from point A to Point B was the speed at which a horse could travel (granted the transcontinental railway in the US was built in the prior decade, but the general point holds). By the 1970s, overworked bankers were already shuttling from London to New York at the speed of sound on Concorde flights. The book is replete with the productivity enhancements from inventions such as the washing machine, the automobile, penicillin etc. The challenge is that productivity boosting innovations have stalled over the past few decades. Facebook is nice, it gives its users a great deal of satisfaction and has made loads of money for its founders but it is not even in the same zip code in terms of increasing productivity as the invention of the washing machine or dish washer was. Washing machines and dish washers saved housewives all over the developed world from hours of drudgery and helped increase women’s participation in the labor force and made the ones already in the workforce more productive. This is a somewhat sobering message. If Robert Gordon is saying productive growth will be flat / slow going forward and Ruchir Sharma is saying that working-age population growth will be a headwind and both play out as predicted, then we should all be bracing up for secular stagnation in global economic growth.

How Asia Works by Joe Studwell. Interesting book about how the Asian economies were able to deliver rapid economic growth and lift a lot of people out of poverty using tools / policies such as capital control, mass mobilization of rural people into light manufacturing and government directed investment into areas such as energy, roads, ports etc. This sectors are critical for growth but are often not the most attractive place for investors or lenders to direct money to without government intervention. Japan followed this path first, then it was followed by the various Asian Tigers and China. Not sure how many times this rabbit could be pulled out of a hat but Ethiopia appears to be pursuing this strategy in Africa, let’s see how it turns out.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll. Exxon Mobil is not an ordinary company, it is the largest company in an industry (oil & gas exploration and production) that is far from normal. Ploughing billions of dollars into drilling for oil (sometimes in “iffy” countries) just strikes me as somehow different from selling toothpaste, soap or cheap shirts. The book by Steve Coll does a great job in giving readers a peek behind the curtains at this very unusual company that has its own security apparatus and sometimes even better intelligence in some countries than governments do.

Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager's Reports 2002-15 by Edward Chancellor. Many investment books tend to look at companies through a demand lens: how many widgets can it sell? who will buy the widgets? how much can they pay for them? etc. This book, based on the investing strategy of one of the world’s most successful fund managers, takes a different approach. It evaluates companies on the supply side: how much new capital is coming into a given sector, what new capacity is being added and how rational is the new capacity? etc. If one accepts that a key detractor to generating profits and creating wealth is competition (we’d all love to own an unregulated monopoly!), then thinking about companies in this way makes a lot of sense. 

Review - After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton

Like anyone else with an interest in Middle Eastern geopolitics, or frankly with a working CNN subscription, I have heard the phrase “the Sunni-Shia split” hundreds of times. That is why I was attracted to this book by the noted popularizer of religious history, Lesley Hazleton.

While I have always had a sense that the conflict between these two strands of one of the world’s great monotheisms is a longstanding one, I had never really had the proper historical context for the schism which is now a millennium and a half old. This book does a masterful and engaging job in providing the context and motivations for the protracted internecine struggle that followed the death of Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. In this book, we see how adherents of a young religion struggled to come to terms with the death of a founder who fused religious, political and military authority in his charismatic self.

The author takes the reader on a narrative history of the four succeeding caliphs to the Prophet Mohammed (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali), collectively referred to as the Rashidun (i.e., the rightly guided caliphs). The tensions and struggles in the early history of the faith was reflected in the fact that of the first four caliphs, only Abu Bakr (the first caliph who ruled for two years) was not assassinated. Ms. Hazleton very exhaustively and humanely examined the main cast of characters and their motivations and intrigues over this 30 year period.

The book ends with the death of Hussein (grandson of Prophet Mohammed and son of the 4^th Caliph, Ali) at Karbala (a city in modern day Iraq) in AD 680 at a battle with the forces of the Yazid (the 2^nd Umayyad caliph who ruled from 680 to 683 AD). That singular battle, commemorated in heart-rending fashion by annual Ashura events across the Shia world, continues to echo with a great deal of significance into the present age. The martyrdom of Hussein is an event which continues to be a deep source of angst and a potent mobilizing force for millions of people all over the world. It is impossible to know how the history of the world would have turned out if the events at Karbala in AD 680 had turned out differently or if a confrontation had been avoided all together. While it will never be known for certain if it is true, many traditions hold that Muawiyah (the first Umayyad caliph) advised his son and successor Yazid to treat Hussein gently (“as for Hussein what can I tell you concerning him? Be careful not to confront him except in a good way. Extend to him a free hand and let him roam the earth as he pleases…”). If this account is true, it should serve as a cautionary tale for all of us, as we do not know how long the negative effects of what currently seem to be expedient actions could last for.

Overall, I think this book is a great book for anyone who like me constantly hears about the divide between the two main strands of the world’s 2^nd largest religion but remains essentially clueless about its origins. This book doesn’t proffer a solution to the long-running schism but it at least provides an accessible historical context for non-experts like me. 

Review of The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore

I recently read the latest book by the popular historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Romanovs: 1613-1918. After reading Jerusalem: A Biography, by the same author I had set a high bar for the mix of entertainment and information that his particular type of narrative history delivers. This high expectation was very well surpassed by this magisterial book on the 300 year history of what must be one of the most intriguing dynasties to rule a major power.

The author takes the reader on an exhilarating trip through the dynasty that was born when a group of Russian noblemen placed the crown of Russia on a young (at 17 years) and very reluctant Michael I in 1613 and which met its end when the Bolsheviks executed the last Tsar (Nicholas II) in 1918 along with his family. The book is a tour de force of narrative history, dealing with weighty topics such as the Russian response to Napoleon’s invasion and the modernization of Russia by Peter the Great while also delving deep into the great love affair that was the relationship between Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin – Peter the Great’s epic parties (styled by him as the The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters) was also amply covered in the book.

The book gives one a sense, similar to how I felt after reading a book on the Medicis, of the severe limitation posed by having hereditary as the primary organizing structure for any kind of leadership (business or government). In this book we meet truly exceptional leaders like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great (actually a minor German noblewoman who succeeded in deposing her hapless husband and assuming the throne in her own right). Of both leaders, I can’t help but feel a high degree of admiration for Catherine the Great. This was a leader of high intelligence, clear-headed ambition (she organized a coup d’etat against her husband after all) and with a reformist bent, even if many of the reforms she sought to pursue by a renaissance-inspired constitution came to little effect. Her partnership with her long-time lover, Potemkin must count as one of the most productive power couples in history. Together, they led Russia to the height of its greatness, building many new cities and annexing the Crimea. While both Catherine the Great and Potemkin were not “exclusive” in modern romantic parlance, they shared a deep love and mutual respect for each other’s intelligence and ambition that they were essentially inseparable until Potemkin’s death.

However, this same dynasty which produced such leaders as Peter and Catherine also produced some veritable clunkers and one need not look further than the last two Tsars to run Russia (Alexander III and Nicholas II). Both men were noted for having happy marriages (uncommon for royals) and for being fundamentally good family men but they were so limited that in a meritocratic system they would hardly have been elected city councilors not to talk of autocrats of a major world power. Tsar Nicholas and his wife were greatly influenced by the mystic Rasputin in deciding state matters. Such was the influence of the illiterate Rasputin on state matters that many leading noblemen felt it necessary to have him eliminated. In the end, the limited abilities and narrow worldview of Nicholas II proved deeply insufficient for preserving the monarchy beyond its 300^th year.

Overall, I found this book to be very informative and engaging and that it succeeded in humanizing a family that has been largely clichéd in popular culture (we have all heard the stories, often apocryphal, about Catherine the Great’s appetites!)