What book reporting on economics that wasn't written or co-written by an economist are you concerned is too influential or widely read? As we can obviously see, even professionals in medical sciences were wrong about Theranos. How did John Carreyrou, a WSJ reporter, do such a good job reporting on them?
To do journalism well, I think you need insider help: a whistleblower without ulterior motive, corroborating evidence and subject matter experts who can confirm suspicions. So, I think there are ways for journalists to marshall resources and then do their part which is to write a coherent story based on credible evidence and opinion, but much of what comes from journalism is hurried and often put together after havin…
This is an answer to some question, but to neither of the questions I actually asked. Did my questions not make sense?
I don't know any of the authors you've mentioned, but in my own experience, not reading books written by journalists is a good rule of thumb . That doesn't mean, obviously, that it's impossible for a journalist to write a good book. By profession, journalism is both shallow and narrow: it focuses on the surface of events in the given moment. That tends not to equip someone with the knowledge or expertise to write a t…
It seems like a rule of thumb that’s served you poorly, given it’s left you unfamiliar with some of the most widely acclaimed recent (and less recent) non-fiction work.
I presume you're referring to the authors the OP listed. It's certainly true that I don't tend to read a huge amount of popular nonfiction, and that I'm young enough to have a generationally limited knowledge of what's out there. But, at the same time, what the best nonfiction books of recent decades have been is an open, and very subjective question. I have my own peculiar interests and proclivities. I think, from a quick Google, that all the books the OP listed fall outside of that space.
In recent years I've switched a lot to watching a non-fiction author's 30 minute talk on youtube about their book rather than reading the book entirely. This is especially true for business/self-improvement type books, where I've found its almost never really time efficient when I'm really just looking for the list of 5 things I should be doing and skipping the extraneous pages of anecdotes.
For me it's the opposite: for example, I had watched countless videos on "disruption" but did not fully grasp it until I read The Innovator's Dilemma. The same holds true for theory of constraints vs reading The Goal, Robert Cialdini's works on influence, Richard Dawkin's views etc. In all cases, I thought I understood the material before reading the original source, and in every time the books blew me away. Perhaps…
I think you're hitting at the dichotomy of knowing vs grokking. A lot of powerful concepts have high level summaries that can trick the audience into thinking that's all there is to it. Chris Voss's excellent "Never Split the Difference" comes to mind. A lot of his negotiating strategy can be boiled down to "develop a mutual and deep empathy with your negotiating partner". On some level this makes intuitive sense; people who empathize with you will help you solve your problems, and empathizing with other will help you tailor your solutions to their concerns. But when you sit down to pull this off, you run into two major problems. What is the strategy for doing this? Some phrases tend to antagonize people, while others help build rapport. There are often emotional stages that relationships have to go through, so you need to behave appropriately at each stage, but also you need to move the relationship to the point that is beneficial for you. The second major hurdle is actually implementing these strategies. Even with the head knowledge, when the pressure to perform is on, you may not behave appropriately.
For non-fiction, I think I have always unconsciously followed the GP rule, because I don't remember any book, good or bad, that lacked one. Fiction, of course, rarely gets one.
I can't think of any fiction that has an index. Do you have examples?
John Carreyrou wasn't an expert on phlebotomy or biochemistry. Roger Lowenstein wasn't an expert on hedge funds or technical finance. Eric Schlosser on nuclear command and control? Nope. Woodward and Bernstein and constitutional law? Not so much! I don't think these are very good rules. I thought it was especially amusing that this person doesn't trust journalists to write about anything but journalism. If you believ…
> Woodward and Bernstein and constitutional law? Not so much!
Neither of their books were really about constitutional law. "All the President's Men" is in the "Books about journalism" section of Wikipedia.
It seems like a rule of thumb that’s served you poorly, given it’s left you unfamiliar with some of the most widely acclaimed recent (and less recent) non-fiction work.
I presume you're referring to the authors the OP listed. It's certainly true that I don't tend to read a huge amount of popular nonfiction, and that I'm young enough to have a generationally limited knowledge of what's out there. But, at the same time, what the best nonfiction books of recent decades have been is an open, and very subjective question. I have my own peculiar interests and proclivities. I think, from a…
It is fine to not be interested in things; there's lots I'm not interested in either. It's less great to have strong, sweeping opinions about things you're basically incurious about.
Here's a rule: read stuff that you think is interesting.
And what's your answer to " But how can we identify those, without first reading them? "
by previewing/skimming them first?
I don't get how this is some big black/white issue. You don't have to finish every book you start, nor do you only have to read a single book at a time, and you can listen to audiobooks at high speeds if time is your main concern. Because in the time it takes you to "research" whether a book is worth your time or not, you could've already read a couple chapters of it and gotten enough of a broad overview of what it contains to decide for yourself.
I've managed to read about 60-90 books a year for the last 6 years, and that's only counting the ones I actually finish. Yet I'm sure the tally of books I've only started/skimmed would be significantly higher than that if I bothered to keep track of it.
John Carreyrou wasn't an expert on phlebotomy or biochemistry. Roger Lowenstein wasn't an expert on hedge funds or technical finance. Eric Schlosser on nuclear command and control? Nope. Woodward and Bernstein and constitutional law? Not so much! I don't think these are very good rules. I thought it was especially amusing that this person doesn't trust journalists to write about anything but journalism. If you believ…
> Woodward and Bernstein and constitutional law? Not so much! Neither of their books were really about constitutional law. "All the President's Men" is in the "Books about journalism" section of Wikipedia.
Yeah, I agree; I wrote that comment very quickly and needed something better than "whatever you want to call the expertise required to understand the issues involved in Watergate and in reporting Watergate". I brought it up because I think it's pretty funny to have a "no journalists, except when they're writing about journalism" rule. Nobody was interested in _All The President's Men_ because they wanted a Jack-Shafer-esque inquiry into the media and the practice of reporting; what made the book influential is the reporting Woodward and Bernstein performed.
If you want a replacement example that isn't make that point, substitute in Lawrence Wright and either scientology or terrorism.
That doesn't refute the fact that he spent his life researching the content in GEB.
"The idea that changed Hofstadter’s existence, as he has explained over the years, came to him on the road, on a break from graduate school in particle physics. Discouraged by the way his doctoral thesis was going at the University of Oregon, feeling “profoundly lost,” he decided in the summer of 1972 to pack his things into a car he called Quicksilver and drive eastward across the continent. Each night he pitched hi…
What is your point? When Hofstadter was 35, he had spent his adult life studying a subject which culminated in the publication of a book about it. He wasn't passively throwing words on pages to get anything published, he was publishing his life's work.
You seem to be trying to argue that -- because he continued to live afterward, he somehow didn't spend his entire life on the book. But that's not what was being asserted -- only that he had spent "his life" up to the time of the work's publication on the work. And it's not even relevant if it were meant as you seem to be assuming, because Hofstadter has continued to study the very same subject ever since. He's also published more books on the very same matter in the following years. It was his life's work then, and it continues to be today.