Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Isaacson takes enormous people and ideas and turns them into swift, gripping narratives. Leonardo da Vinci and Elon Musk were fabulous. Code Breaker was no different. The subject alone—gene editing, curing disease, rewriting the very code of life—is insane, but what makes it such a pleasure to read are the stories behind the science. “The key to true curiosity is pausing to ponder the causes,” Isaacson writes. Why is the sky blue? Why does this molecule behave the way it does? For Jennifer Doudna, the book’s central character, it was not enough to get the answers—she needed to know how the answers could be of use to the world. Her breakthroughs came from a willingness to move into unfamiliar fields, to take intellectual risks, to ask questions that were bigger than she felt qualified to answer. Real discovery, Isaacson suggests, begins not with answers, but with the courage to linger inside a good question. To keep looking.
The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson
The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence is, Isaacson says, “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
In each chapter of this tiny book, Isaacson pauses over a single phrase or word. What did the founders mean by “self-evident”? What about “unalienable rights”? Where did these ideas come from? What should they mean to us now?
These shouldn’t be abstract questions. The Declaration of Independence was intended to be used in our lives and laws, written not to become a relic of history but to be questioned, returned to, and practiced. You couldn’t ask for a better starting point than this book.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My aunt-in-law started a family book club this year, and this book was the first on the list. I probably wouldn’t have read it on my own, so I’m glad it was forced on me. I really enjoyed it. The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was how sad it was: after the first night of reading I had to emotionally detach. (Once detached, I was fine. Mostly.) It reminded me of another fictional character named Babbitt, although Ove is much more endearing. Ove is rigid, rule-bound, and easily irritated. The obvious message is that you can’t judge a book by its cover: the gruff, inflexible exterior conceals a surprisingly tender heart (as depicted in the trailer of the 2022 movie adaptation, A Man Called Otto). But my biggest takeaway was how much time this guy wasted. How opinionated he was about stuff that wasn’t in his control (namely, other people’s behavior). It turned out to be the perfect book to begin the year with. My word for this year is focus. Namely: focus on what I do. Less time forming opinions about what everyone else is doing, and more time paying attention to what I do and what I think about. My own thoughts and actions. Those two things alone will give me more than enough work this year/the rest of my life.
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
Imagine a dam 72 feet high and nearly 900 feet wide, sitting above a small Pennsylvania town. Imagine it holding back a lake more than two miles long, containing 20 million tons of water. Imagine the lake sitting on one of the most exclusive country clubs in America, owned by powerful, wealthy men such as Andrew Carnegie, Benjamin Ruff, and Henry Clay Frick.
Now imagine the dam breaking.
That’s what happened in 1889, when the South Fork Dam collapsed and sent a wall of water roaring downstream at forty miles an hour, flattening everything in its path. Entire neighborhoods vanished. Trains were lifted from their tracks. Houses, trees, animals, and people were swept together into a single moving mass. By the time the water finally stopped, more than 2,200 people were dead.
McCullough once said he wrote this book because he wanted to read a good account of the tragedy and couldn’t find one, so he decided to write the book he wanted to read. The result is both a gripping historical narrative of the event, and a sobering reminder that the people in charge definitely don’t always know what they’re doing. It’s also a reminder of how even the biggest catastrophe—the biggest anything, really—is eventually forgotten.
Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life by Daniel Klein
The Art of Happiness by Epicurus and The Pocket Epicurean by John Sellars are two of my favorite philosophy books. And now I can add another Epicurean one to the list. Epicurus wasn’t a hedonist, as some people claim. Yes, he said the ultimate goal of life is pleasure. But pleasure from moderation, not excess. By keeping his tastes simple, bread and water were exquisite tasting. The best pleasures, he said, are the tranquil ones, not the wild ones. A clear conscience, good company, and a mind free from mental disturbances. It doesn’t get much better than that, he’d say.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce
Oh man, this book was FUN. It’s a collection of short stories by the philosopher and cynic Ambrose Bierce. The stories are dark and macabre, and set mostly during the Civil War. Each story has a twist at the end. And yet the stories are philosophical? It’s like guilty pleasure reading without the guilt.