Best books I read in 2016

Jason Collins

2 years ago

The best books I read in 2016 – generally released in other years – are below (in no particular order). For the non-fiction books, the links lead to my reviews.

Joe Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (2015): A lot of interesting ideas, but left me with a lot of questions.

Garett Jones’s Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own (2015): A fantastic exposition of some important but neglected features of the world.

Phil Rosenzweig’s Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions (2014): An entertaining examination of how behavioural economics findings hold up for real world decision making.

Philip Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (2006): I re-read this before reading Tetlock’s also good Superforecasting, but Expert Political Judgement is the superior of the two books.

Jonathan Last’s What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster (2014): Much to disagree or argue with, but entertaining and a lot to like.

John Kay’s Other People’s Money (2015): A fantastic critique of the modern financial system and regulation.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: The classic I most enjoyed.