The many company shuttle rides last year turned out to be the most productive time for reading. This reason alone is enough to make me eagerly look forward to the days when self-driving cars hit the market.
- Why the West Rules—for Now by Ian Morris
- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
- Asset Allocation: Balancing Financial Risk by Roger C. Gibson
- The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable by James Owen Weatherall
- The Quants by Scott Patterson
- Dark Pools by Scott Patterson
If Guns, Germs, and Steel is an attempt to expose geographic factors as the main reason behind the different evolutionary paths taken by different civilizations, Why the West Rules is a similar attempt with focus on the differences in the social development between West and East. With this slightly narrower topic, Ian Morris was able to afford finer brushstrokes than Jared Diamond. As a by-product, Why the West Rules offers a pretty good review of world history. The Ascent of Money tells vivid stories about credit, bond, stock, insurance and mortgage, and concludes with an examination of globalization. The target audience of Asset Allocation seems to be professional financial advisors, but the language is plain enough for laypeople, and the key message is, of course, diversification. The remaining three books are variations on the same theme, i.e., legends about important people in the financial industry: The Physics of Wall Street is centered on people with strong physics or math background, The Quants focuses on big names in the quantitative hedge fund industry, and Dark Pools is about people in the high-frequency trading business. The Physics of Wall Street is probably more credible than the other two given their apparent theatrical overtones.
JC Notes 