Mid-length Non-fiction Book Reviews: Volume 6
Evolutionary morality, more gulag, and even more Stalin. Alzheimer's fraud, pro-union supply chain chaos, juicy Facebook stories and delegation in business.
Stalin's War: A New History of World War II by: Sean McMeekin
Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's by: Charles Piller
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by: Peter S. Goodman
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by: Sarah Wynn-Williams
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by: Dan Sullivan
The Moral Sense
By: James Q. Wilson
Published: 1993
313 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Humans have an innate moral sense derived from biology and the specific requirements of human development, outside of, and more central than the morality they derive from their culture.
What's the author's angle?
Wilson was a noted conservative intellectual. The example of his thinking you might be most familiar with is his “broken windows” theory of policing.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who wants a deeper grounding for a conservative values, an evolutionary perspective on: decency, politeness, self-restraint, honesty, cooperativeness and thinking of others welfare. Particularly when these values seem to be in short supply all over the political spectrum.
Specific thoughts: We’ve really lost sight of the group
So much of ethics is living usefully within a larger group. Basically doing things which benefit the group at small cost to oneself. The idea that someone might have an obligation to do something they don’t want to because it benefits other people is so far out of favor that it’s barely acceptable to mention. You might find a slight nod to it in an advice column as a matter of etiquette, but mention anything resembling a real duty and people will look at you as if you’ve grown a second head.
In my last post I mentioned attending the Natalism Convention in Austin. Reflecting back on the speeches there, they all advocated increased fertility from a self-interested angle. I don’t necessarily blame them for that. But it’s interesting to reflect that even when you’re talking about the perpetuation of the species, no one wants to mention the word “duty” or anything that might imply that even if having children ends up being a sacrifice we might still need to do out of an obligation to the wider group. Now this can be a subtle distinction. Some of the criticisms of the convention revolved around appeals to “Western Civilization” which does make it seem like an appeal to sacrifice for the group, but it didn’t come across that way. It came across as, “Our team is awesome, the other team sucks, don’t you want to be on the awesome team?”
It was not always thus, but rather than turn into the old man yelling at clouds, I will offer up what, for me, was the most memorable anecdote in the book.
Two scholars set out to measure how common it is for people to invest money in some group enterprise when they could get a higher return by investing in an individual one. In one experiment, people were asked to choose, alone and without knowing how others would choose, between investing money in an individual project that would earn them a certain amount of money and investing the same amount in a group enterprise that would benefit everybody, in this case, a project, such as a hi-fi set, that could be enjoyed by everyone living in a college dormitory. More people invested their money in the group project (that they would enjoy whether they paid for it or not) than invested in projects that would benefit them individually. In the twelve versions of this experiment, only one group of subjects clearly preferred to be free riders by shunning the group project— graduate students in economics.
As you can tell by the term “hi-fi” set, this study was published a long time ago, 1984 to be exact. Would it replicate now? I’m guessing it would not. That is you would see free-riding among other people, not just grad students in economics. Assuming I’m right (and I strongly suspect that I am) it could be argued that people are just more rational. But the point I want to draw out—the point this book makes—is that it’s really a sign we’re becoming less moral.
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (1918-1956)
Published: 1973
712 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The second volume in the definitive expose of the vast Soviet prison system—the gulags. The volumes are more or less chronological, so the first volume covers how people are swallowed by the machine and the second volume covers the conditions once someone is inside of it.
What's the author's angle?
Solzhenitsyn spent a decade imprisoned in the gulags, so he is definitely not a disinterested observer, but his perspective is all the more valuable because of his insider perspective.
Who should read this book?
Everyone should read this book, though I suspect a lot of people will not want to.
Specific thoughts: Why does communism get a pass when fascism doesn’t?
To return, once again to my experiences at Natal Con. As I walked into the convention on Friday evening I was called a fascist and a neo-nazi by the ten people protesting the convention. There were many reasons for them using that term (one of them was not that it was an accurate label for my beliefs). But the biggest reason is that it’s the worst insult they can imagine.
I ignored them, but had I retorted that they were communists (the organization they belong to certainly leans socialist) I suspect that they wouldn’t have minded it. I even suspect that some of them might even have embraced the label. Given that communist regimes killed far more people than fascist regimes, the absolute loathing for fascism as compared to the relatively neutral stance many people have on communism has always struck me as strange.
Obviously this is a large topic, and the debate has been going on for decades. But most people defend their more benign view of communism by claiming that Stalin (and Mao) weren’t really communists. I used to have some amount of sympathy for this argument, but having read the first two volumes of the Archipelago, I’m going to say that it’s wrong. It’s clear from Solzhenitsyn that ideology played a huge role in the abuses he describes.
To begin with, if the situation in Soviet Russia was just that one dictator/autocrat/despot had been replaced with another one then you might imagine that they might treat dissenters in similar fashion. But Solzhenitsyn emphasizes again and again how much better political prisoners had it under the Tsars. Not only were conditions worse under Stalin, but the number of prisoners was greater by an order of magnitude. All of these differences ultimately stemmed from differences in ideology. Beyond that there was just the ridiculousness of things, which I mentioned in my review of the previous volume, which appears to have been a characteristic part of the underlying ideology. The strange inversion where you had to pretend that you were building utopia, when in reality it was the most miserable government designed by man.
Tenno recalled with shame how two weeks before his own arrest he had lectured the sailors on "The Stalinist Constitution—The Most Democratic in the World." And of course not one word of it was sincere.
There is no man who has typed even one page… without lying. There is no man who has spoken from a rostrum… without lying; There is no man who has spoken into a microphone… without lying.
But if only it had all ended there! After all, it went further than that: every conversation with the management, every conversation in the Personnel Section, every conversation of any kind with any other Soviet person called for lies—sometimes head on, sometimes looking over your shoulder, sometimes indulgently affirmative.
…But that was not all: Your children were growing up! If they weren't yet old enough, you and your wife had to avoid saying openly in front of them what you really thought; after all, they were being brought up to be Pavlik Morozovs, to betray their own parents, and they wouldn't hesitate to repeat his achievement. And if the children were still little, then you had to decide what was the best way to bring them up; whether to start them off on lies instead of the truth (so that it would be easier for them to live) and then to lie forevermore in front of them too or to tell them the truth, with the risk that they might make a slip, that they might let it out, which meant that you had to instill into them from the start that the truth was murderous, that beyond the threshold of the house you had to lie…just like papa and mama.
Despite all of this communism doesn’t inspire the same revulsion as fascism. But this is a problem which has been going on for a long time, which takes me to the next book.
Stalin's War: A New History of World War II
By: Sean McMeekin
Published: 2021
864 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The under-reported role Stalin played in the pre-war atrocities of World War II. And how, once the war started, the allies failed to extract even the smallest concessions from him, and moreover treated him with kid gloves through the whole of the conflict.
What's the author's angle?
McMeekin is a historian of some note, but he has been criticized for being excessively anti-Russian in his conclusions.
Who should read this book?
If you think Stalin and the communists in general are treated too kindly then this book will give you more ammunition for that view. Additionally, if you want to experience intense anger at the actions of Roosevelt, his underlings, and to a lesser extent Churchill, then this book will definitely provide that.
Specific thoughts: How should Roosevelt and Churchill and the countries they represented have dealt with Stalin?
When considering the actions of the US and UK with respect to the USSR during WWII. You can imagine placing things on a continuum. On the most extreme end you could imagine them refusing to ally with Stalin and beyond that denying him any assistance in his war with Hitler.
On the other end of the spectrum you could imagine them giving Stalin all the aid he asked for, oftentimes at the expense of their own ability to wage war, while demanding very little in return, and in any case having Stalin ignore even these weak demands.
There are many critics of this book, but even they agree that we were firmly on the latter end of this continuum. So was it the right call? Or should Roosevelt and Churchill have pushed back more?
Obviously war’s are fraught affairs, and second guessing decisions made under extremely difficult conditions is easy, but oftentimes not productive. Much of the criticism of this book accuses McMeekin of overplaying Stalin’s machiavellianism, and moreover suggesting things that would only be considered good ideas in hindsight, and possibly not even then. Nevertheless, I think his main argument is correct: Roosevelt and even Churchill, treated Stalin and his demands far more solicitously than was justified even at the time, to say nothing of how poorly it looks in hindsight.
Again, I can’t tell you how mad this book made me. And, yes, I know that this book lays out the most anti-Stalin case possible, but every time I independently checked one of the facts that angered me it turned out to be true. For example: Russia sent any American pilots who crash-landed in Russia to the gulags. We continued sending war materiel to Stalin after the defeat of Germany, which meant that it was mostly used to crush resistance in Eastern Europe. Which fits into a larger narrative of abandoning Eastern Europe almost entirely to the Russians.
This book is filled with page after page of appalling decisions by the US leadership. And while I agree that most of the criticism relies on some amount of hindsight, I nevertheless add this to the list of ways we have always been confusingly soft on communism as an ideology.
Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's
By: Charles Piller
Published: 2025
325 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
Widespread fraud in the realm of Alzheimer’s research, including numerous instances of image manipulation, shoddy data, and flawed studies across several labs and companies.
What's the author's angle?
Piller worked closely with the main whistleblower, Matthew Schrag, in bringing the story to light, though that didn’t seem to result in any bias, both seem very interested in scientific integrity.
Who should read this book?
Anyone who cares deeply about the current crisis in science should read this book for an example of how things have, and can go very wrong.
Specific thoughts: How sure are we that this is limited to just Alzheimer’s research?
I had heard a fair amount about this book before reading it, and the impression I picked up was that a single bad actor had incorrectly pointed everyone in the direction of the amyloid hypothesis, causing tens of millions of research dollars to get wasted by people building on his work. And to a certain extent Sylvain Lesné does fill this role of chief villain in the book. But it turns out that he’s far from alone in his fraud. It seems everywhere that Piller and Schrag look they find fraudulent image manipulation. The list of people under suspicion ends up covering a broad collection of the most influential researchers:
Karen Ashe: Prominent neuroscientist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of multiple papers with Lesné.
Hoau-Yan Wang: Associated with the experimental drug simufilam. Indicted for defrauding the NHI out of millions of dollars.
Berislav Zlokovic: A USC professor who was incredibly influential, with 8,400 citations across 35 papers—on administrative leave.
Eliezer Masliah: The Director Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, author of 132 suspicious papers going all the way back to 1997.
As a final example of how widespread it is, at one point, as part of an attempt to comprehensively survey Alzheimer’s studies, Schrag discovers that his mentor, Othman Ghribi, has been engaged in fraudulent data and image manipulation. This forces Schrage to issue an individual retraction of two papers he had co-authored with Ghribi. And, in an effort at rigor, and to avoid charges of favoritism, Schrag compiled a 67 page dossier covering 34 of Ghribi’s papers which all appeared to have doctored images.
So this is bad, and it’s bad on multiple fronts:
First, though this is both bad and good, we might be heading in a direction where the best way to make a name for yourself is to follow in Schrag’s footsteps. It might be way easier to find suspicious research that doesn’t replicate, than to do original research that is sufficiently rigorous. I admire the heck out of Schrag, and at the moment he’s probably attracting more grief within his profession than praise from outside it, but outside praise maybe become the best way of getting praise.
Relatedly, it’s bad for young scientists. They’re now operating under a cloud of suspicion where everything they do may end up being scrutinized, and tiny errors could be blown up into career ending accusations. One of the things the book makes clear is drawing the line between a fraudulent image and a weird image is difficult without access to the original source files.1 So the possibility of false accusations is pretty high. Pre-registering hypotheses and providing raw data will help, but that transition is still ongoing.
Third, it’s obviously bad for Alzheimer’s research. At this point no one is sure what data can be relied on. Whether the science is sound but sloppy, or if they’re basically going to have to start over in all of these areas. It’s particularly bad news for those hoping for a cure anytime soon.
Finally, and this is the thing I kept coming back to. Is Alzheimer’s research uniquely bad for some reason? Or has it just been subjected to an unusual level of scrutiny? If other fields are subject to the same level of scrutiny will we find a similar pile of skeletons in that field’s closet?
I suspect that there are some reasons why Alzheimer’s research might be more prone to fraud. It’s not quite cancer, but it attracts an enormous amount of attention. And whereas cancer has an easily identifiable biomarker, Alzheimer’s doesn’t. Nevertheless I think the incentives that truly drive this kind of misbehavior—publish or perish, fame and attention, and the fact that all of the “easy” science has been done—exist basically everywhere you look in scientific academia.
This leads one to the sobering conclusion that we may have a much broader, and deeper problem than we realize.
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
By: Peter S. Goodman
Published: 2024
416 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
The supply chain issues that occurred during the pandemic with a heavy focus on how it played out among the working class.
What's the author's angle?
This was a very pro-labor anti-capital book, and Goodman does seem to have a progressive-populist leaning more broadly.
Who should read this book?
If you’re really interested in the labor side of things you might want to read it. I found it kind of lacking when it came to logistics which is what I was mostly interested in.
Specific thoughts: What wrongs must we right? What wrongs should we attempt to right? And what wrongs are necessary costs in order to get somewhere better?
I read this book looking for examples of how efficiency leads to fragility. And there was indeed a lot of that. Goodman seems to reserve particular venom for McKinsey consultants. (As well he should, they deserve all the opprobrium they get and more just based on their role in the opioid crisis.) His criticisms extend to extreme “leanness” in manufacturing, inventories, and workforces, through to stock buybacks, and excessive corporate profits, all the way down to a consideration of the plight of the humble longshoreman, the ones who recently went on strike.
Perhaps you noted a little bit of sarcasm in that last bit. Because of their strong union, longshoremen make quite a bit of money. Half of longshoremen make over $150k/year. And of course the union wants to halt all automation, just as previously they wanted to stop containerization. In their defense, Goodman points out that being a longshoreman is a pretty sucky job, and that it’s one of the few jobs left where a working class person can achieve a middle class lifestyle. I’m not entirely unsympathetic to this, but I think it’s probably one of those things where discomfiting the longshoreman may be the price we need to pay to get somewhere better.
I think he makes a stronger case when it comes to long-haul trucking. Over the last few decades trucking went from another area where the working class could be middle class, to an industry where things are pretty awful. Truckers are not making 150k/year. Oftentimes they end up making less than minimum wage, and are forced to exit in a worse position than when they started. Goodman mentions that the average turnover among truckers is 100%. Meaning that if there are 3.5 million truckers in the US, then every year 3.5 million new truckers need to be hired to keep up with the number of people who quit. Given that some people last longer than a year, this means that some positions are being filled twice a year.
Must something be done about this? Should we wait for automation to solve it, when we get self-driving semis? Must we then solve the problem of 3.5 million truckers (or some large fraction of that) being out of work? What sort of problems must be solved vs. being nice to solve, but the world won’t end if we don’t?
This is a tough question to grapple with, because obviously we would like to solve all the problems. But clearly that’s impossible. But people get understandably angry if you tell them that their life is going to get a lot worse when they’re put out of a job through automation, but everyone else’s life will get marginally better. And Goodman points out that there are a lot of dislocations like this going on. And a lot of stuff that seems pretty bad, but might be the inevitable consequence of a free market economy?
One can imagine creating a list. Perhaps we should call it The List. Stuff goes on the list if it’s truly something that must be solved because the consequences of it not being solved are too great. So x-risks would obviously go on the list, and probably near x-risks as well. For example there’s debate over whether nuclear war is a true x-risk, but it nevertheless probably belongs on The List. So what about this problem of truckers? What about the large issue of inequality, and life sucking for the lower class?
I know that quite a few very smart people think that inequality is basically not a problem. But to the extent that it translates into populist anger, it’s ended up taking us to a very chaotic place. I don’t agree with everything Goodman says, but I think more chaos is ahead, and despite all the attention it’s gotten it may need still more attention. Does this problem of populist anger, dislocation, the associated chaos belong on The List? It might…
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Published: 2025
400 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
An insider’s view of the bizarre habits and decisions of Facebook’s upper echelon.
What's the author's angle?
Wynn-Williams worked as Director of Public Policy at Facebook, and accordingly spent a lot of time with people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
Who should read this book?
Facebook/Meta does not want you to read this book, if you’re like me, that’s all the reason you need to read it.
Specific thoughts: When the story is this juicy, objectivity is difficult.
This was a quick read for me. I gobbled up all the salacious details of the backroom shenanigans of Facebook like a fast food meal in the middle of a long road trip. And while it was salacious it seemed entirely believable. At no point did I think “That couldn’t possibly have happened.” Wynn-Williams struck me as being entirely credible, and the stories she told matched my own experiences with tech executives. Still three things should be kept in mind:
First, if I had someone chronicling all of the dumb things I did in my early entrepreneurial career I doubt I would come off much better than Zuckerberg or Sandberg. Particularly if I ended up with as much money and influence as they did.
Second, while I’m sure all of the things in the book happened. We’re only getting context on these things from one angle: Wynn-Williams. I’m sure that with some of these things there is a different context where the incident looks entirely ordinary.
Third, Wynn-Williams is, understandably, pretty upset about her time at Facebook. And so not only are we getting things from a single angle, but it’s a biased angle. That said, there are lots of places in the book where she compliments the people for times when they really did excel, so it’s not entirely critical. In fact one of the big appeals of the book is how much she started off believing in the people and the mission of Facebook.
You may think that with those three caveats in place that I wouldn’t recommend the book. Or that I think it’s fatally flawed. On the contrary I think we need far more of these books. I’d like to see a similar book about Uber, OpenAI, Apple and Google. Come one, come all! I think a greater sense of how the sausage is made within tech sector would probably do us a lot of good.
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
By: Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan
Published: 2020
208 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
That most of the stuff we’re trying to do can be done better by someone else, and we should be looking for that person rather than attempting to figure out how to take care of it ourselves.
What's the author's angle?
The author (Hardy) is a huge fanboy of the guru (Sullivan), and given that he basically begged Sullivan to let him write the book you should expect a business book even more relentless positive than usual.
Who should read this book?
This is yet another inspirational business book, and I personally know many people who swear by it. I thought it worked pretty well in the “cheerleader” role, but it was light on actionable advice.
Specific thoughts: Delegation is desirable, but it can also develop disastrously
There are few feelings better in business than delegating a task to someone who will not only take the task off your plate, but do it better than you ever could. However, there are few things more frustrating than delegating a task only to watch as it’s butchered in ways so terrible they become recurring nightmares. This book talks a lot about the first thing and not at all about the second.
To be fair they do offer some methods for pushing things towards the positive outcome. And yes, these methods allow you to put your thumb on the scale, but they don't guarantee success.
I will admit that in my own business I often let my fear of the terrible outcome keep me from pursuing the bliss that comes from the first option, and this book probably helped me be more balanced. But in the final analysis, other than offering a sort of general encouragement to do more delegation, it’s not breaking much new ground.
Perhaps, like me, you’re subscribed to numerous substacks, and if one of them doesn’t update for a while you don’t even notice. Except, perhaps, when it finally does update and you’re reminded that it exists in the first place. In which case you probably don’t even care about the most recent gap in my publishing, or the broken commitments it represents. But perhaps you're a true fan, I think I have a few, and the gap was noticed and the broken commitments caused you psychic pain, however fleeting and however minor. I can’t promise an end to that, but I can tell you that whatever the psychic wounds you’ve suffered, my self-inflicted psychic torment is far, far greater.
Subscriptions are a balm to my troubled soul. So if you haven’t subscribed, and you’re feeling kind, you might consider it.
Of course none of the accused ended up providing their original source files, which seems pretty suspicious…
>> "But it’s interesting to reflect that even when you’re talking about the perpetuation of the species, no one wants to mention the word “duty” or anything that might imply that even if having children ends up being a sacrifice we might still need to do out of an obligation to the wider group."
I wonder if the best way to sell pro-natalism is to avoid both the extremes of "self-interest" and "duty" and take the mean of "gratitude". Something like: "this world is broken but it's also wonderful, and I'm thankful that I've gotten to be a part of it. It seems fitting to give back to it."
Obviously, there are pieces of that which need to be unpacked, but my hunch is that there's something to this. A better flavor, somehow.