Mid-length Non-fiction Book Reviews: Volume 7

Stories of women with lots of kids, theories of economic decline, the Korean War, two books on the 2024 election, Marcus Aurelius, and a mediocre business book

1. Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by: Catherine Pakaluk

2. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by: Mancur Olson

3. This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness by: T. R. Fehrenbach

4. Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by: Jonathan Allen

5. Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

6. Meditations by: Marcus Aurelius

7. The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by: Dan Sullivan and Benjamin P. Hardy

Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth

By: Catherine Pakaluk

Published: 2024

400 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

A survey of what motivates mothers to have a lot of kids. Pakaluk and her co-investigators interviewed 55 women who have five or more children. (Sometimes much more, one of the subjects of her investigation has fifteen children.)

What's the author's angle?

Pakaluk has eight kids herself, so she’s not exactly a disinterested observer, but that fact probably helped her to get the mothers in her study to open up to her in ways they might not have with other investigators.

Who should read this book?

Anyone looking for positive stories about large families, and a reminder of some of the hidden benefits we’ve forgotten about.

Specific thoughts: Large families are an “experience good”

Pakaluk buttresses a point that I’ve long made: It’s difficult to describe the benefits of having kids, particularly a lot of kids, until you do.

Kim described children as something of an experience good. Other women concurred. “You can’t really know what it is until you experience it. You fall deeply in love with your first baby,” said Moira, a mom with five in the Northeast. “Experience goods” is the economists’ label for goods whose total costs and benefits cannot be fully assessed in advance, before being acquired and experienced. An example would be a vacation in a new place, or a meal at a restaurant. You have a rough idea of what you’re getting, but you must make the decision before you know the most important things about it. So, the idea that the benefits of having children turned out to be more substantial than expected came up frequently.

I entirely agree, and not only that, I think that the experience changes as you have more kids. Of course women who have no children bring down the fertility level, but the people who only have three kids, aren’t doing very much to boost it either (it’s more than the replacement rate, but not by much). But Pakaluk claims that three kids is generally where things are at their most difficult. As the joke goes, you’ve had to move from man to man to a zone defense. They’ll probably all be young and needy. And because of this the older children are not old enough to help. So Pakaluk speculates that people get to three kids, imagine it’s just going to continue to get worse, and stop right before it starts getting easier.¹

If you get past three kids, particularly once you get to the realm of five or six kids then not only can the older kids help, but you also notice amazingly beneficial socialization effects. Children have to learn to get along. Older children learn responsibility. Older daughters get experience caring for a baby.² In short, as you read about the experiences of these women you start to get the feeling that large families are how “the system” was designed to work. Having one or two high pressure children is actually the worst way to do it. To the extent that some studies show that parents are unhappy (and I have my doubts, these studies are all over the place.) It’s entirely possible that it’s just we’re not having enough kids to get to the happy place.

Just as there is something of a state change as people have more children, I think there is an even stronger state change for marriages with children. I’m not the best person to ask here because we had children pretty quickly after getting married, so I have very little experience of being married without children. But I kind of wonder how marriages work in their absence. Raising children makes you into a team in a deep and important way, one which seems impossible to duplicate otherwise. Pakaluk agrees with me, and offers many stories of how having children (particularly lots of them) strengthened and deepened a marriage.

So what do these women have in common? Is there some secret sauce that we can access which will help us turn things around? There is one thing, all 55 of the women she talked to were religious. Though which religion varied a lot. And just because they were religious, that didn’t mean that they were uneducated. Pakaluk highlights many very accomplished women (several had PhDs, including herself) who decided to have lots of kids. But, a strong religious belief appears to be necessary, but not sufficient in order for them to have lots of kids. (I understand the Collinses are a counter example, but at the moment they only have four kids, so they wouldn’t have been eligible for the study in any event.)

Outside of this the book doesn’t offer up much in the way of recommendations. It’s great as a collection of stories, and positive depictions of large families and the women who bear all these kids, but it doesn’t do much to pin down the actual mechanism for how this might be brought about. In her defense Pakaluk points out that we’re still very early in our study of large families, and outside of her efforts, almost no work has been done. This book is a great start, and a very upbeat look at having lots of children. May there be many more (books and children).

The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities

By: Mancur Olson

Published: 1982

276 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

This book reminds me of an old clip from the Simpson’s. In this particular scene Mr. Burns is reminiscing about how it “used to be”. In the flashback we see a very young Burns, in a sepia tone scene following around his father. His father confronts an ill-clad child laborer, and discovering that he is stealing atoms, orders him to be hauled away. As the boy is being dragged off he says:

You can’t treat the working man this way. One day we’ll form a union and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve. Then we’ll go too far, and get corrupt and shiftless and the Japanese will eat us alive!

This book is an examination of the process the boy describes scaled up to the level of civilizations. The Japanese even play a central role in the story!

What's the author's angle?

Olson is attempting (and largely succeeding IMHO) to put forth a new theory for stagflation, something that all previous frameworks (Keynesian, monetarist, and rational-expectations) had a difficult time explaining.

Who should read this book?

The theory Olson presents is sensible and compelling. As economic books go it’s quite readable. If you have any interest at all in economics I would definitely pick it up.

Specific thoughts: The missing piece to leftist critiques of laissez faire.

I was reading this book around the same time as How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman. (See my review here.) And while I felt like Goodman went too far in a progressive populist direction, much of what he said about corporate misbehavior stemmed from exactly the sort of processes Olson described, but viewed from a leftist angle. As is so commonly the case these days, Goodman seems to mostly ignore the abuses of the left. (For example, he’s a big defender of the longshoremen’s union.) But people on the right have the opposite problem. They’re happy to point out union abuses, but they often completely ignore abuses by corporations.

I think this is what made Olson so powerful for me. It wasn’t just another book from an economist talking about how unfettered markets would solve everything. Olson presented a compelling case for how any sufficiently insular group can fall prey to sclerosis, rent-seeking, and anti-competitive practices. And further how markets have no way of self-policing against this practice. Out of all this he uncovers a credible source and mechanism to explain the origin of the current populist anger (decades in advance of its appearance) which is, otherwise, so often dismissed.

This is not to say that this anger is entirely justified, or that corporate sclerosis is exactly as bad as union obstinacy. On the one hand, it is often easier to disrupt a corporation than to break up a union. On the other hand it appears easier for a few businesses to coordinate than for any given workforce to unionize. The overall point being that Olson’s logic cuts both ways, and perhaps as we try to navigate the various forms of populist anger that seem so omnipresent, using his toolkit in as broad a fashion as possible will help us better understand it and ultimately delay the decline Olson warns about.

This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness

By: T. R. Fehrenbach

Published: 1963

540 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

The Korean War, how we stumbled into it with ill-prepared troops and a poor understanding of our new role in the world. The book is interesting because Korea is the first of many post WWII wars where the US tried to keep things limited. But Fehrenbach points out over and over again that at the level of the individual soldier all wars are total war.

What's the author's angle?

Fehrenbach is very critical of US Army training methods in the leadup to the war, and concludes that if we’re going to be an empire that we really ought to have legions in the mold of previous empires: Well-trained professional soldiers who go where they’re needed and fight because that’s their job.

Who should read this book?

People interested in Korea, and in particular people who are interested in tracing a line from Korea, through Vietnam, down to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Specific thoughts: How sure are we about the quality of our soldiers?

I already discussed this book extensively in a previous post, so if you’re interested in a more in-depth discussion I would refer you to that. I’m still fascinated by the issue of troop quality and overall morale, and in this space I’d like to go more into the backstory leading up to Korea. I was never able to find a place for it in that previous piece, so I’ll stick it in here.

In the wake of World War II complaints poured in about arrogant and abusive officers, differences in pay and privileges, and the harsh treatment NCOs and officers inflicted on their subordinates. While these things certainly happen all the time, WWII exaggerated the problem, mostly because it cast such a wide net. The speed and scope of the mobilization resulted in hastily trained, underqualified officers, while at the same time bringing in middle and upper class soldiers who carry with them a lower tolerance for abuse and a greater expectation that their complaints will be acted on.

In response to both bad behavior and the complaint about the same they asked Lieutenant-General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle (of the Tokyo Raid fame) to chair a board. People referred to it as the “GI Gripes Board”. Based on the board's recommendations the army made numerous changes including: far less harsh discipline, a levelling of privileges, and an overall "democratization" of the army. This happened in ‘46-47 meaning that there was enough time for it to affect the soldiers who later were sent to Korea in the early days of the war. Fehrenbach contends that these soldiers were undertrained, unprepared, and unused to taking commands. Not only did this contribute to losing battles, but it also contributed to numerous lost lives.

The question is did we learn our lesson? Or have there been further attempts to soften the army, in one respect or another, leading to soldiers of lower quality? The answer would probably have to be “No, we have not entirely learned that lesson.” One of the more interesting incidents occurred during Vietnam when McNamara decided to take more than 300,000 individuals who had scored too low on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, and allow them to be drafted anyway. These troops ended up being called “McNamara's Morons” and they died at three times the rate of soldiers who had qualified under the previous standards.

Currently there’s a military wide recruiting slump, and the military is once again trying various things to overcome it. I think we have a sense that the US Military is doing well based on the unit level performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps. Certainly one would hope that the wars of the 21st century have at least given us an experienced military. But a lot of that fighting has been done by special forces or took place against vastly inferior foes. I’m not sure how much this tells us about how the military will perform when we’re against more of a peer competitor. Hopefully we’ll either never have to find out, or failing that, we’ll find out that, at the level where it’s really important, Fehrenbach’s warnings were heeded.

Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

By: Jonathan Allen

Published: 2025

352 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

A behind the scenes look at the 2024 presidential campaigns from the debate in June, through the transition from Biden to Harris a month later, culminating in the actual election in November.

What's the author's angle?

This is the third “behind the scenes of the presidential election” book Allen has written, so it’s kind of his beat. To the extent Allen has a partisan slant, he has worked in the past as a Democratic party operative, but this book has been accused of being too hard on Biden and Harris and not hard enough on Trump. But I think it’s safe to say that the ground level reality was pretty hard on Biden and Harris beyond any embellishing Allen might have done.

Who should read this book?

Two books, this one and Original Sin (see the following review) have emerged recently as attempts to chronicle Biden’s withdrawal from the race after his disastrous debate performance, and the craziness which followed. If you want more of a focus on the election with discussion of Trump as well, read this book. Otherwise read Original Sin.

Specific thoughts: The ongoing weakness of the actual parties

It’s easy to think that in our hyper-partisan times that powerful partisan passions should translate into powerful parties. (I mean they have the same root for crying out loud!) But actually the opposite is true. The two major parties have probably never been more weak. Everyone knew that Harris was going to have problems as a candidate, and it’s clear from the book that several high level Democrats, most notably Obama, really wanted a mini-primary in order to choose someone else. But once Biden endorsed Harris, it was all over.

Pause to consider this for a second and you realize how absolutely bonkers it is. Biden, who was just revealed to have selfishly decided to run again, despite being unable to effectively campaign in pursuit of that run, got to decide who should run in his place. He just demonstrated that he makes horrible decisions about whether someone (himself) is qualified to run for president; he should be the last person making that decision again. And this is without bringing in his obvious cognitive impairment which further calls into question whether he’s competent to make any decisions.

It would have been one thing for him to anoint Harris, and then back away from things in order to give her the best chance possible, but instead he repeatedly told her “Let there be no daylight between us”. It was understood that this was the cost of his anointing. Harris was already going to be tied to a historically unpopular president, who’s just been revealed to have perpetrated a major coverup, and Biden wants to bind her even more tightly to all of that?

This all culminated in Harris’ appearance on The View when she was asked:

…whether there was anything specifically she would have done “differently than President Biden during the past four years.”

Harris paused for a beat. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes looked upward as though she were trying to access information. Shaking her head lightly from side to side, she spoke nine words that would haunt her campaign. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.

Many people wondered how she could have fumbled so badly. Surely they had to expect that she would be asked about differentiating herself from Biden, and make sure she had an answer prepared. It turns out she had prepared for that, and when she was asked the first time she talked about differences going forward, and putting a Republican in her cabinet. The answer she had practiced. What she wasn’t prepared for is a follow-up question. Having used up her prepared answer she gave the disastrous “not a thing comes to mind” response. In Harris’ defense, she’d been running the “no daylight” script for several months. Also her campaign was almost entirely staffed by Biden loyalists who were constantly reminding her of the need to be loyal. (Though I think they all still would have liked her to answer differently, but you can’t be continually pushing one thing, and then act surprised when that’s what you get.)

This answer and her eventual loss in the election was the natural outcome of all of those things. Still, the race was close and one wonders if a different choice there, or somewhere else, might have tipped it the other direction.

Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again

By: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

Published: 2025

352 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

It’s pretty much there in the subtitle. The one thing you won’t find is much introspection about the broader culpability of the media.

What's the author's angle?

Lots of people are annoyed that this book doesn’t cover the media’s role very much, but Thompson was actually writing articles about Biden’s decline before the debate. Tapper doesn’t have quite as much cover, but he never said Biden was better than ever like Joe Scarborough. This means they’re using the book to paint themselves as more sober and reflective actors in the whole mess.

Who should read this book?

If you mostly want shocking, behind the scenes stories of Biden’s problems from well before the debate, this book has you covered. And really, who doesn’t enjoy such stories? From a gossipy perspective this book is better than Fight but it’s entirely focused on Biden, and not the election as a whole.

Specific thoughts: Who is owed an apology?

Lots of people, particularly those who think the Trump presidency is a disaster, are looking for someone to blame. Popular candidates include Jill Biden and her Rasputin-esque chief aid, Anthony Bernal. To give you some idea:

It was difficult to find many Bernal defenders among those who have known him longest. He had allies among aides he had mentored but more detractors who resented his internal machinations. He freely trash-talked senior, mid-level, and junior aides. They thought Bernal was confiding in them, only to discover that he was insulting them to others. Some even described him as the worst person they had ever met.

Despite this, Biden himself deserves a big chunk of the blame, though it’s unclear how much his decline should allow him to be let off the hook. But the more it lets him off the hook the more it increases the blame we must assign to those around him.

Biden’s justification, and the justification of everyone around him, was that he was the only one who could beat Trump. And somehow they spun this into an excuse to cover up all manner of infirmities. And is still claiming that if he hadn’t dropped out he would have beaten Trump. It’s a level of hubris that can’t help but be fascinating.

It’s unsurprising that this is where the post-mortem discussion has centered. I’m at least as interested in who’s owed an apology. Certainly Robert Hur, the special prosecutor who declined to prosecute Biden because of his evident dementia, is owed a giant apology from all sorts of people for the vitriolic attacks he endured for telling, what proved to be, the truth. Not only that, but Hur had left his law firm to take on the prosecutor job, and after releasing his report he was essentially blacklisted and unable to find work for several months. The book treats him very sympathetically, but I haven’t heard of anyone high profile apologizing to Hur for the way he was treated, and lots of people definitely should.

However, the person who stands out to me is Dean Phillips. Phillips mounted a primary challenge against Biden precisely because he could tell that the president was just too old. He got a lot of grief for doing so, and was ostracized by essentially his entire party. As part of his long shot run for president he retired from the House, partially as an example that you don’t need to cling to power forever. It is possible to step down. I haven’t heard anyone bring him up as a potential Democratic Candidate in 2028, but I think he has a lot to recommend him.

The impact of Biden’s decision to run again, even though he clearly wasn’t up to it, will continue to reverberate for a very long time. It would be nice to point to a single decision point or a single person, a single sliding door we could avoid going through the next time this comes up, but it appears it was just a lot of flawed people following very perverse incentives, and not nearly enough people willing to look out for the greater good of the entire nation.

Meditations

By: Marcus Aurelius

Published: 180 AD

272 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

A collection of observations on living philosophically, specifically the philosophy of stoicism.

What's the author's angle?

It’s widely accepted that Aurelius never intended these observations/sayings to be read by anyone other than himself. This means that the whole book has a refreshing lack of agenda.

Who should read this book?

As one of the all time great works of Western philosophy, probably everyone.

Specific thoughts: Is short bad?

You can find hundreds of people talking about this book. It’s well covered territory, so what can I possibly add to the hundreds of observations which have already been offered on this exceptional book?

Probably not much, but I would like to talk about length. Meditations is a series of observations, most only a sentence or a paragraph with a few that might take up an entire page. I have no objection to pithy observations, and I’ve long fancied myself to be a collector of quotes. So this was right up my alley, but at some point I was reminded that in other contexts I’m of the opinion that shortness is bad.

Or at least that is one of the narratives that we hear over and over again, and a narrative I’ve pushed myself. The story goes that in the early days of the country we communicated through long articles and extensive speeches. The classic example is the Lincoln-Douglas debates. But first came radio, and then TV, and then YouTube until at last we arrived at the hellish, epistemologically vacuous world of TikTok.

The most obvious metric is that things gradually got shorter, and as that happened they required less effort to understand which is both a consequence and a cause of society as a whole being dumbed down. But clearly this misses something important, because Meditations, and other examples of great quotes, require and reward deep examination and repeated readings. But they’re also very short. Consider:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

So what is the difference between this quote which takes 30 seconds to read, and a 30 second TikTok video, why is one a deep philosophical observation and the other something that rots your brain? (And to be clear, I believe deeply in both of those descriptions.)

I think it comes down to engagement. What engagement is each seeking? Recall that Aurelius didn’t even know other people were going to be reading his observations, whereas TikTok is designed around nothing else. The information conveyed matters not at all, all that matters is whether you look at it (as opposed to read it) and continue to look at the next video in the chain. Any sort of reflection would disrupt that. As it turns out, that’s a pretty big difference.

The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success

By: Dan Sullivan and Benjamin P. Hardy

Published: 2021

264 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

Two different mindsets, the first is a positive mindset which focuses on how much better your present is than your past. How much you’ve gained between now and then. The second is a negative mindset which focuses on how far you still have left to go before (you think) you’ll be happy/satisfied. This is the gap between now and some magical future when you’ll finally be happy.

What's the author's angle?

Sullivan is a business consultant and Hardy is the man he trusts to take his ideas and translate them into book form.

Who should read this book?

If you find yourself continually imagining that you’ll be happy once something happens, this book might help. However, I think it’s more of a “pump you up” book, than a book with lots of insights. (It basically only has one. It’s a powerful one, but it’s still just the one. Nor is it the only book to offer this insight.)

Specific thoughts: How do they do it?

Sullivan is obviously VERY successful, but when I read him (this is the second book of his I’ve read) I don’t come away thinking “This man is a genius!” Or “I never would have thought of that!” Instead I more often come away thinking “I’ve heard that before, at least half a dozen times.” Which is not to say this is a bad book. Reading it will definitely inspire you to focus more on what you’ve done than the imaginary things you may feel you still need to do. It also does a pretty good job helping to encourage gratitude. Which can never go amiss. Nevertheless, it deserves to be reiterated, this is a pretty lightweight book. And I’m almost ashamed to have it in the same set of reviews as Meditations.

But I guess that could be said about a lot of the books I review.

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I returned from Iceland yesterday. It was spectacular. I may have to return there every summer during July when Utah is an inferno. I didn’t get as much writing or reading done as I wanted to, but my goals on this front are always entirely unrealistic. If you want to experience the continual disappointment that comes from unmet goals consider subscribing. As an inducement I’ve tossed in a couple of pictures:

1. It should go without saying that Pakaluk and myself are speaking of averages. Obviously there are lots of outliers with everything that’s said here.

2. Pakaluk is exclusively positive about stuff like this, but I do know people who helped out a lot with siblings when they were young and ended up getting sick of it. Consequently they ended up having far fewer kids of their own.