In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 73 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my ninth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Blood and Oil by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

As I read biographies of entrepreneurs and investors, one time period keeps coming up, and I’m increasingly curious about it: the late 1960s through roughly 1982. Inflation skyrocketed to double digits, and interest rates reached nearly 20%. This period had a profound impact on the economy and society.

I shared a few weeks ago (see here) that I’m digging deeper into this period to understand what happened, why it happened, and what can be learned.

This week’s book, Inside the Nixon Administration, is the personal diary of the chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of this period, Arthur F. Burns. When I found it, I was excited about reading it because it contains the raw thoughts of the man setting monetary policy during this period, including about what he saw inside President Richard Nixon’s administration. No spin, no wordsmithing, none of that, which is rare in books. This diary was never meant to be viewed by others, so it’s truly a glimpse into the mind of the Fed chair at the time and into the real Nixon administration.

This book isn’t written like a story you can follow. It’s literally daily journal entries about what Burns was dealing with or thinking about that day. Even though it doesn’t flow like a nice story, what he shares is fascinating.

I learned why Nixon chose Burns as Fed chair: because he was a friend and advisor. They’d worked together in the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Nixon as vice president and Burns as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. It was also revealing to see how heavily involved Burns was in the Nixon administration. He regularly attended meetings in the White House and met with Nixon’s inner circle.

And it was interesting to see how the close relationship between Burns and Nixon allowed Nixon to influence monetary policy. The result wasn’t great—inflation and price controls. But what was more interesting to learn was what was most important to Nixon. He made employment a priority because it increased his odds of being reelected, even if that meant rising inflation.

Burns also candidly assessed several administration officials, including Paul Volcker, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and John Connally. The most interesting assessment was that of Richard Nixon. Burns began optimistic and holding him in high regard, but the more he worked with him and observed how he made decisions, the more his view of Nixon turned dour. By the end of the diary, Nixon and his circle were embroiled in the Watergate scandal, which Burns shared candid views about.

I’m glad I found this book. It gave me a valuable perspective on one of the most important men during this critical period in the country’s history.

If you’re interested in this period or the Nixon administration, consider reading Inside the Nixon Administration.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 72 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my eighth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
• The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

In addition to entrepreneurship, I love investing. It’s an intellectual sport that you can never master and that requires continual learning. A few weeks ago, I listened to a podcast with investor and Columbia Business School professor Michael Mauboussin in which he described the concept of expectations investing. The gist is that it’s a method of figuring out what’s already factored into a stock’s current price. He mentioned his book, which details the method, so I bought a copy.

I read the updated and revised version of Expectations Investing, which describes an interesting framework for deconstructing a stock price. The main principle in this framework that makes it different from other valuation methods is that you don’t forecast cash flows to determine the worth of a company and its stock price. Instead, you estimate expectations that are factored into the current stock price to determine what the market anticipates cash flows will be and how many years into the future the market is forecasting those cash flows (i.e., the forecast period). It’s akin to starting at the end and working backward, which intrigued me. Once you know what the market is expecting, you can determine if those expectations are reasonable or will likely lead to revisions (i.e., changes in the stock price).

The framework is great, but it’s not for beginners. I think of it as a graduate-level approach to value investing. It’s not easy to execute initially, but with work and practice, it can be learned by anyone. The book’s website offers useful tutorials that supplement learning.

Other things I like about this book are the “expectations infrastructure” frameworks around thinking about company value creation (value triggers, value factors, and value drivers). The three methods for estimating the continuing value of a company in a discounted cash flow model that incorporates inflation expectations were very useful. And I found his step-by-step approach to determining a company’s cost of capital useful.

I’m glad I read this book. It led to my doing some modeling and analysis of companies using this method, which was both frustrating and fun. If you’re interested in learning about advanced value investing and understanding what’s priced into a stock already, consider reading Expectations Investing.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 71 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my seventh weekend, and I added two more books:

• The Joys of Compounding by Gautam Baid
• Working Backwards by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur committed to learning as much about entrepreneurship as I can. The best way I’ve found to do that is to study entrepreneurs. So, every week, I share a book that I’ve read about an entrepreneur; most are biographies. I post my latest read every Sunday in the Library on this site.

A few years ago, I read The Power Law, which details the history of the venture capital industry, mostly focusing on San Francisco’s ecosystem and VC firms. As I continued learning venture capital history, I discovered Georges Doriot. He was a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor, and he founded one of the first venture capital firms in 1946. His firm, American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC), was publicly traded on the stock market. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a publicly traded VC firm; this intrigued me.  

I found a biography about Doriot’s life, Creative Capital, and gave it a read. Doriot was born in France and emigrated to the U.S. after his father’s factory was decimated in World War I. He was the first Frenchman to attend HBS and started as an investment banker in NYC but quickly became an assistant dean at HBS. This role morphed into his teaching a course and being promoted to an "Assistant Professor of Industrial Management."

An interesting part of this story is Doriot’s path through the Army during World War II, which was pivotal to his founding a VC firm. He managed procurement, which during a global war was no easy task. He and his team had to create products that met the unique needs of deployed troops (think boots that leave minimal footprints in the mud so enemy soldiers can’t track U.S. troops), have private companies manufacture products in sufficient quantities by certain dates (think General Motors building 100,0000 Jeeps in four months), and coordinate delivery of ungodly quantities of various goods and food to war zones. The team building, product development, and problem-solving skills he developed were invaluable and gave him experience managing chaos (which is valuable to entrepreneurs).

Also notable was that even in the early days of VC, the Power Law ruled returns. ARDC’s best investment, which made up the majority of its returns, was a $70,000 check into Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that turned into more than $200 million for ARDC, in large part due to ARDC owning over 50% of DEC when it went public.

This biography was well-researched and had a thorough bibliography and notes section. Anyone interested in learning about the birth of the venture capital industry or why VC firms don’t do well as public companies should consider reading Creative Capital.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 70 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was a holiday weekend and my sixth weekend. I decided to push myself a bit and added four more books:

• How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
• Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor
• Security Analysis, Seventh Edition by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
• Hedge Fund Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager

That’s the update on my July 4th goal.

In May, I read A Short History of Financial Euphoria, which described famous financial bubbles from the 1600s’ tulip mania to the 1980s’ junk-bond frenzy and savings-and-loan crisis. One of the companies mentioned was Investors Overseas Services (IOS), a multibillion-dollar fund of funds built in the 1960s by Bernie Cornfeld. I’ve read about IOS and Cornfeld in other books and was always curious, so I read a biography about Cornfeld, The Bernie Cornfeld Story, written by an early IOS employee.

The biography provides an insider’s perspective on Cornfeld’s life, his personality, and how he built IOS. It details what allowed Cornfeld to rise from social worker in the United States to international financier in Switzerland, as well as his battles with the SEC and how his empire crumbled after IOS’s IPO in 1969.

Cornfeld’s story was pretty wild. It’s interesting to learn how he and IOS rode the bull market of the 1950s and 1960s to insane heights but then were crushed when the market began to reverse in the early 1970s.

I still want to learn more about Cornfeld and will look for more books on him and his associates.

I like to use holidays to unwind, but I’ve also established a habit of setting myself a challenge for each holiday. I enjoy a challenge, and it adds something different to the holiday. I don’t always knock these out of the park. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail (I chronically overestimate what I can accomplish). Either way, it’s fun to push myself toward a goal that I care about (even if others couldn’t care less). I always learn something during the process.

The Library on this site accurately shows every book I’ve read in 2024 and 2025, but not before that. I’ve been adding books that I read before 2024, but that’s a longer-term weekend project. I usually add two books per weekend.

I want to ramp that up a bit this holiday weekend. I’m aiming to add four books to the Library by Tuesday.

That’s the challenge. Very simple. Wish me luck!

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 69 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my fifth weekend, and I added two more books:

• 100 to 1 in the Stock Market by Thomas Phelps
• 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.