Elon Musk¹: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

 

The most innovative² and intriguing³ entrepreneur of our time is ushering⁴ in a future that's as unexpected and disruptive as the erstwhile future that the PC and then the internet created.

 

"Because of Musk, Americans could wake up in 10 years with the most modern highway in the world: a transit⁵ system run by thousands of solar power charging stations and traversed by electric cars……These advances are simultaneously⁶ difficult to fathom⁷ and seemingly inevitable⁸ if Musk can simply buy enough time to make them work."

 

Get What's Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, and Paul Solman

 

Don't activate⁹ your Social Security until you're 70. If you're eligible¹⁰ for auxiliary¹¹ benefits (spousal, childcare), activate your Social Security at age 66, suspend your own benefits until age 70, and meanwhile collect the auxiliary benefits.

 

"Social Security is, far away, Americans' most important retirement¹² asset. And that's not only true for people of modest means. Middle-income and upper-income households actually have the most to gain, in total amounts, from getting Social Security right. Toting up lifetime benefits, even low-earning couples may be Social Security millionaires……Social Security is a very meaningful income source."

 

Losing the Signal: The Untold¹³ Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff

 

A major corporation with a dominating market presence trashes its future due to the hubris¹⁴ and short-sightedness of its executive team.

 

"BlackBerries meet us fast and efficient, but a little neurotic¹⁵. The handsets transformed legions of users into addicts¹⁶. For three days in October 2011, RIM¹⁷ customers were forced to go cold turkey. No BlackBerry. Where did everybody go? When the outage ended, users were as committed as ever to mobile messaging. For Research In Motion, however, it was a different story. RIM was losing the signal to the market it created."

 

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler

 

Traditional economics assume that people are rational and will act in their own best interests, when in fact people are irrational¹⁸ and frequently make very silly and stupid decisions, both individually and en masse.

 

"The problem is the model being used by economists¹⁹ (…) which I like to call an Econ for short. Compared to this fictional²⁰ world of Econs, humans do a lot of misbehaving, and that means that economic models make a lot of bad predictions. Virtually no economists saw the financial crisis of 2007-08 coming, and worse, many thought that both the crash and its aftermath were things that simply could not happen."

 

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder

 

A real-life account of an American financier who set out to expose corruption²¹, murder, and a criminal conspiracy²² in Putin's Russia.

 

"10:45. I really began to panic. 10:51. How could I have been so stupid? Why would an average guy from the South Side of Chicago think he could get away with taking down one Russian oligarch after another? 10:58. Stupid, stupid, stupid! ARROGANT²³ AND STUPID, BILL! ARROGANT AND JUST PLAIN STUPID! 11:02. I'm going to a Russian prison. I'm going to a Russian prison. I'm going to a Russian prison...."

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