Book Review: The Inner Game of Tennis

June 14, 2017April 23, 2018 Douglass GakingLeave a comment

Business Insider just published a piece about how this book guided the Golden State Warriors through their historic 2016-17 season. The piece shows a photograph of one of the best paragraphs of the book, which Tom Brady tweeted, showing where he wrote in the margin next to it. The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance has helped a lot of successful people get where they are today by focusing on a critical, but unemotional mindset.

I first read The Inner Game in the spring of 2004, at the end of a mostly unsuccessful freshman year in music school. The demand for hours of daily practice is one of the major reasons that people drop out of music school. Spending anywhere from 2 to 8 hours per day alone in a small room with your instrument, fighting to meet the standards of yourself and your professors, can quickly drive you insane. Continue reading “Book Review: The Inner Game of Tennis” →

Book Review: Buffettology & The New Buffettology

June 6, 2017April 23, 2018 Douglass GakingLeave a comment

Buffettology: The Previously Unexplained Techniques That Have Made Warren Buffett the World’s Most Famous Investor

There are plenty of books about Warren Buffett available at any bookstore or library. What makes this one unique is that it is not written from the perspective of Warren Buffett’s cult following. After her divorce with Warren Buffett’s son, Mary Buffett capitalized on a rare opportunity to publish insider information about one of the richest people in the world and his investment strategies.

Rather than quote Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters to death like most authors, Mary sticks to the details of Warren’s investments, how he made each choice and how it worked out. She provides a lot of quantitative data that is useful for reverse-engineering Warren Buffett’s portfolio.

Information from this book definitely helped me refine a few aspects of my investing philosophy and my screening process. Mary is concise and unemotional, making this a quick and productive read.

The New Buffettology

This sequel to Buffettology updates Mary Buffett’s analysis of Warren Buffett’s investing strategies from the first book. It is a fine addition to the library of materials available about Warren Buffett, adding new investment decisions from his history that I had not previously read about. It also brings readers of the 1997 Buffettology up to speed on developments getting into the 21st century, when the bubble of the 1990s burst, hurting many portfolios, but creating new opportunities for patient value investors.

Book Reviews

Book Review: Physics of the Future

May 24, 2017April 23, 2018 Douglass Gaking1 Comment

Physics of the Future This book has a misleading title, which may or may not be the author’s fault, but it is a valuable resource for considering the possible technological developments of the next several decades. Dr. Michio Kaku focuses a lot more on biology than physics, which is the one thing I found disappointing about the book. However, his coverage of nanotechnology makes a nice recovery.

Dr. Kaku’s realistic discussion of artificial intelligence presents the most important conclusion of his research in future technologies: we cannot recreate the human mind. He writes,

Since we are drowning in an ocean of information, the most precious commodity in modern society is wisdom. Without wisdom and insight, we are left to drift aimlessly and without purpose, with an empty, hollow feeling after the novelty of unlimited information wears off.

Much like Thomas L. Friedman in The World Is Flat, Dr. Kaku shows how the economy progresses from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism through processes like the Four Stages of Technology and Moore’s Law. Your mind is the one thing that disruptive innovation can never replace. So invest in yourself and train your brain by reading books. Physics of the Future is a good place to start!

Book Reviews

Book Review: The World Is Flat

May 15, 2017June 26, 2017 Douglass Gaking2 Comments

While it seems a little early to write a “history of the 21st century,” The World Is Flat is full of amazing insights that reshape the way we look at our world. What do the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Netscape IPO, and 9/11 all have in common? Thomas L. Friedman shows how these and other events are both causes and effects of the flattening of the world that has been on a fast track from 1989 to today.

There is no aspect of our lives that isn’t affected by the flattening trend. Most of these effects are good for us, but only if we understand them. 9/11 is an example of what happens when one group of people takes advantage of the flattening world for destructive purposes while another is unimaginative about its possibilities. The rise of eBay is an example of how a simple technology-based platform can open the business world to people who had previously been held back by geography, age, prejudice, or disability.

This book is an absolute must-read for every global citizen, whether they hold a political office, invest in emerging markets, or work on an assembly line. So many non-fiction books I read start off interesting and then become dull, as if the author had a great idea, but had trouble filling a few hundred pages with it. TWIF gets more and more interesting as you go, building up to a final chapter where Friedman offers a viable solution to create global peace, while simultaneously predicting the populist revolution that is happening today. It is clear that this book has not been read by enough people, and that needs to change!