📚 The Angry Optimist's summer book tips

Here are some tips of books I've enjoyed.

Moral Ambition

by Rutger Bregman

Rutger Bregman starts by scolding a monk who happens to be the world’s happiest man. Bregman is, quite rightly, angry that this monk has spent decades meditating without doing anything to improve anyone else’s life.

That’s the message of the book: be ambitious—but to make the world better, not to optimize an ad algorithm. The only real downside is that he believes in ghosts—sorry, I meant the existential threat from AI.

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

There are plenty of books about abundance from a liberal perspective, and quite a few more centrist and neutral ones. But far fewer from the left. Abundance is an exception, and hopefully the beginning of a trend.

Focusing on the US, the book explores how left-wing policies can lead to greater growth and more abundance to share—without harming the environment or climate.

Superagency

by Reid Hoffman

The AI book market is flooded with threats and doomsday scenarios. Superintelligence is a very welcome break from that. Instead, it shows how AI empowers humanity—and how AI and humans together can achieve superagency.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli

by Mark Seal

A thorough and excellently told account of how The Godfather movie came to be. It was far from guaranteed that it would become the legendary film it is today.

An alcoholic and gambling-addicted Mario Puzo writes the novel and screenplay. A heavily questioned director, Francis Ford Coppola, is constantly threatened with being fired. And loads of other problems and complications.

Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist