Sunday, December 29, 2019

Super Pumped by Mike Isaac

I recently reviewed John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, in which the founder and ex-CEO of Theranos was ousted as a compulsively lying sociopath. Theranos, a Silicon valley startup once worth billions, promptly collapsed as the public became aware of its true nature. Uber, the subject of Super Pumped, isn't as bad a company as Theranos, but it comes much closer than I anticipated.

Super Pumped and Bad Blood have, surprisingly, a lot in common. Both were written by prominent business journalists (from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal respectively) who uncovered scandals within the companies with the help of whistleblowers. Of the two, Carreyrou is perhaps the more successful exposé as his reporting directly led to the end of Theranos. Isaac's allegations against Uber are not as damning, but they touch on the same themes; venture capital's excesses, egotism, founder worship and the normalization of toxic working culture.

Uber is a staple of global business news, so I thought I knew what to expect. Super Pumped is the story of Uber and Travis Kalanick, its founder. Uber started out as a way for limousine drivers to earn extra income while waiting for scheduled gigs. High-flying "ballers" could hail a limousine with their smartphone at their convenience. Most of us know Uber as the low-cost taxi service, where anyone can be a driver, but that came only later. Ridesharing was pioneered by Uber's nemesis Lyft, but Uber quickly stole the concept and beat Lyft to the market. It was the first in a series of dirty moves that many people associate with the company.

Uber has been so controversial that Wikipedia helpfully provides readers with a 21 point list of criticisms against the company. Combine those with the immorality of its founders and management and it's hard to continue using the company's services. I remember using Uber for the first time and being amazed by both the app and the service. Catching a cab with an app was already enticing, but paying less for it than a standard taxi was the real hook. In hindsight, some of the warning signs were there from the beginning. Prices were low because venture capitalists picked up a significant portion of the tab. Since then, driver satisfaction has nosedived as Uber has reduced their fees.

Most surprisingly, despite being one of the fastest growing companies ever, Uber's management made a string of inexplicably bad business decisions. Kalanick saw himself as the first American that could crack the Chinese consumer market. China, however, already had its share of ridesharing apps that understood the market better than an arrogant American rival. Uber ended up burning billions of dollars in China, Russia and other markets it barely understood. Kalanick believed that Uber needed to be the first to enter a market to "win" it. But from the start it was obvious that ridesharing isn't a natural monopoly. Rivals like Bolt, Didi Chuxing and Lyft have shown that stamina matters more than blitz.

Super Pumped reads like a series of extended newspaper stories. It's standard practice and quite accessible, but it also guarantees that there is little to say beyond the crisp content. I barely got to the juicy details here, and I'm happy to recommend Super Pumped to others, perhaps just to spread the word on Uber. Bad Blood succeeded in taking down Theranos. Unfortunately, there has been no such luck with Super Pumped yet.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

There are a lot of great jokes in Slow Horses, its title included. Slough House is a halfway home of sorts for disgraced MI5 agents; the Slow Horses. Any number of reasons can earn you a transfer to Slough House. Botching an operation, alcoholism, political machination; all might put your career on hold and send you to the drab establishment on the edge of London. Working at Slough House is designed to be mind numbingly boring. The goal is that you slowly realize that quitting is the only way out.

Slow Horses may be written as a spy thriller, but comedy is where it truly shines. I rarely enjoy written humor, but Mick Herron combines excellent prose with classic British comedy in a unique way. Parts of it remind me of the excellent The Sellout from a few years ago, although the subject matter couldn't be more different. Herron succeeds in selling the funny with the serious and in creating characters who are both fantastical and relatable. Established voices like John le Carré rarely go beyond sly and clever in their work. This doesn't mean that le Carré leaves me cold, very much the opposite, it just underlines how well Herron pulls it off.

Jokes are, of course, not to be explained. River Cartwright is one of the ex-spies assigned to Slough House after a disastrous training exercise. His promising career is sidetracked and he finds himself running trivial errands for Jackson Lamb, the rotund traditionalist heading the department. The whole affair seems like a dead end. Nothing of interest has happened at Slough House in years and the other inhabitants (inmates?) seem disinterested or fully checked out. However, as a teenager is kidnapped in front of his home, the Slow Horses are pulled into the intrigue. Saying more would considerably spoil some of the fun.

Slow Horses is the first in a series (six volumes so far), but it barely shows. An extended sequence introduces the cast without feeling like a setup for a second book. Understanding the characters is a payoff in its own right. It's all very self contained, even as the characters are clearly moved into position for the next story. I've often recommended J.K. Rowling's Cormoran Strike Series of private eye novels for people looking for an entertaining but well written thriller. If Herron's follow up, Dead Lions, is as impressive, I might consider changing my recommendation.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

1984 is one of the most widely read books of all time and a staple of the high school English class. Surprisingly, I had never read it. I've always been a fan of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" though. It's the foundational essay of how to write in the 20th century and a handy guide for editing your own writing. I try to adhere to it as much as possible. "Never use a long word where a short one will do" and "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out" are a few of the key ideas. Orwell's advice for writers is as strong today as it ever was.

Politics and the English Language and 1984 have surprisingly much in common. "Politics" is, above all, about how vague language encourages vague thinking. Writing and thought are more closely connected than most people think and embracing jargon, cliches, abstractions and political dada slowly erode a population's ability to think clearly. Often, resorting to a common figure of speech is just a way to avoid understanding what is being said. Politicians are typically the worst offenders - then and now - but academics, CEOs and news media are just as susceptible to lazy wording. The essay is one for the ages, so I'll do something that I've never done before and link it here.

In a way, 1984 is the fictionalized version of that essay. One of its main messages is that language is more than the medium of communication. The way we use language has a fundamental impact on how we think. In 1984, "Ingsoc" - the English Socialist party - has created "Newspeak", an artificial language based on English that is to be used in all official communication. Newspeak is designed to obfuscate ideas. Once Newspeak becomes the de facto language, the theory goes, it will become impossible to think unorthodox thoughts of the party. Newspeak is Orwell's finest argument against totalitarianism. The language is brutalist and reductivist and perfectly reflects the goals of its (fictional) creators.

Hundreds of studies and dissertations have been written about 1984. That doesn't mean that it's an academic endeavour or devoid of casual interest. The narrative is surprisingly compelling and relatable. Winston Smith is a mid-level party member, who finds himself on a slippery slope leading to betraying his party. It's part Philip K Dick sci-fi dystopia and part cold war spy fiction. Trust me, it's fantastic. Don't spend the first quarter of your life having not read 1984.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Pirulainen by Tomas Gads

In its original Swedish, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is Män som hatar kvinnor: Men who hate women. Tomas Gads - actually a duo of Finnish women - could perhaps borrow that title for their translation of "Pirulainen". A police thriller, very much in tune with Stieg Larsson, Pirulainen begins with the death of an industrialist in the Turku archipelago in western Finland. Police have a hard time telling if it's murder or an accident, but the victim's family and business life all point at problems just beneath a pristine surface. And, in the end, it's the women who have it worst.

Turku is a surprisingly good location for a crime thriller. It's a city, but small enough to have some small town vibes. It's not the small town from The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, but it's also not the metropolis of so many police thrillers. Turku's archipelago is a massively underused setting in Finnish literature. Each July, Finns hop on boats and travel the thousands of islands, staying in idyllic villages and enjoying the rugged beauty and untouched nature of the national park. But once the holiday season is over, and especially as the winter months set in, the islands are a hostile home to a few thousand inhabitants, who sustain themselves on fishing and boredom. Most winters, ice surrounds the islands and makes travel difficult or impossible. Only the eccentric seem to survive the whole year. Most of the action in Pirulainen takes place in the city of Turku, but the opening drama - and a memorable mid-book detour - make use of the archipelago.

Pirulainen stands out from many crime thrillers by focusing on the police charged with the investigation and not the killer. At the center is Halme squad, a relatively diverse group of detectives that share the spotlight. There is even an Enid Blyton moment as the cast is introduced one by one: their conflicts and quips are what drive the action, especially when the investigation hits a bump. Gads is surprisingly merciful to his cast: their weaknesses are not only humane but also hilarious. The IT guy is a desperate ladies' man. The single mother, previously a big-time business leader, is addicted to online video games. The latter has an affair with her daughter's football coach (goalie coach to be exact), who turns out to also be the coroner assigned to the case. It's funny and heartfelt, but doesn't take away from the book's overall mood.

My biggest gripe is stylistic. Gads plays it fast and loose with points-of-view and the effect is jarring at times. Most people won't mind, let alone notice, but when the story follows the police to an interview and the perspective suddenly shifts to the interviewee's point-of-view, it feels off. The focus is deservedly on the police, so a shift into someone else's thoughts sticks out. Also, chapters focusing on the police are interrupted by someone visiting a shrink and the musings of the killer. Combining so many voices in one book strains the reader's attention. It's a minor annoyance in an otherwise exciting book.

Gads is clearly laying the groundwork for a follow-up. In addition to the (relatively minor) twist ending, there is a lot left to unpack within the squad itself. Sergei, a Finn with a Russian name and a history of working the eastern border, is perhaps the prime candidate for a continuation. Novel characters are hard to come by, especially in police thrillers that tend to rely on familiarity for effect.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Where would we be without Michael Lewis? Few authors can claim their work to contribute as much to the global vocabulary on finance, sports and analytics. Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys and, now, The Fifth Risk have become shorthand for step changes in their respective industries. You can't talk about the 2008 financial crisis without talking about The Big Short and any conversation about sports analytics is bound to mention Moneyball. In addition to these landmark books, Lewis has also written the best outsider's view of behavioral economics (The Undoing Project) and recorded one of the best non-fiction podcasts of 2019 (Against the Rules). I've reviewed Lewis several times on this blog already, but I can't help feeling a little giddy everytime I see a new release from him. He's just that good.

The Fifth Risk, a look into three misunderstood US federal agencies, is not teeming with fascinating characters like The Big Short and doesn't evoke the same warm feelings as The Undoing Project, but it does leave you with a genuine sense of bewilderment and disbelief. In a telltale anecdote, a US presidential candidate singles out The Department of Energy as one of the governmental agencies that he would close if elected. But what exactly does the DOE do? With a budget of over 20 billion dollars, it must be an example of government waste, goes the thinking. The DOE is, in fact, in charge of maintaining the country's nuclear material and weapons, a task that any presidential hopeful is likely to applaud. Throughout the book, Lewis shows how an orthodoxy of small government has blinded us to some of the obviously good and necessary work being done within it.

The Fifth Risk - explained as the risk that comes from neglecting unlikely long term risks like nuclear accidents - is split in three sections, each of which addresses a different governmental agency: the aforementioned DOE, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. Unlike most of Lewis's books, the characters don't transcend their roles and are confined to individual sections. It's my only squabble. The Fifth Risk reads more like three excellent pieces of investigative journalism than a fully realized book. I first read parts of the DOE chapter in Vanity Fair (and loved it!), but The Fifth Risk takes the story only a bit further.

As with Lewis's work in general, there are multiple levels here. The Trump administration's disinterest in actually running the government is the obvious starting point. It's only the surface. In a concise 200 pages, Lewis addresses many of the ails of the modern United States. Politics is untethered from reality and policitcians are unable to perform some of government's most rudimentary functions. Blatant cronyism has suddenly become acceptable. "The free market" is expected to right wrongs that are clearly beyond its control. Somehow, freewheeling fools and disingenuous charlatans are given government positions that they barely understand. The whole polity is obsessed with regime affiliation, and so on.

It's a grim read with black humor that would make for a great Cohen brothers movie. The Fifth Risk is, among many other things, a reminder that details matter. It's easy to deal in imperatives and principles. It's much harder to gain a genuine understanding of an issue and work years to address it. It's a critique that is first directed at a number of political movements in the Western world - the Republicans, populist Europe, modern monetary theory - but it's not limited to them. Understanding and working with dirty details is perhaps the best vaccination against tribalism and government dysfunction.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Leonardo da Vinci barely needs introductions. He is one of the poster children for genius alongside Einstein and Newton and his Mona Lisa is the best known work of art in the world. You would think that his story has been repeated ad infinitum in previous biographies. Isaacson, however, justifies this book's existence well. He is best known for his era-defining look into the life of Steve Jobs and, given his generalist background, he has the right background to deliver a balanced recounting of the polymath's story. After all, Leonardo's life is a combination of flamboyant brilliance, as seen in his best known paintings, grinding procrastination and an overall search for truth in a country on the cusp of a scientific revolution.

There are surprisingly few contemporary accounts of Leonardo and even those greatly embellish his life. Isaacson relies on Leonardo's notebooks for context, and with good reason, as those provide the best view into the mind of the artist. Leonardo was an obsessive note taker and his notebooks, the majority of which have survived for posterity, are filled with amazing sketches and thoughts written in his peculiar mirror-script. Paper was precious at the time, so he would revisit old drawings and continue a different topic on a used page. Or he would combine two drawings in unexpected ways: curly hair evolving into a water eddy or a tree evolving into a human circulatory system. Isaacson gracefully includes pictures of the relevant notebook pages, which is one reason to buy the book in hardcover and not Kindle format.

Isaacson proclaims that the notebooks are the primary inspiration for his interpretation of Leonardo. It's a good starting point, but it also underlines his weakness in interpreting Leonardo's art. At least for a layman, Isaacson's description of Leonardo's main oeuvre is too flowery and comes too close to some of the cliches that circulate about art criticism. He takes his interpretations one step too far and often repeats himself unnecessarily. His description of Leonardo's and Michelangelo's rivalry is much more interesting than the description of The Battle of Anghiari, a lost Leonardo that was commissioned to sit across the room with a Michelangelo. Leonardo's work and personality are best viewed in the context of another genius of the era, and it's a shame that Isaacson spends so little time on Leonardo's contemporaries. Leonardo is dandy and outgoing, but so fixated on perfecting ephemeral elements in his art that he often forfeits his commissions and leaves work unfinished. He would spend as much time perfecting a piece's perspective as he would on painting some of the figures. Michelangelo, on the other hand, slept in his clothes and, occasionally, in his boots. He would complete the largest and arguably most famous religious painting in the world: the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

I have a fundamental disagreement with Isaacson's description of Leonardo. He views the artist's inability to finish some of his main works - namely, The Battle of Anghiari and The Adoration of the Magi - as another display of his brilliance. According to his interpretation, the works were dropped because Leonardo could not find the perfect way to work out a particular detail in the painting; an artificial perspective or the right painting material. Leaving imperfect paintings unfinished means, in this oblique logic, that all finished paintings must be perfect, thus proving his genius. The same reasoning is applied to his inventions, like helicopters, crossbows and other apparatus, which were mostly untested in the field. For me, Leonardo was seminal in spite of this trait, not because of it. By being a fraction less demanding on himself, he would have produced even more great pieces of art without much reducing its quality. Art criticism often focuses on minutiae - which perhaps explains its love of Leonardo - but the world in general would have benefited if this particular genius had a slightly less perfectionist approach to life.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point may have been one of the first non-fiction books I read. I borrowed it from a friend in high school as he described it as a "modern classic", whatever that means in the context of modern non-fiction. In a way, I've been on that path ever since. I've never been a disciple of Malcolm Gladwell in the way that some people seem to be, but I do follow his writing and, more recently, his podcast Revisionist History. I recommended The Tipping Point to my wife - it's succinct, entertaining and touches on some of the cornerstones of sociology - but ended up reading it myself once it landed on my bedside table.

It hasn't aged well, but it still has surprisingly much to offer. The Tipping Point describes a theory about social epidemics that Gladwell has amalgamated from academic studies and his own thinking. A social epidemic is how fidget spinners, high (or low) waisted jeans and Instagram suddenly became central fixtures of western societies without any seemingly deliberate plan behind them. Gladwell lays out the three key components in compellingly simple terms: it's about the people, the context and the content. Certain types of people are vastly more powerful in spreading a social epidemic. Mavens learn every minute detail of a new product and act as data banks. Connectors spread the message by, well, being connected. Salesmen convince others to act on the information curated by mavens and distributed by connectors.

It may not be worth it to explore the contents of The Tipping Point in more detail. The theory itself has held up well over time, but the anecdotes and other trivia are hilariously out of date. The dramatic drop in crime in the United States was a recent phenomenon at the time of release, but today it is being studied as if it were ancient history (and the reasons behind the decline are perhaps better explored in Freakonomics). Hush Puppies and Airwalk have not been in the public mind since more or less since the release of this book. The Tipping Point was released in 2000 at the height of the dot-com bubble. Social networks wouldn't properly exist for another decade. Their existence would increase the speed of social epidemics by an order of magnitude: today, tweets travel faster than seismic waves (https://xkcd.com/723/).

Gladwell's framework for understanding social epidemics seems to do well in today's world of Facebook, Brexit and Trump. What it lacks, though, is a compelling exploration of a single phenomenon that would showcase the theory in action, starting from the first person who reacts to a coming social epidemic. The author doesn't show us who were the first people to adopt Hush Puppies. He only speculates about their existence. This increased focus on the people in social epidemics would be a great way to study contemporary phenomena. For example, why is Naziism resurging on the political right? Why do some environmental initiatives surge (reducing plastic or carbon compensation), while others never find traction (emissions trading or reduction of meat production subsidies)? The Tipping Point could benefit from a complete rewrite, not because it describes the world poorly, but because it was ten years ahead of its time.

Monday, July 1, 2019

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

How to Stop Time is the absolute opposite of what I normally read. I picked it up at the airport - a gift for my wife - on the relative strength of its funny back cover. Most casual reading tries to hide behind a facade of sophistication. The plots are too complex, they try to pander to trends set up by better works or they might simply overplay their hand. I'm looking at you The Woman in the Window. How to Stop Time was the exact opposite of that. It put its silliness in plain sight - the last line on the cover is "as long as he doesn't fall in love" - and doesn't pretend to be more than the most casual reading at an airport newsstand. An About a Boy, Nick Hornby for the 2010s.

Here's the gimmick. Tom Hazard is essentially immortal. Having reached puberty, he barely ages. He was born in medieval France and has since lived in dozens of countries under hundreds of aliases. His mother was executed as a witch and, ever since, he's been on the run from suspicion and superstition. During the years, he's conveniently met Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He's been a grade school teacher, a pianist and a stage musician. The premise is just as exciting as a really good nap, and the plot never really shakes things up beyond what you might expect. Historical events and people are duly mentioned. Lost loves and family are central but never explored further than the generic: "will she be found?". There is a very mild surprise at the end related to mild villainy.

For the casual reading that it is, How to Stop Time is not entirely without merit. Haig conjures a sense of pain arising from living longer than one's time. As Hazard's life spans multiple generations, he sees the circularity of time and becomes complacent as mistakes are repeated and collective memory fades. Other "albas" - people with the same condition who, like albatrosses live beyond our expectations - show a credible variety of approaches to living forever. One passes time by surfing in southern Australia, another is consumed by anger. The most memorable one has built a society to protect others of his kind, but ends up managing it through charisma tinged with conspiracy. Living forever is a curse and not a blessing in How to Stop Time.

Sunday, June 2, 2019

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

In the past, stock bubbles have usually been popped by flagrant misdoings or scandals. Worldcom and Enron downed the dot-com bubble and Lehman Brothers and AIG kicked off the global financial crisis in 2008. The latter, of course, was more than an accounting scandal. It was a result of the realization that financial instruments and consumer debt had changed beyond the control of regulators and financial markets. Theranos, the choice corporate evil in Bad Blood, seems now like it should have triggered a similar reckoning in the venture capital and startup world.

For a while, Theranos was one of the most valuable private companies in the world and Elizabeth Holmes, it's founder and CEO, one of the youngest self-made billionaires. After a series of classic investigative pieces in the Wall Street Journal, Theranos quickly unravelled and suffered a massive public humiliation. Its value dropped to nothing, as did its founder's. John Carreyrou, the journalist behind the reveal, wrote Bad Blood as a bookend to the story, a final testament to the absurdity and con-artistry of the company and it's backers.

Theranos made its name by claiming to have solved a key problem in medicine: the use of venipuncture needles. It's technology could supposedly run hundreds of blood tests on a pinprick sample from the tip of a finger. The promise was substantial but the product was terrible. Theranos ran almost all of its tests on the conventional laboratory equipment it had bought from competitors and never settled on what it's business model or product actually was. Yet, with the support of the prominent individuals on its board, it was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars of financing with a valuation of 9 billion dollars. The scale of the fraud is staggering and it still strikes me as nuts. How were Holmes and her paramour-COO Sunny able to project revenues that were so obviously non-existent? Why didn't investors do the basic due diligence of checking up on the "deals" the company claimed it had made?

Holmes herself is the key element in this mystery. Initial stories indicated her charisma as the reason she was able to pull it off. Carreyrou shows that this is only the first part. Her parents, rich and well connected, were able to support her claims by making connections and possibly pulling strings. To make things even more ridiculous, her father was a vice president at Enron when the company went bankrupt. That detail would be too on-the-nose if it was fiction, but alas it is not.

Bad Blood accidentally showcases the general decay of the American corporate system. A company built on the back of inherited wealth and power makes its way to the top of Silicon Valley by faking it without ever making it. Theranos' only successes - it's deal with Walgreens - can be attributed to a health care system that puts emphasis on revenue generation and not patient health. Its pitch - a disruption of laboratory testing - was nowhere near realistic. As the secrets were spilling, Theranos hired the most expensive lawyers to harass and discredit potential whistleblowers.

To get back to my initial thought, the question of a startup bubble seems more pressing today than it did when Theranos failed. Uber, Lyft, Impossible Foods and other venture capital companies have gone public with grossly inflated valuations that are nearly impossible to justify. Uber seems especially unlikely to be worth this much in a few years. It's businesses are unprofitable despite slowing growth (a Silicon Valley anathema) and the company has not been successful in building the kind of "moat" that it promised investors even a few years ago. Theranos should have been the scandal that killed these kinds of valuations, but it didn't, so we might need to wait a few more years for the end of this bubbly era.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

The Big Short by Michael Lewis

I forget why I decided to reread The Big Short on short notice. It could have been that I felt like reading something short and entertaining after struggling with a few other books, both of which I ended up not finishing. I guess it takes a very specific type of person to consider The Big Short "entertaining" though. It's a dissection of the financial instruments that created the financial crisis in 2008 and a character study of the people, who saw it coming. Dozens of paragraphs are dedicated to describing how mortgage bonds, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps work. It's absolutely obligatory to understand these products to understand the inner workings of a bonkers financial system. It does mean, however, that some readers will be bored out of their minds by the technical aspects of the banking system.

Apparently that was never me; I've been fascinated by the financial sector for years, despite never working in it and only having taken a few introductory courses on the subject. I was in high school in 2008 and I distinctly remember reading news about the banks and companies that were going bankrupt all over the world. There was a finality in the air as no one really knew what part of the financial infrastructure would fail next. Even though I had no money at the time and didn't own a credit card - and had little to lose - the drama felt more real than wars in the Middle East or famine in North Korea. I've always found it difficult to explain why some things are compelling and others are not. Some interests seem ingrained and a fascination for financial markets seems to be (just one of) my soft spots.

Michael Lewis is, of course, a titan of the non-fiction journalistic take. It seems completely absurd that three of his to-the-point and unembellished books have become Hollywood movies starring actors like Brad Pitt (twice!) and Sandra Bullock. Today, people use the word Moneyball - the name of another Lewis book and movie combo - to describe the use of analytics and statistics in the management of sports teams. For years, his contributions have had an outsize impact on the intellectual community. His recent podcast "Against the Rules" proves the versatility of his approach. Fascinating and often oddball characters catch readers (and listeners) off guard. Simply guiding readers through theory rarely elicits strong reactions from a general audience. Lewis can address almost any topic on earth, no matter how complicated or obtuse, because he approaches it from a human point of view.

Having read most of his other work, I still consider The Big Short to be the crown jewel. It's relatable not only because it's characters are relatable, but because Lewis has an intimate and personal understanding of the industry and its problems. His prologue is not unlike the prologue in Slaughterhouse Five: it puts the author in the midst of a cataclysm that he knows is coming but cannot stop. Even now, we know that the global financial system is far from fixed. Over one trillion dollars of bad student debt has been handed out to Americans. Uber and Lyft have sold shares to the public at grossly inflated prices. European banks have been more than happy to launder money for Russian oligarchs. Any or all of these pieces may fall once the next catastrophe brings fear back into the market. When that day comes, Lewis is sure to be on the frontlines to explain where we, once again, went wrong.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Paranoidi Optimisti by Risto Siilasmaa

Risto Siilasmaa is one of the few business people in Finland, who is also a public figure. His predecessor at Nokia, Jorma Ollila, is another. "The Paranoid Optimist" recounts how Siilasmaa saved Nokia from certain bankruptcy by selling off key business and changing the company down to its core. It also, somewhat inadvertently, pits the two icons against each other.

In the time span of a few years, Nokia went from being the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world to being a side note in trade magazines. When smartphones were new, it produced more than half of all units in the world. At its peak, the company employed tens of thousands of people in Finland alone and accounted for over one percent of national GDP. It was a national icon in the same way that IKEA is for Sweden. Finns could say that it was acceptable that foreigners didn't know Finland as long as they knew Nokia. The speed with which that changed gripped the entire country. After a few catastrophic years, Nokia sold its mobile phone division to Microsoft in a deal that, at the time, felt like the end of a hegemony.

Siilasmaa was at the center of the fight, first as a board member, then as the chairman and later as interim CEO. When he joined the company, Ollila embodied the soul of the company as its chairman and the person most credited with building it into a juggernaut during his time as CEO. Siilasmaa criticizes Ollila mercilessly and, at least in part, this seems to be justified. Ollila ruled the board rigidly and with little discussion or discovery to explore changes in the industry. Even if you control for the hindsightedness - it's easy to see the rise of Apple and the iPhone after the fact - Ollila did go against most management doctrines by limiting board members' exposure to what was actually happening in the company and the industry. His officious approach obstructed genuine discussion and prevented management from seeing serious problems until it was too late.

The Paranoid Optimist is in no way the definitive history of Nokia - a history, which spans over 150 years and products from rubber boots to toilet paper - but it is an excellent opinion piece on a critical part of that history. Siilasmaa stretches the reader's interest a bit by introducing the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition, which seems a little shoehorned in. For most of the book, however, he is able to hold the reader's interest. His management views follow Richard Rumelt more than Michael Porter, and provide nice anecdotes for director-level discussion. Hopefully his unassuming tone and clarity of thought are taken up in the business world. With The Paranoid Optimist, Siilasmaa shows that he is, not only, one of the foremost management thinkers in Finland, but also relatively grounded and sensible in his writing.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

Keeping with the theme of cold war spy thrillers; The Spy and the Traitor. If you've read (or seen) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre, you'll know exactly what's going on. The difference is that this time it's all real (and personal). The Spy and the Traitor is a spy thriller that also happens to be the real deal. Oleg Gordievsky is a KGB agent stationed in Copenhagen, who starts to have misgivings about his masters. As he rises in the communist ranks, he establishes an elaborate double agent routine with MI6 in the United Kingdom that comes to form the backbone of western intelligence on the Soviet Union for almost a decade. In a cruel twist of fate, he is undone by an alcoholic CIA agent with an expensive wife, who sells his identity to the KGB. In a frantic covert operation behind the iron curtain, MI6 tries to smuggle Gordievsky across the Finno-Russian border to save him from a certain death.

It is sometimes difficult to identify this as non-fiction, based solely on the story and characters. Macintyre does an excellent job of building a presentable cast of support characters. He's the Michael Lewis of spy thrillers and in some ways, this is Flash Boys but with spies. He has the same ability to make the most mundane details seem worthy of prolonged consideration as Mr. Lewis, and in his hands, a story that could be told dully, is suddenly gripping. The author's own excitement with the details is what really sells the story. Will a KGB informant see Gordievsky standing on a Moscow street corner and identify the Safeway plastic bag, his signal to British intelligence, and comprehend that it's not something an observant communist would sport? Did a nappy, conveniently soiled by the baby on board, distract the dogs at the Finland-Russia border crossing?

Macintyre's inquisitiveness also left me pondering the value of the global intelligence game. Most of what Gordievsky exposed relates to the KGB and their armada of spies. So what is gained from this massive machinery? Spies watching spies is just another variant of a dog chasing its own tail. Gordievsky ousts his own as lazy: they invent contacts and operatives and name government officials as informants when they are anything but. They gather data from regional newspapers and pass it off as insider intelligence. As the KGB was partly faking it, why should I assume that MI6 was not? Granted Gordievsky did genuinely help foreign relations by helping Margaret Thatcher understand the Soviet leadership, but even then it is hard to see the benefits outweighing the costs.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) by Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy is the frontman of alt-country group Wilco. I had the privilege of seeing Wilco at Pori Jazz a few years ago here in Finland. The group almost never comes this far north, but the Finnish summer did not relent even for them. It was barely 10 degrees outside and occasional rain guaranteed that unprepared festival goers were regretting showing up. I made my way to the front of the stage barely ten minutes before the band walked on. After a few songs, a rainbow broke out over the festival area and Tweedy made a joke about singing sad songs in the rain. Overall, it's one of my favorite concert experiences.

Now, Tweedy has written an autobiographical novel and complemented it with a companion album, Warm. For the Wilco fan, this is as good or even better than the band releasing a new album. Tweedy has always been the emotional center of the group and in Let's Go he recounts his life all the way from his childhood to the present day. Wilco, however, is not your average rock band. They've always been closer to a jam band than The Rolling Stones and this shows in Tweedy's light touch with the pen on both album and book.

Let's Go is really funny. I was chuckling mid-sentence several times, to the annoyance of my wife, who was trying to nap next to me. Tweedy has an off-handed way of writing that is in stark contrast to his songs, which can be musically complex and lyrically inscrutable. Early days Wilco was known for setting the bar extremely high in the recording studio, but Tweedy has since matured and loosened up and this is in full effect in his writing. He transcribes conversations between him and his wife into parts of the book, which - coming from someone else - could appear half-baked. Here, however, these passages are some of the most entertaining and heartening in the whole book.

Tweedy may not be the most trustworthy source for everything, though. He subscribes to radical honesty and describes his comfort level with being vulnerable a "superpower", but some passages raise questions about wilful forgetfulness. Tweedy coolly fired original drummer Ken Coomer via phone after stumbling on Glenn Kotche. He admits to his mistake in handling the incident, but devotes less than a paragraph to it. The same goes to his falling outs with fellow band members and Jays Farrar and Bennett. The way he tells it, neither was his fault and both men abandoned the band due to their own demons. But it's hard not to imagine the other side of the argument.

In contrast, Tweedy is painstakingly open about his opioid addiction. He stole morphine from his wife's ailing mother. He disguised his addiction behind migraines, which he did really have, and hid the truth from his wife, who found out only once an acquaintance, who was more familiar with opioid misuse, pointed out that her man was a junkie. Incredibly, all of this can be heard on the album A Ghost is Born, which was recorded during the worst part of Tweedy's addiction. His voice is uncharacteristically bland and forgettable and the songs lack the charm of Summerteeth or the quirks of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It's impossible to listen to the album now without hearing Tweedy's addiction in each song and he admits as much. Spiders (Kidsmoke) was recorded in just two takes, because that was all Tweedy could get the energy for.

Tweedy outlines his life after recovering from addiction in a way that lends additional context to the music he has recorded since. Many of his albums after A Ghost is Born have received less critical acclaim, but the truth is that they were not meant to. Tweedy has consciously lowered the bar for his musical output to focus more on his family. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot may have been the global experimental breakthrough, but Sky Blue Sky (and the song Sunday Morning) are unforgettable pop epics. They mark another turn in a musical career that has spanned over three decades.

Monday, January 14, 2019

The Pigeon Tunnel by John Le Carre

2018 may look like the year I read the least books in the history of this blog (just 10 entries dated last year), but it's far from the truth. First of all, I finished a record three books during a Christmas holiday in South Africa, the reviews of which have been on my backlog for the past two weeks. The real number for last year is probably 13; over one book per month. Second, last year included some of the longest books that I've ever read - 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster and Hamilton by Ron Chernow - which definitely set me back in pure numbers but contributed to a total page count that is most likely way above my yearly average. Karl Ove Knausgård may have dampened my enthusiasm for the long form, but 2018 was a success in terms of page volume.

The books themselves were great too. Many of them had a profound impact on me and a few have been in my thoughts ever since. The Pigeon Tunnel from spy-thriller veteran John le Carré was refreshing and charming, but probably not among the books from last year that will keep me up at night in the future. Le Carré is best known for the cold war espionage of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which I've previously featured. His CV is impressive as is the number of film and TV adaptations that have been made from his books. These books seem like they were written by a confident auteur; someone who could bend people and words into new shapes and surprise readers with intrigue built on the frailty of man. The Pigeon Tunnel shows an altogether different side of le Carré (or David Cornwell, his real name). His prose is still pristine, but the person behind it is much more nuanced.

The Pigeon Tunnel is a collection of anecdotes from Cornwell's life. Some focus on the real world inspiration for his best known characters. Others recount his travels abroad and meetings with world leaders. The longest one, and the last chapter in the book, is devoted to his father, a confidence man and criminal, who's lies and vagary left le Carré permanently seeing two sides to people in his life: the one they try to show you and the one they don't. In these stories, Cornwell is insecure but warm and describes his journeys more through the lens of his constant conviction that he is way out of his league. There are parallels to Bruce Springsteen's autobiography: a man driven to entertain by an absent father and a sense of not doing enough.

In addition to the harrowing tales of his father's misdeeds, I was most struck by an acute generational gap between me and Cornwell. A battalion of cold war diplomat-spies was unleashed on the world with the overt goal of stopping communism. Behind this laudable facade, however, not much was done to the general benefit of western countries and Cornwell admits as much. Young diplomats would attend lunches and dinners, interview locals and file reports that may or may not have had as much informational value as the local newspaper. In reality, the western intelligence community tricked itself better than it could trick the opposing spy agencies. In today's world, the same spies would compete to work 60 hour weeks and write elaborate reports: meaningless work done exceptionally well.

It is difficult to pin down what The Pigeon Tunnel is about. Cornwell's life is better told in a sanctioned biography. The le Carré novels do a better job of animating the cold war. It is not a autobiography by any means; the stories are too vivid and wonderful to be assumed unenhanced by their masterful author. As part of the oeuvre, The Pigeon Tunnel is more evidence to the writer's skills in semi-retirement. In itself, it's impossible to recommend to non-fans.