"The Origin of Financial Crises" by George Cooper

This is a small book, about 200 pages paperback format, but it was a required reading for one of my MBA classes.  As nobody has time to really read the textbooks during a rigorous MBA, I re-read this book over several months, on paper, one of the only such in recent years.  It feels good to feel the paper of a good book when one gets used to pixels and AMOLEDs. The paper book also smells and the fingers can feel the texture, two more channels for communication of message, set and setting.

Mr. Cooper is an investment analyst and former employee of Goldman Sachs.  He has built a fortune for himself and lives in London.  This should indicate that Mr. Cooper knows his stuff.  It is so, however the book concentrates primarily on a handful of concepts.  The author is a firm proponent of Keynesian economy and the intellectual successor in thought Minsky.  Mr. Cooper uses several interesting metaphors like "The Inflation Monster" to make the abstract financial concepts more palpable for the lay reader, but it looks that most of the effort went into the first third of the book, less into the second third, and not that much in the rest.

The author spends the first third of the book mostly making fun of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, which is mostly accepted as the background of most economic activity around the world today.  Mr. Cooper would like to see it replace by his own concoction of Minsky for the thought, Maxwell for the engineering principles and Mandelbrot for the mathematics.  The man proof of the broken-ness of the Efficient Markets theory is given as the constantly occurring bust and boom cycles, which occur even when market players are rational and the market forces are operating.  Mr. Cooper sees this as the intrinsic flaw of the Efficient Markets camp, assuming that the markets will always operate at the highest efficiency and self-correct.  Mr. Cooper supports a minimal intervention approach that would "burst" the bubbles as they form and would level the valleys as they form.  He sees this as being the charge of the Central Bank of each country, which institution is seen as essential.

There are many good arguments, and the book is very readable at first, however it gets very confusing towards the end.  The inclusion of the mechanical essay by Maxwell in the appendix did not help, although it is obvious that it was some kind of epiphany for the author.  The book makes a pretty strong argument for some control and regulation of the financial markets at all times in order to produce optimal results.  It presents a good overview and insight about how inflation came to be and why it is inevitable in today's modern economy.  The examples with the kings recalling the gold coins from the subject and then re-coining them to steal gold is very striking.  The book is a good read and a good insight into modern market economy.

"Ubik" by Philip K. Dick

An amazing short novel by the SciFi Great, and just like many of his other novels, you really have no idea what is going on or who's who for the first 30 pages.  The next 20 pages you learn the names and personalities of the main characters and then the real ride begins.  It is a surreal ride and more so, because for so many pages you don't realize it and it seems like yet another 60s sci-fi novel.  But Philip K. Dick would not be one o the greatest science fiction writers ever if he left it at that level.  No, the twists come one after another with rapid velocity after you realize that for most of the novel all the main characters are dead and their corpses are kept on ice in a 'moratorium' which is a kind of artificial life extension institution that takes people at the time of their deaths and keeps their brains alive for many decades in a half-dream state called 'half-life.'

From another Philip K. Dick novel "Minority Report" we have 'pre-cogs' in Ubik as well, but here they don't deal with pre-crime, but are more common and can be hired for just about anything.  However, what's interesting in Ubik is that there are 'anti-talents' that is people with psyonic powers which are of the opposite charge of the regular psyionics like telepathy or pre-cog.  When 'anti-talents' are near 'talents' their psyonic fields cancel each other, thus making 'anti-talents' very useful for corporations to hire to protect themselves against industrial espionage that uses 'talents.'  Another interesting branch is there are people who are 'testers' like the main protagonist Joe Chip.  Joe's psyonic power can only be used to measure and 'feel' other psyonics, whether talents or anti-talents, but cannot do anything else. 

The novel goes into existentialist issues and is written interspersed with advertisements for Ubik in a manner of TV advertisements interrupting a movie.  Philip K. Dick published Ubik in 1969 when TV was just taking off as a commercial medium and he wanted to explore that direction, which points to the fact that he was a quite experimentalist writer for his period.  That would be like today's science ficiton novels being written with intermezzos consisting of twitter messages, or Tumblr, or other social network and their projection 23 years in the future, having in mind the book happens in 1992, the past for us, but the future for 1969. 

The author was a bit too enthusiastic about technological progress (which was common in the 1960s) and imagined that in 1992 we would have robots that clean our apartments, hover cars, fully robotized restaurants and coffee shops, bases on the Moon and Mars and building our first inter-stellar space ship drive.  Yes, folks, that was supposed to happen 21 years ago, according to Philip K. Dick, and realistically we'd be lucky if we get 10% of that 21 years from now (2013).  The book has many dark moments, thus some reviewers have called it "existentialist horror novel," but I think that is exaggeration.  The novel is not horror, just intense, in the dark Philip K. Dickian way.  And it is a pleasure to read.  You can't put it down.  Go, read it.

"The Plague" By Albert Camus

Le Peste, written in 1947 by Albert Camus, largely as a metaphor for the suffering France and himself have gone through during the German occupation in World War II.  The book depicts the life of a 200,000 people medium-sized town in French Northern Africa, from before the striking of a plague epidemic to a little after the epidemic passed.  Camus describes the lives of the people before and during the plague, their behavior, their ways of coping, their relationships, thoughts, dreams.  Several characters are fundamental in the book like that of the main character Dr. Riueu who is different from the unnamed narrator of the book.

There is a criminal who is hiding in the city and how is probably a metaphor for the traitor Vichy regime in France.  There is a journalist who is trying to escape, but eventually joins the fight against the plague.  There is another doctor, Riueu's colleague who dies in the last paragraphs of the book after surviving the entire plague.  There is the man who has retired in his 40s and is happy everyday regardless of what is happening around him.  There are the separated lovers, the wives abroad, the children, the dogs, the cats and the rats, especially the rats.

Camus describes how Riueu takes a swim in the ocean one day while the plague is in full swing, just to be able to feel how normalcy used to feel before.  The underlying message of the book is that horrible, abnormal, heart-breaking things have happened, do happen and will continue to happen throughout human history, but humans have adapted to even the worst of conditions.  Humans have adapted to live under the terrible plague, hundreds dying each day, just like they adapted to live under a terrible Nazi regime which murdered people daily.  Eventually, the plague passes, and everything is back to normal. It has to be.  There is no other way to go forward, to survive. 

But the plague bacillus, just like war, never dies.  Only waits in hiding until the next opportunity.

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle

I spent several months re-reading this book, since it is written in the form of questions and answers covering multitude of topics, including sub questions and detailed explanations.  It is a deep book.  Maybe one of the most original teachings of modern times.  It seems like sublimation of Zen Buddhism and Gurdjieff's system with some salt-and-pepper Christianity thrown in.

It is very difficult to review this book, as it is very dense and varied and it doesn't (really) follow any sequential structure. The history of Tolle is interesting too. Highly educated but also very depressed and seeing no meaning or exit in his life he became suicidal.  In the darkest hour he received enlightment, which is decribed as the Power of Now.  He spent a year as a homeless guy (he has a PhD and comes from a relatively wealthy background) sleeping on benches and eating whatever, but being constantly happy and present.  Then he felt a calling to spread what he learned to others.  He moved to Vancouver, wrote the book, tried to sell it to bookstores, but there were no takers.  He gave free lectures and seminars and after a while the fame started to spread.

The basic tenet of the book is that we spend way too much time begrudging the past and fearing the future which robs us of the only reality we actually have - the now, the present.  Tolle teaches that we need to withdraw from desire and connection with the material world as much as possible.  The past is irrelevant, the future has not come yet, so the now is all we have and we have to remind ourselves over and over again of that obvious fact and always pull our emotions and thoughts from the past and future, and focusing them on the now.

He mentions an interesting concept of the "Pain Body" which is the sum of all grudges, insults, hurts and resentments we still hold and which acts as a vampire, sucking our energies and sapping our will, leaving us empty an powerless.  He teaches bringing consciousness to the Pain Body and its elements, as unconscious things are resolved when brought to the light of consciousness without resistance and denial.  

Tolle wrote a second book "A New Earth" where he describes the evolution of the human race and the planet once we all 'awaken'.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote

An interesting short novel.  The language of Capote really comes through.  All the characters in the book sound very authentic and his observations are sometimes hilarious.  One can see that the author has spent plenty of time among the 'elite' of New York City at that time, the socialites, the bankers, the brokers, etc.  The main character of the story, Holly Golightly is doing quite well in the socialite circles of New York, finding one or another "sponsor" to pay her bills which can get pretty high as she likes to show that she has expensive tastes.  Her only source of income is the weekly visit to a Mafia boss in Sing-Sing to whom she 'talks' but what really happens is seen towards the end of the book.

Unfortunately things don't go well for Holly.  Her less-than-glorious past comes to light when her husband from Texas (whom she married at 14) comes to New York to look for her.  Then it turns out that the weekly conversations in Sing Sing were actually coded messages to the New York mafia.  Her current sugar daddy, who's baby she's carrying, Jose, abandons her, since he cannot have his name connected with the scandal. Holy is devastated as she was studying Portuguese and learning about Brazilian culture for months before than, despite Jose never telling her he wants to marry her. Her brother dies.  In the midst of all this she asks the author of the story for a list of the 50 richest men in Brazil.

Holly disappears, only to write from Brazil few months later, no baby anymore, that she met a delightful old gentleman who's loaded, but there is a small formality of his wife and seven children.  The author concludes that for women like Holly there will always be another hunting ground, but are women like that ever truly happy?

"Children of the Mind" by Orson Scott Card

This is the fourth and final (? not really) book in the Ender/Andrew Wiggin tetralogy. It took me much longer time to read it (besides busy schedule and a lay-off) because it is a difficult book to read.  There is very little action happening in the book, but most of it is philosophical conversations about different existential issues.  Issues covered overtly and covertly are the existence of a supreme out-of-this-concept-of-the-universe God (or Godhead would be more appropriate as the Gnostics called that entity), the relationship of this good with lesser entities, like angels (which could be Jane or the Queen formics), the role of free will in human's relationship with the supernatural, the concept of the soul and how could it fit within textbook physics, the role of marriage, sex inside (or outside) a marriage, the role of faith in the lives of people (humans and alien pecaninos), the role and duties of the priesthood class and finally Ender as a flawed Jesus Christ (in which case Jane might be the Holy Spirit).

The deep wish and urge of Card to explain his Mormon fate scientifically and universaly is painfully visible throughout the novel and is rather distracting. Auya is a soul, anyone can see that, but with the philotic postulations Card goes further to try to explain Auyas as must-haves, but then we get into discussing zombies (the new Peter and the new Valentine) who are alive but have no souls (Auyas), while the transfer of Auyas Card is describing reminds very closely of certain Voodoo rituals and possessions.

The book has some interesting concepts, but it is not based on a plot or a story, but rather Card's desire to rationally explain the irrational concepts his faith has imposed on him.  This effort, which is painfully obvious at times, detracts from the artistic side of the book and makes it of much lesser quality than the previous three ones.  I will not be reading any more Ender books (be they "Shadow" or otherwise).

"Eat Stop Eat" by Brad Pilon

This is a shortish e-book written by a body-builder and long time supplement industry insider.  It doesn't show anything that is not already known and present in other books and on the Net, but does a great job of effectively and succinctly summarizing all that knowledge in one organized presentation.  The main point of the book is that no diet will work long-term unless it restricts the calorie intake in an acceptable way.  Most diets work short term because of the calorie restriction effect, not some magic in them, and fail in the same way, because long-term the food restrictions imposed cannot be maintained effectively in the everyday life.

The Intermittent Fasting (IF) is different from the regular water fasting in that it only lasts for 24 hours in a sequence (although one can do two 24 hour periods per week, but no in sequence) and is repeated every week for the rest of one's life.  Water fasting usually last between 3 and 14 days, and is done once a season or once a year and require much greater preparations and arrangements for the regular employed full-time person.  The IF results in between 50 and 110 fasting days per year which cumulatively is more than most of the averages on water fasting.

The author also recommends combining the IF with 2-3 strength training sessions per week and recommends it for body building.  Body builders can reduce calories and increase health with IF without losing any muscle mass, which sometimes happens with longer water fasting.  Why nobody recommends fasting as often, the author asks? From his experience in the supplement industry he answers: because nobody can make money off it.  It has been the natural way of controlling weight and restoring health for thousands of years, but it cannot be made into a pill or capsule and cannot be sold.  That's why there's plenty of disinformation and no concerned effort to promote it.

Some myths about fasting are dispelled in the book.  It won't make you lose muscle mass.  The weight loss is not only water.  It won't influence your digestive health negatively (quite the opposite).  It won't make you dizzy or weak (that comes from your sugar addiction), etc. etc.   An amazing book for the people who haven't discovered fasting and the way it can improve health.