2021 Books
[MBB grant updates: applications are now closed, reviewers are reviewing applications. The plan is to release the result and award the grant money before the end of January 2022.]
This year, I didn’t read many books partly because I was busy writing one (my Ph.D. thesis), but mostly because I read more technical and longer books. My favorite is Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, hands down. Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics will come next. Then, Formation: The Making of Nigeria by Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi.
These are some of the books I read in 2021.
Interpretable Machine Learning
by Christoph Molnar
Perhaps it will be befitting to start with a confession: I have not read many machine learning texts that are well written like Christoph’s book. It is technical, and at the same time, not very technical.
I am a biochemist who works in a field that uses morbidly old Interpretable Machine Learning (IML) method(s), and to read the book feels like taking in large quantities of very cold water after a wild soccer game on a merciless hot (summer) day.
It feels like I have just read ~30 recent papers(!) in IML – papers that I wouldn’t have had the time to read, which is what a good book should get you. The book started with a friendly introduction to the field, followed by intrinsically interpretable models, model agnostic models, neural network interpretations, and some prophecy on the future of I(ML).
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives
by Benedict XVI
I understand that this is the third entry in The ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ series by Ratzinger, but I decided to start with the 3rd anyways.
Very much like Ratzinger, this work is insightful, and it left me enlivened (and in thirst) about the subject. It probes the theology of the birth of Christ: starting from the genealogy to the double annunciations (John the Baptist + Christ), all the way to the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple.
Intellectuals and Race
by Thomas Sowell
A professor thinks and writes clearly about race; and its contemporary politics.
The Elements of Investing: Easy Lessons for Every Investor
by Burton G Malkiel, Charles D Ellis
If you want to start investing and are unsure where to start, this is an excellent place to start. And expectedly, it starts with 1) ‘get out of debt,’ and 2) ‘save.’ Followed by the ‘gospel’ of index fund investments.
The Song of the Bird
by Anthony de Mello
This is a short book of stories, parables, and tales revolving around religious truth, religious life.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
by Scott Kupor
Secrets of Sand Hill Road is a pretty informative book to explore the world of Venture Capital (VC). Scott describes what VC is, how they chose startups to invest in, their limited partners, what to think about when forming your startup.
Significantly, he went through the details of VC term sheets (which I gracefully left for another day, if I will need it.) And the two scenarios of a good exit (Acquisition and IPO.)
Hands-On Gradient Boosting with XGBoost and scikit-learn: Perform accessible machine learning and extreme gradient boosting with Python
by Corey Wade
The book builds up carefully from decision tree learning, one of the simplest machine learning algorithms (ML) out there, which takes the form of a literal decision tree.
Decision trees can then be bagged into other ML algorithms such as random forests, gradient boosting, and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), all covered in the book. A strength of the book is its emphasis on hyperparameter tuning.
The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey
Paul and Michael’s book is slightly outdated but still very relevant as an introductory text. The very basic idea of the blockchain, specifically in finance, was unpacked.
They work the reader through the history of money (metallism, chartalism, that kind of thing) and financial institutions, contemporary banking system, and then how the blockchain tech can lead to the next evolution in the series – many of which we are beginning to witness.
The critical point is to unhinge your grandma’s currency from the idea of money – i.e., money qua chartalism. With the blockchain solution being: 1) an inviolable universal public ledger and 2) an incentive for users to keep the ledger up to date. The rest are details. And, of course, one must add the keyword: decentralized. They also briefly touched on other use cases of blockchain tech, i.e., dAPPs.
Formation: The Making of Nigeria From Jihad to Amalgamation
by Fola Fagbule, Feyi Fawehinmi
A good friend of mine sent me a copy of this book from the UK just around the time I was starting to get neck-deep into writing my Ph.D. Thesis. I had promised myself I would read less of other materials so I could focus on writing, but I couldn’t fulfill that promise.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading formation, occasionally setting up a timer to make myself stop reading so I can go back to writing. Anyone interested in either modern Nigeria or the making of Nigeria will find this enjoyable. Here is a fairly long review.
Formation tells the story of pre-colonial Nigeria from 1804 to 1914. As such, it covers Dan Fodio’s jihad that had a massive impact on the Niger-area states – an impact so mighty that we continue to feel its pulse in 21st century Nigeria.
In the 19th century, the jihad sacked many Hausa kingdoms and also catalyzed the dissociation of Ilorin from the Old Oyo Empire, which in turn led to the continued disintegration of the Oyo empire. That century also saw several internecine warfares amongst the Yorubas.
Amid this furor, Abeokuta was birthed, and the need for an alliance with the British State to materialize its progressive and liberal ideas. There is also the Clapham Sect Era, which saw a fruitful and progressive collaboration with the locals in Southern pre-colonial Nigeria. This sect pushed for education and trade in commodities, moving away from the dastardly international trade in human bodies in the previous years. This era saw the likes of Jaja of Opobo and Bishop Ajayi Crowther.
Next is the post-Clapham Sect Era, where power indeed changed hands. This period kick-started with the scramble for Africa (Berlin conference), of which pre-colonial Nigeria was not left out. Needless to say, it was an era of imperialism and subjugation. This era also saw the sale of the Nigerian territories to the British State by the Royal Niger Company for £865,000 in 1899. The acquisition led to the consolidation of various protectorates, which they administer via the indirect rule.
One thing led to another, and you have the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorate in 1914, in which the authors state:
“The Southern Protectorate was to be merged with its much less financially buoyant and landlocked Northern neighbor. This was considered especially shrewd by the pinny-pinchers in London, given the high cost of achieving and maintaining military conquest in that country.”
More than a century later, such asinine amalgamation had led to such an umbrageous debacle of the polity, with activists now springing up, on almost a daily basis – demanding the end of the country.
Metabolic Phenotyping Meets Machine Learning: Detecting Renal Cell Carcinoma in Urine
by Olatomiwa O. Bifarin
Since I wrote this and read it, I might as well put this here. This is a thesis I wrote towards the completion of my Ph.D. degree at The University of Georgia.
In summary, I merged chemistry (metabolites detection and identification) with computer science (classic and explainable machine learning) to detect and stage kidney cancer in urine. It is still under embargo, but you can read the full abstract here.
I have published two papers from the work, which is about 70% of the thesis content. I hope to publish the last major work of the thesis early in the next year.
Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
by Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang
I focused on the early days of Starbucks in this very readable memoir. First, it had an interesting (and intricate) founding story. The company started as Il Giornale, founded by Howard Schultz. Il Giornale acquired Starbucks in 1987 (Starbucks Coffee Company was initially founded by Jerry, Zev, and Gordon), together with the right to the name ‘Starbucks Coffee Company.’
Howard had worked with the original founders of Starbucks before leaving to found Il Giornale after an irreconcilable business operations preference (selling coffee beans vs. selling coffee beans + selling the actual drink, ‘fast drink’).
In the book, Howard wrote about his journey building Starbucks into a giant corporation; he spoke to what made Starbucks unique, its employee-focused business philosophy, aggressive vertical integration of operations, quality-driven business model, and the like.
Principles: Life and Work
by Ray Dalio
Ray’s book is nice. The first part (his autobiography) is simply fantastic, but the second session (the actual principles) is a little redundant and turgid - which is not to say they aren’t useful ideas, they are. It’s just a rather boring read. So, I came across an app by Ray the other day, which goes by the book’s name. I have yet to try it out, but it might be a useful resource to metabolize the book’s content.
Building Your Book for Kindle
by Kindle Direct Publishing
If you look to publish your book on Kindle, this is a great resource. I wrote a Ph.D. Memoir, which was initially intended to be published on Kindle, and this resource works you through every bit of the process to have a well-formatted Kindle publication.
Wander: An Abridged Ph.D. Memoir Essay
by Olatomiwa O. Bifarin
Again, since I wrote this and read it, I might as well put this here.
Wander is a memoir written by Olatomiwa Bifarin about his Ph.D. experience in the United States. In this 5000-plus-word essay, he tells his story of completing a Ph.D. program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia.
His tales highlight the surprising benefit of wandering and the counterintuitive – and no less potent – benefit of how being less competitive can improve one’s odds of success.
These lessons apply not only to folks who want to get a Ph.D. but even more so to anyone who engages in any kind of knowledge work. As he has stated in the essay, his memoir will benefit equally “prospective graduate students, local novelists in your hometown, or even actors in Hollywood.” You can read it here
Themes and Variations
by David Sedaris
Short and funny essay. I picked this up because I wanted to do something different: it turns out to be too lewd for my liking.
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
by Thomas Sowell
Basic Economics got to be one of the clearest books I have read on the free market and economics in general. He discussed the many ways in which economics and politics can be incompatible. To quote Thomas Sowell: “The first lesson of economics is scarcity, the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” My only quibble is that, at 700 pages, it’s bloody long. But really, who cares? Even if it’s a thousand-page. One of the best books I read this year.
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
by René Girard, Stephen Bann (Translator), Michael Metteer (Translator)
Girard delivers on his promise; if one can take such an appealing book title, as one. And he had his foot in so many ponds - fundamental anthropology, literary criticism, biblical theology, psychology, et cetera. His theory of mimesis explains quite a lot of things - one is tempted to say it explains everything. Why are humans violent? Why does it seem many of us never get satisfied by anything? What explains our obsession with prestige? What is the origin of culture, religion, political institutions? How does Christianity destroy myths? In my estimation, there is a small price to pay for such deep insights like Girard’s: “Things Hidden...” is a difficult book to read. One of the best books I have read and definitely one of the most difficult. Some chapters just went right above my head - I will read it again.
Escape From Reason
by Francis A. Schaeffer
Escape from Reason is a book on philosophy and Christianity that explores how the former, at least in the contemporary definition, shadows the latter. If you will, it is a history of philosophy book that details the evolution of modern humanism via philosophers like Kant, Rousseau, Sartre, and the like. My only critique of the book is the situation of St. Aquinas at the root of this evolution, which is detailed in my essay, St Aquinas on Trial.
Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
by Geoffrey B. West
How do the properties of things change as the size changes? In this brilliant book, Prof West investigated what (and how the) properties of organisms, cities, and companies change as the size changes. He gave stimulating scientific explanations for closed-ended growth in biological organisms and open-ended growth in cities. And then he closed with the subject of sustainability: is the open-ended growth (that we see in cities) possible forever? I wrote an essay inspired by the ideas in this book titled: Why we die, but cities don’t.
Have a nice 2022, and happy new year, in advance.