My recent interest as it pertains to Vietnam primarily stems from reading the Lyndon Johnson books that Robert Caro has been working on for the past fifty years. So far, he’s published four out of the five planned volumes and it encompasses Johnson’s childhood up till the 1964 election. The first book Path to Power (1982) took Caro eight years to explore Johnson from literally examining the soil and weather patterns his great-grandparents endured whilst farming to Johnson winning his seat in the House of Representatives. Caro and his wife Ina, who is his primary research assistant for his books, even moved to the Texas Hill Country for three years to understand where Johnson was from and how that shaped the man who would climb the rungs of power.

The second book Means of Ascent (1990) explores Johnson’s career in the House of Representatives and how he put everything on the line to win him a place in the United States Senate by stealing his 1948 election. (Caro would be the first to put together the pieces of how the dramatic stealing of the election and subsequent courtroom battle actually went down by researching further than anyone had done before and hearing confessions from dying old men who had helped Johnson win).

His third book Master of the Senate (2002) is widely acclaimed as the best book in the series. The Senate fits Johnson’s personality perfectly and Johnson makes the Senate work for the first time in a hundred years. It explores how Johnson convinced Senators to break from the strongly held tradition of seniority in the United States Senate to make him Senate Majority Leader and cajoled, manipulated and wielded so much power as he navigated the egos and personalities of the various Senators and made Congress work by passing an unprecedented amount of legislation.

At the time he arrived in the Senate, seniority governed all its workings. New members were not supposed to speak much, or at all, on the floor during their first year or two, and during the remainder of their first six-year term to speak only infrequently, and to participate in other Senate activities in a largely apprentice role. After his first two years in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson was Assistant Leader of his party. In another two years, while he was still in his first term, he became his party’s leader, the Democratic Leader of the Senate. Since the Democrats were in the minority, he was therefore Minority Leader. When, two years later, the Democrats became the majority, he became Majority Leader, the most powerful man in the Senate after just a single term there, the youngest Leader in history—after a rise unprecedented in its rapidity.

Robert Caro, Master of the Senate

The fourth book Passage of Power (2012) explores how Johnson became Kennedy’s Vice President in 1960 in a manner that was incredibly uncharacteristic of the Johnson that the audience had known through the preceding 2500 pages. Throughout the series, Johnson is described as this ruthless political operator who does everything he can to win. He whips his subordinates into shape, he is ruthless about winning and during each of his successful campaigns he pushes his body to such an extreme campaigning that in both winning elections he had major health issues and had to be hospitalized right before election day.

Johnson had only lost one election before and that was in 1941 when he ran for the Senate after four years of being a Congressman. He had FDR’s support and his campaign was generously backed by Texas oil and construction business magnates who had previously supported his Congressional campaigns and whose money Johnson funneled to other political apparatuses and campaigns. However, Johnson was complacent compared to his first congressional campaign and as a result had the election stolen from right under him. The ensuing WWII and post-war period would see Johnson resolve to finally break out of the House of Representatives and give it his all for his successful 1948 campaign. He had to win this as he was giving up his House seat in order to run.

Back to 1960, Johnson doesn’t decide to run for President most of the year. While he’s thinking about how he was already turning 52 and that most of the men in his family had died in their 50s or 60s because of heart issues and that he probably won’t have much longer as he had already had one heart attack a few years prior, he doesn’t rush. Caro ascribes this to Johnson’s fear of failure to confront the final rung of power that he had been running towards his entire life. Johnson was a perfect fit for the Senate and his years as the Majority Leader had turned the position from mere title to an actual powerful position. He was unequivocally the most powerful democrat in the country while Eisenhower was in the White House. However, he thought that his power in the Senate would translate to power at the national level in winning the party primaries and convention. He thought that he was beyond playing the typical national politics game that Presidential hopefuls did in those days in order to win the primary. It was this fear of failure and more so the fear of losing to Kennedy whom he looked down upon as a junior Senator from his position as Majority Leader that made him avoid the game of trying to court votes to win his party’s nomination. Johnson said that he was “tending to the store” (referring to the Senate) whenever he was asked by the press and would not comment on whether he was actually going to run. This led to him being way behind the Kennedy political machine and conceding instead for Vice President as he thought that it was at least a stepping stone if he was lucky enough to survive and run in 1968.

Johnson was immediately depressed through the thousand days of Camelot as while Kennedy enthralled the nation with bold ideas and speeches, Johnson was mocked by the Washington establishment for being irrelevant. Kennedy and the people around him completely disregarded this master parliamentarian even when it came to Congress and soon he became so irrelevant such that Caro would write that even the mockery of Johnson’s downfall from his days as Majority Leader stopped. It had gotten to a point where there were even talks of Johnson being replaced on the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and Robert Kennedy picking up the baton from his brother in 1968 leaving Johnson with no path to the Presidency. Johnson became incredibly depressed and hopeless and thought that his career was over and that he would never reach the apex of political power after working all his life for it and that he would soon die of a heart attack anyways like all the men in his family had as they approached their 60s.

Then Kennedy was assassinated and all of a sudden Johnson had achieved what he had wanted his whole life in the worst possible circumstances. Johnson coped with the tragic event by trying to use the momentum of Kennedy’s assassination and his skill in willing Congress to work by passing landmark legislation like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and more. Then he wins the 1964 election in his own right with the highest percentage votes up till then in American history and there Caro’s telling of the story stopped.

The meat of the Johnson Presidency has yet to be explored and that’s what the ninety-year-old Robert Caro has been working on for the past fifteen years as he wakes up every morning and wears his suit to his Central Park office and types away on his Smith Corona typewriter. The company that makes the typewriter had stopped long ago so he has had to stockpile what he can and try to repair the machine as it wears out and even takes in donations of the model to type his final book the way that he has always typed them.

While the landmark legislation that Johnson passed in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination is of course part of Johnson’s legacy, it’s more often that he’s remembered for the tragic loss of American life in the escalation of the Vietnam War and the 1960s which were marked by the war and protests and civil unrest. While the great bulk of Johnson’s legislative agenda through the Great Society programs were dismantled by successive administrations, the core of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 live on but what strikes the consciousness of people more is the more than 50,000 dead young men that were ordered by President Johnson to fight a war in a jungle 9,000 miles away.

The final pages of the fourth book give a little preview of the extent to which Johnson’s decisions in the war in Vietnam destroyed the credibility and reverence of the office itself. While Nixon would do his part to continue this work, Caro argues that this domino effect started with Johnson.

Robert Caro has given many interviews, been featured in a documentary about his writing process, written a book about how he works, and spoken at many events about Johnson. However, there is one sentence that keeps popping up in recent years as they almost inevitably ask how far along he is into the fifth and what is expected to be the final volume of this great work of art that is The Years of Lyndon Johnson.

“Robert Caro has yet to make his research trip to Vietnam”

Here are some excerpts from a Smithsonian Magazine interview in March 2025 and he was then around 400,000 words into the manuscript or around 700 pages into the fifth book.

In February 2019, Caro mentioned in an interview that he had completed 323 pages of the fifth book’s manuscript. When I ask him where he is up to, he says, “Well, I’ve done a lot more than that now.” I don’t expect him to be more specific, but then he continues: “Well, I’ll tell you what pages I’m up to—951.”

I ask whether he has a number in his head where he thinks it will top out.

“No,” he says. “Because I don’t know what I’m going to find in Vietnam, for one thing.”

Caro is legendary for going further than normal biographers would typically go, a proclivity epitomized by his reporting on Johnson’s childhood in the Texas Hill Country. Realizing that he wasn’t really understanding the milieu from which Johnson emerged, Caro and his wife (who has often played a substantial role alongside him as a researcher) moved to the area—for three years.

Similarly, Caro has long said that he doesn’t feel able to complete this final volume without spending time in Vietnam. He and his wife had a trip scheduled for the first half of 2020, but they had to postpone it because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I half wonder whether Caro will tell me that he no longer sees such a trip as feasible, but I should know better.

“When I finish what I’m writing on now,” he tells me, “we’ll go to Vietnam.”

I ask him how long he thinks they’ll go for, which elicits a dry laugh.

“A long time,” he says. “Because what’s one of the things that I want to do about Vietnam? It’s: what it’s like to fight in the jungle. I mean, you take 600,000 American boys used to cleanliness, and you’re put in this horrible place where you wake up in the morning, there’s these five-inch leeches under your skin. So that’s going to take some time.” He also explains it a different way: “Well, one of the points of this last book is to show the reader how a great power goes to war, how unjust a great power can be because of its greatness. That you can send 600,000 men to a little country. So I think that’s very important. … And I guess I say to myself, you know, if you can show people the horror of this, you will have accomplished something.”

The real decisions about the Vietnam War, Caro goes on, were made “over sherry in this Tuesday lunch” at the White House. He was even recently allowed to sit in the room where these Tuesday lunches played out so he could feel how they might have been. But he clearly wants to describe the effects of such decisions on the other side of the world and not just in the abstract. He compares the Vietnam material to the celebrated “One Mile” section of The Power Broker, where Caro dramatized the repercussions for individual people when Robert Moses built something like a new road (in this case the Cross Bronx Expressway) by routing it though existing communities (in this case a one-mile stretch cutting through the East Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx). To write the section, Caro tracked down and interviewed everyone he could trace from the displaced and destroyed communities. This is precisely the kind of storytelling that Caro feels is so important. “They’re all talking about, ‘Oh, there was a great human cost of building this road.’ And I’m saying, ‘But not one book, not one magazine article has ever examined what that human cost is.’ I said, ‘I’m going to do that.’” Exactly what he might seek in Vietnam, where the human cost is perhaps less unexamined, isn’t yet clear, but it’s a part of the story he feels compelled to tell. “It’s not just Robert Moses who has unchecked power, as you’ll see if I ever finish this book,” Caro says. “There was an element of unchecked power after Lyndon Johnson starts escalating the Vietnam War.”

After reading these Johnson books last year, I started to cope with the waiting for the final book by obsessing over the equally if not more dramatic and Shakespearean life of Richard Nixon. In fact, I have written about an episode that I found interesting after reading my first Nixon biography by John A. Farrell that revolves around these two men.

After visiting Japan in December and being disappointed by their lack of museums and history (at least after the Meiji Restoration) with the exception of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, I decided that Vietnam would probably be better as there was no reason for them to not have giant memorials and museums celebrating their long fought battle for independence.

To prepare myself for Vietnam, I decided to read the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Embers of War by Fredrik Logevall. While I had read Kissinger by Walter Isaacson and multiple books on Richard Nixon that obviously touched on the bombing campaigns and peace talk negotiations by the Nixon-Kissinger duo, I wanted to learn more about the origins of the war. I prefer to read biographies to understand history as I find them more engaging and it further affirms my longstanding belief in the great man theory of history, but this book was informative yet readable and incredibly well-written as you would expect of a book that won a Pulitzer.

The book’s timeline spans from 1919 to 1959 and Logevall clearly knows how to hook people as he starts off the prelude with the story of a young Congressman Jack Kennedy visiting Saigon in 1951 with his younger siblings Robert and Patricia. They were on a tour in Asia so that Kennedy could learn more about the region that was going to play such a big part in the foreign policy discussions back in Washington.

The prologue of the book then talks about a young 29-year-old Ho Chi Minh trying to get a word in with the American President Woodrow Wilson. The year was 1919 and Wilson had just given a speech at Versailles about the post Great War order. He had suggested he wanted to free colonial peoples to determine their own destinies in his push for the League of Nations. While the young Vietnamese man would be ignored, he would continue on and towards the end of this book’s tale he would have successfully won a war against the French in the First Indochina War and the first two Americans would die in the Second Indochina War in 1959, whose names are the first two among the more than 50,000 names forever engraved into granite stone at the Vietnam War Memorial in the capital of that great power on the other side of the world.

The tale of Ho Chi Minh who left his homeland when he was about twenty and then only returned after three decades after living around the world and fighting for its independence from its colonial master is almost mythical and unreal which makes for great lore. Also while I was in Hanoi, I didn’t realize that a mausoleum especially in a communist country meant that you get to actually see the body of Ho Chi Minh as it is publicly displayed inside this majestic building in the middle of their main square. Apparently Mao and Lenin are also viewable like this which is wild.

Logevall goes through the French colonial history of Indochina from 1919 onwards to WWII when it was temporarily freed from Japanese invasion until they changed their mind one day and had a weird co-colonial enterprise as the Japanese continued their conquest over Southeast Asia. After the Japanese surrendered, the French were back in control but by then the mystique of the colonial white man had been erased as it had been around in colonial countries around the world and resistance had started in the outskirts of major cities like Hanoi and Saigon led by people like Ho Chi Minh. It didn’t take long before Ho Chi Minh and his comrades entered into a full scale hot war with France in 1947 and were supported by the Soviets and Mao’s China. However, Logevall argues that the scale of the Soviets and Maoist China was vastly overestimated by the western allies. The Soviets were not that interested in this part of the world and whilst Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese leaders travelled to Moscow to make their case to Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders, the Chinese had to be there with them and played a more direct role in supporting Ho Chi Minh for the time being.

To set the stage for this book, there are three simultaneous games being played. Firstly, the revolving door of various French generals and high commissioners (or governor-generals as they were known for a time) being assigned to tackle this post-war Indochina question with colonial tensions rising across the globe and a hot war with Ho Chi Minh and his troops in the battlefields across Vietnam. Then there is the diplomatic chess game in Geneva and Paris which revolve around not just what France and her allies should do in this situation but even the extent to which they should care due to the more overarching issue of the communist threat closer to home in the form of the Soviets and the Iron Curtain and the whole host of issues that came about in that same time period. Then there is of course, the third game which was being played in Washington policy circles, the White House and Capitol Hill as they grappled with McCarthyism and the effects of “Losing China” and the concluding war in Korea that had split the country.

Being an American historian, Logevall clearly focuses more on what the American Presidents thought about Vietnam going as far back as Wilson as I mentioned earlier in this post. However, he really focuses on the President’s view starting from FDR. One of the more interesting counterfactuals to think about was what would have happened to Indochina if FDR had lived to complete his term and oversee the end of WWII. Logevall notes that whenever the question of Indochina or any colony came up, FDR was always in favor of giving people their independence. Of course, maybe this fairytale counterfactual is pointless if the Soviet threat of communist expansion and domino theory would have led FDR to make the same decisions as his successors but it’s interesting nonetheless that he had seemingly such a marked difference compared to all the future Presidents. In fact, I recall reading about this recently in No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin which is about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship through the war focusing on the domestic front. In the book, FDR is said to have brought up letting the Indians govern themselves during one of his meetings with Churchill in the middle of the war and Churchill left the discussion halfway in anger at the thought of giving up the crown jewel of the empire. FDR then decided to not bring it up because there were more important things to focus on in the midst of war but alas it’s still worth mentioning.

After FDR, Harry Truman inherits the problem and simply follows the status quo when it came to Indochina following his Secretary of State Dean Acheson and what the experts thought which was that they should maintain the communist threat but not involve American troops as not only is that always an unpopular move by any administration but because most Americans didn’t even know what Indochina or Vietnam or Ho Chi Minh were. This made it simply untenable to even fathom participating directly especially since the Korean War was raging on and there were more pressing issues in Europe.

Then we get to the meat of Indochina through the reign of Eisenhower. Eisenhower and his VP Nixon were elected after 20 years of democratic Presidents in the wake of the Red Scare with Nixon being one of the chief political benefactors of this fear as he famously ‘exposed’ a communist spy Alger Hiss while he was in the House of Representatives just a few years ago. The administration was convinced that “Losing China” to the communists and ongoing armistice in Korea that was Truman’s fault was what had lost the democrats the White House and didn’t want to make the same costly political mistake with Indochina.

Ike and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles didn’t want to negotiate with China because they hadn’t recognized it yet and crucially didn’t understand that the USSR, China and Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces weren’t exactly the best of allies just because they all happened to be communists. The author argues that this assumption of the three communist states being one singular bloc vying for world domination was the biggest mistake Ike and Dulles made in dealing with the situation. As mentioned before, they didn’t understand that the Viet Minh and their forefathers and the Chinese had a thousand years of history which brought about disagreements and tensions and the Soviets were not all that concerned about this part of the world and were also suspicious as to why at one point Ho Chi Minh had disbanded the communist labelling of his group during negotiations with the French which they took to be proof that they were not actually communists.

Ike and Dulles still have to sell the war and educate the people on why their supplies were going to this colony of France and they did with Ike giving his famous speech on the domino theory and he then went to Congress to ask for permission to fight while Dulles campaigned for a “United Action” coalition in Europe. However, the British were convinced that this United Action would lead to WWIII and opposed it. Interestingly enough, Congress (which includes Minority Leader Johnson at this point) comes back to the President and tells him that they would need British and Allied support first before they could authorize him to fight through this “United Action” front with France for her colony. Logevall argues that this was a political maneuvering by Ike and Dulles as it either means that they genuinely wanted to fight but were blocked by Congress due to it being conditional on Britain or that they didn’t really want to fight but had to appear as though they wanted to because of the political climate and the losses in China and Korea and had an easy way out of actually fighting because of Congress and Britain. Logevall argues that because of Ike asking unrestricted authority from Congress, it was actually the former because you wouldn’t ask for blank check otherwise.

Despite all this wrangling, the main climax of the book comes down to the battlefield in Vietnam that culminated in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 which resulted in a Viet Minh victory. Logevall says that “for the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle”. I found this quote hard to believe and as I researched further I realized that perhaps the author is right in a technicality as he is specifically referring to colonial warfare which doesn’t involve the Russo-Japanese war etc and further limited it by saying “fixed battle” which I guess doesn’t involve the various Imperial Japan victories during WWII against European colonies etc.

Back in Geneva where the great and mostly middle dwindling powers had met to discuss the fate of Indochina, this sudden victory had certainly shifted the odds in favor of Ho Chi Minh but it wasn’t enough for a full communist Vietnam settlement. The settlement was eventually reached with Vietnam being split into two and Ngo Dinh Diem was installed in South Vietnam as the leader as he had connections in Washington. Interestingly, France and her western allies had won more at Geneva than they had at the battlefield because of fear that the Americans struck in the hearts of the communists through Dulles’ threat of entering the war in the most significant speech that he gave on the matter.

Then, the secretary continued, the United States would “hold this area and fight subversion within with all the strength we have,” using economic and military assistance to the non-Communist governments as well as an American-led regional defense grouping modeled in part on NATO. It was a monumental decision, as important as any made by an American administration on Indochina, from Franklin Roosevelt’s to Gerald Ford’s. Its true import would become clear only with time, but even on that day the weight of the secretary of state’s words were hard to miss."

…

Privately, Eisenhower knew what every other informed observer knew: that the terms of the agreement at Geneva were far better, from France’s perspective and the West’s perspective, than would have been expected on the day the proceedings opened. He felt a measure of vindication. America’s tough words, starting with Dulles’s speech in September 1953 that warned of major retaliation if China intervened directly in the war, had had their effect. The threat of direct U.S. military involvement caused nervousness in Beijing and Moscow and helped persuade the Viet Minh to accept concessions in the final agreement

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War

Ike and Dulles had saved Vietnam temporarily from falling into communist hands and Diem would be a very popular leader in the minds of American people and the press as he was hailed as a sort of Zelenskyy-esque figure as he was leading his people to fight the good fight. Though, Diem was a vastly different leader in most aspects starting with the fact that his elections were so fake as to warrant the CIA who was propping him up to warn him to not cheat as much and make it somewhat believable (Diem wouldn’t listen and give himself 98.2% of the votes). Moreover, other than his ties to America, he did not have much leadership or military experience that had helped him. In fact, in 1963 under the Kennedy administration he would be accidentally assassinated in a CIA-led military coup because of some misunderstandings and miscommunications.

However, even immediately after the Geneva settlement, everyone knew that the countryside was already in control by the North and their allies but ignored it and knew that their days were numbered even with all the support politically and financially and militarily by the United States. However, the Washington status quo and expert opinion prevailed and the Americans slowly became more and more entrenched and attached to this country that was falling apart almost from the start which is the tragedy of it all.

Logevall argues that Vietnam in the 1960s happened because the leaders in the 40s and 50s simply followed the safe status quo decision backed by the bureaucratic Washington machine instead of making the hard choice of reevaluating the importance of defending Vietnam. Not to mention taking a hard look and whether the domino theory that the rest of Southeast Asia or even Japan, Australia and India would fall to the communists if they had full control of Indochina. As mentioned a few times, they overestimated the strength of the communist bloc and imagined they were more united that they actually were.

Moreover, the American leaders operated on this issue with a fear that if they had been “weaker” or let go of Vietnam that they would be like Truman who had “lost” China and Korea which was damning in the age of McCarthyism and the ever expanding communist threat in the Cold War. Truman passed this along to Eisenhower who passed it along to Kennedy and his entourage who further deepened American commitment to South Vietnam but was assassinated and the issue was once again passed along. But time didn’t give Johnson a chance to pass it along and he was confronted with making the hard choices all these other great men had delayed for way too long.

“You know who this is? Robert McNamara. The most hated man in Vietnam. Him and Henry Kissinger”, I overheard a tour guide telling the person on my right while I was at the Saigon War Remnants Museum.

When I came back home, I wanted to learn more about Robert McNamara. I had read about Johnson and Kissinger and Nixon of course. But McNamara was always the person who was mentioned next in these series of names revolving around the war. All I had known was that he was Kennedy appointed and Johnson begged him to stay to show confidence in the government after the assassination. However, unlike most of the other Harvard Kennedy men, McNamara stayed with Johnson until almost the end of his term. He is credited as the architect of the modern policy analysis in the U.S. military and of course escalating the Vietnam War as he was the Defense Secretary from 1961 to 1968. So to understand more, I watched his documentary which was published when he was 87 years old in 2003 titled The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. I had read that McNamara had later apologized for some of the actions he took during the Vietnam War in his memoirs and interviews decades after the fact and this interview had a similar vibe.

McNamara starts off the documentary talking about his life from how his first memory was WWI Victory Day celebrations in California when he was two years old to leaving Harvard to join the army as America was entering WWII. During WWII, he was in the Air Force as an officer under General LeMay who was in charge of Air Force operations in Japan at the time. McNamara recounts how both he and LeMay were aware that they were bombing civilians in firebombing campaigns in places like Tokyo where these campaigns killed as much as 100,000 civilians a night but that they had to do it to end the war. He talks about a conversation he had with LeMay at the time where LeMay told him that if they lost the war that they would surely be tried as war criminals. McNamara in the interview said that he agreed with him but that they had no choice as they didn’t want to send American troops on the ground to brutally fight a land war in Japan which is the same rationale that people give for the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war, McNamara had already made a name for himself in the Air Force and was recruited to join the leadership of the Ford Company by the son of Henry Ford. He rose through the ranks quickly becoming the first non-Ford family member to become CEO but within days of being CEO, the new President-elect Kennedy offered him the Defense Secretary role and he accepted.

He moves through the Cuban Missile Crisis and what happened and then the documentary finally came to Vietnam. McNamara stood his ground and used Prussian army general Carl von Clausewitz’s fog of war to talk about how no one has the best information in the midst of making decisions during a war but that while they made mistakes, it was mostly correct and while people would call him a war criminal, he did what he had to do to lead.

I thought the more interesting part was when he met the Cubans and the Vietnamese decades later and had a conversation with Fidel Castro and with Vo Nguyen Giap who was the Minister of Defense of Vietnam from 1946 to 1980.

During the meeting with Castro in 2002 in Havana, Castro revealed that he had urged Nikita Khrushchev to launch nuclear weapons if the Americans had gone ahead with their plans to invade as Kennedy was urged to by the military generals. In the interview, McNamara recalls him being visibly shaken when he first heard this from Castro. Moreover, there were already 42,000 Soviet troops in Cuba compared to the 10,000 that was estimated by U.S. intelligence. On top of that, Castro revealed for the first time that tactical nuclear warheads were already deployed and operational on the island and that a local Soviet commander had full authority to use them which he would have probably done had the Americans gone ahead with the invasion.

At the Hanoi Conference in 1995, McNamara met Giap and other military leaders to discuss the war. McNamara claimed that he was shocked to hear directly from the Vietnamese leaders that it was never about communism spreading but about independence. They said that they would have never become a Chinese proxy as they had been fighting them for a thousand years and thus the domino theory that the Americans espoused was an absurd reading of the actual situation.

After all this, I decided that I had clearly not procrastinated enough from writing about Vietnam and Caro after coming back from my trip. Thus, I decided to watch a lecture on the war by Sarah Paine, a historian and professor at the U.S. Naval War College who had gone viral after being interviewed by AI Podcaster Dwarkesh Patel. Her take on Vietnam is that America didn’t lose in the war as it was just another theatre in the war that truly mattered: the Cold War. While she acknowledges the tragedy of the more than 50,000 dead and what it did for the country, America had won the Cold War. The Sino-Soviet split happened and China and Vietnam were at war with each other as soon as Saigon fell. And most of all, the dominos didn’t fall. Thus, she argues that while Vietnam was a win for Ho Chi Minh and his forces, it wasn’t a loss for America.

While that may have been true from a strategic military analysis point of view, I didn’t want that. I wanted to understand why Johnson made the decision that he did when he inherited this ticking time bomb after Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

One of the sorrows of reading a great biography series like that of Caro’s is that nothing will ever compare again. No other author can spend a decade or more of his life on a single volume and come close to the level of writing that Caro blesses the pages of his books with. While it is non-fiction, the writing is that of a great novel or play and you know that Caro has sweated over and rewrote and contemplated and fought and argued over every single word and turned over every page of thousands and thousands of pages of documents at libraries across the United States to bring Lyndon back to life.

After reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on FDR and Eleanor that I have referenced earlier in this post, I realized that she had written a Johnson biography in 1977 which was earlier than even the first Caro book Path to Power (1982). Moreover, she had actually met and worked with President Johnson in the White House. I was surprised to learn this fact as she is still doing podcasts and interviews today but then realized that she was a 24 year old graduate student at Harvard who was selected as a White House Fellow in 1968. Here’s what transpired as told in Wikipedia:

Johnson initially expressed interest in hiring the young intern as his Oval Office assistant, but after an article by Kearns appeared in The New Republic laying out a scenario for Johnson’s removal from office over his conduct of the war in Vietnam, she was, instead, assigned to the Department of Labor; Goodwin has written that she felt relieved to be able to remain in the internship program in any capacity at all. “The president discovered that I had been actively involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and had written an article entitled, ‘How to Dump Lyndon Johnson’. I thought, for sure, he would kick me out of the program, but instead, he said, ‘Oh, bring her down here for a year, and if I can’t win her over, no one can’.” After Johnson decided not to run for reelection, he brought Kearns to the White House as a member of his staff, where she focused on domestic anti-poverty efforts.

After Johnson left the White House, he wanted to write his memoirs at his ranch so he would invite a team which consisted of Goodwin to pop by and interview him and basically help with the writing process so that he can tell his story. This led to Goodwin having a lot of interaction with the former President which allowed her to glean insights that only she could have known that she wrote about in the biography she would publish 4 years after his death.

All of this to say, I had to betray waiting loyally for Caro’s final book and dive in to Goodwin’s book to see what she had learned about the character as he dealt with Vietnam.

“LBJ was great in domestic affairs,” elder statesman Averell Harriman once observed. “Harry Truman had programs, but none got through. Kennedy had no technique. FDR talked simply during the crisis, but didn’t act enough later. Johnson went back past the New Frontier all the way to the New Deal. He loved FDR, and it was fantastic what he did. If it hadn’t been for … Vietnam he’d have been the greatest President ever. Even so he’ll still be remembered as great.”

“If it hadn’t been for Vietnam”—how many times this phrase has been spoken in conversations assessing Johnson’s place in history. For it is impossible to disconnect Johnson from that war, and undeniable that the fighting abroad halted progress toward the Great Society. Indeed, from the beginning, Johnson later claimed, he himself foresaw and weighed the devastating consequences of war on domestic reform, but in the end, felt he had no choice but to escalate the war.

“I knew from the start,” Johnson told me in 1970, describing the early weeks of 1965, “that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.

“Oh, I could see it coming all right. History provided too many cases where the sound of the bugle put an immediate end to the hopes and dreams of the best reformers: the Spanish-American War drowned the populist spirit; World War I ended Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom; World War II brought the New Deal to a close. Once the war began, then all those conservatives in the Congress would use it as a weapon against the Great Society. You see, they’d never wanted to help the poor or the Negroes in the first place. But they were having a hard time figuring out how to make their opposition sound noble in a time of great prosperity. But the war. Oh, they’d use it to say they were against my programs, not because they were against the poor—why, they were as generous and as charitable as the best of Americans—but because the war had to come first. First, we had to beat those Godless Communists and then we could worry about the homeless Americans. And the generals. Oh, they’d love the war, too. It’s hard to be a military hero without a war. Heroes need battles and bombs and bullets in order to be heroic. That’s why I am suspicious of the military. They’re always so narrow in their appraisal of everything. They see everything in military terms. Oh, I could see it coming. And I didn’t like the smell of it. I didn’t like anything about it, but I think the situation in South Vietnam bothered me most. They never seemed able to get themselves together down there. Always fighting with one another. Bad. Bad.

“Yet everything I knew about history told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon, then I’d be doing exactly what Chamberlain did in World War II. I’d be giving a big fat reward to aggression. And I knew that if we let Communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam, there would follow in this country an endless national debate—a mean and destructive debate—that would shatter my Presidency, kill my administration, and damage our democracy. I knew that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness from the day that the Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China had played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.

“For this time there would be Robert Kennedy out in front leading the fight against me, telling everyone that I had betrayed John Kennedy’s commitment to South Vietnam. That I had let a democracy fall into the hands of the Communists. That I was a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine. Oh, I could see it coming all right. Every night when I fell asleep I would see myself tied to the ground in the middle of a long, open space. In the distance, I could hear the voices of thousands of people. They were all shouting at me and running toward me: ‘Coward! Traitor! Weakling!’ They kept coming closer. They began throwing stones. At exactly that moment I would generally wake up … terribly shaken. But there was more. You see, I was as sure as any man could be that once we showed how weak we were, Moscow and Peking would move in a flash to exploit our weakness. They might move independently or they might move together. But move they would—whether through nuclear blackmail, through subversion, with regular armed forces or in some other manner. As nearly as anyone can be certain of anything, I knew they couldn’t resist the opportunity to expand their control over the vacuum of power we would leave behind us. And so would begin World War III. So you see, I was bound to be crucified either way I moved.”

Did Lyndon Johnson believe all this? Yes … some of the time. Was it true? Some of it; and the rest was not simply pure illusion. For even Johnson’s most grotesque exaggerations were always constructed on some fragment of reality, so that they could never be totally disproven by factual evidence or unanswerable logic alone, only by rejecting his judgment for one more reasonable, more consonant with the known facts.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, First paragraphs of Chapter 9:Vietnam in Lyndon Johnson And The American Dream

While the book certainly misses on the charms of the Caro books that I had come to expect when reading about Johnson and some of the bigger stories and revelations like the stealing of elections and getting money from oil and construction moguls and getting government approval for his radio business which made him the wealthiest President to ever be in office up till that point, the conversations that Goodwin had with Johnson more than made up for that.

It’s hard to read 2500 pages about a person without feeling at least the slightest bit of affinity as you understand the strengths and flaws of a person in all its rawness no matter how horrible and ruthless they may appear to be in the pursuit of power. Reading this book and knowing that Johnson ruined his career and America with the choices he made with regards to Vietnam, you can’t help but think about how he was inadvertently placing all these traps around him that made him the perfect person to fall for them when the issue of Vietnam was handed to him. He didn’t have military experience like the others and his actions during WWII speak volumes to this. Caro said that he wanted military glory and was the first Congressman to sign up after Pearl Harbor in the Navy but instead spent his time taking photographs around California in his uniform and visited various camps and did “inspections” and “reports”. The war was more of a holiday for the Congressman. However, when Johnson realized that the war was going to end soon, he decided that he needed some action or otherwise his political career would be in jeopardy. Johnson pushed for a role anywhere near the Pacific so that he would at least be near gunfire.

They eventually sent him to Australia from which he participated in a mission by sitting at the back of a plane with a photographer. One of Johnson’s other political friends on another plane was actually shot down and killed but Johnson survived the harrowing experience as the plane wobbled while it was under attack by the Japanese before they safely made it back to base. Caro said that Johnson’s role in this was as a passenger but he was awarded a Silver Star by General MacArthur himself which he proudly wore on his lapel every day since. The story of his extent of participation was slowly changed until he became a hero and he would retell the story of his heroic actions from dinner party to dinner party back in Georgetown and campaign rallies ending with the story of the great General MacArthur himself awarding him the Silver Star. Understanding this Johnson, you can’t help but think that he was just further digging himself into a trap.

In bequeathing him the problem of Vietnam, history presented Lyndon Johnson with issues alien to his experience, resistant to his methods of leadership, yet decisive for his Presidency. That was a historic misfortune, for Johnson and for America. But Johnson was not simply a victim of circumstance. Destiny and victimization are not the same. The latter assumes neither an act of will nor even a motivating passion; the circumstances appear as exclusively external, arbitrary, and exorbitant. But Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in Vietnam was his own, the product of his beliefs, inward needs, and the public experience of decades. Admittedly, unlike his predecessors, he did not choose to be confronted with the need to decide whether the assumption that Vietnam was vital to our security…

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson And The American Dream

Goodwin then argued that while any President might have intervened in Vietnam in 1965, it was uniquely Johnson who would have wanted both the Great Society and Vietnam at the same time which ultimately caused his downfall. She says that only Johnson could have imagined that his domain expertise in domestic issues and wrangling with Congress that it would translate to the battlefield despite having little expertise unlike an Ike or even a Kennedy with foreign policy.

Perhaps only Johnson would have dared to conceal the cost of the war from senior members of Congress, so that he might receive the Great Society appropriations before the truth came out. Probably the fact that he was, in fact, a master of the Congress had allowed him to engage in so complicated and immense an undertaking. The very qualities that had led to Johnson’s political and legislative success were precisely those that now operated to destroy him: his inward insistence that the world adapt itself to his goals … Here more than anywhere, the people must have an opportunity to make a choice. For in the end, no statesman can pursue a policy of war unless he knows for what goals, and for how long, his people are prepared to fight. Lyndon Johnson had wanted to surpass Franklin Roosevelt; and Roosevelt, after all, had not only won the reforms Johnson envied, he had also waged a war. But there was a critical difference: Roosevelt did not attempt the New Deal and World War II at the same time. Only Johnson among the Presidents sought to be simultaneously first in peace and first in war; and even Johnson was bound to fail.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson And The American Dream

“And then beside Fulbright there were all those liberals on the Hill squawking at me about Vietnam. Why? Because I never went to Harvard. That’s why. Because I wasn’t John F. Kennedy. Because I wasn’t friends with all their friends. Because I was keeping the throne from Bobby Kennedy. Because the Great Society was accomplishing more than the New Frontier. You see, they had to find some issue on which to turn against me and they found it in Vietnam. Even though they were the very people who developed the concept of limited war in the first place.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson And The American Dream

“How is it possible,” Johnson repeatedly asked, “that all these people could be so ungrateful to me after I had given them so much? Take the Negroes. I fought for them from the first day I came into office. I spilled my guts out in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. I put everything I had into that speech before the joint session in 1965. I tried to make it possible for every child of every color to grow up in a nice house, to eat a solid breakfast, to attend a decent school, and to get a good and lasting job. I asked so little in return. Just a little thanks. Just a little appreciation. That’s all. But look at what I got instead. Riots in 175 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting. It ruined everything. Then take the students. I wanted to help them, too. I fought on their behalf for scholarships and loans and grants. I fought for better teachers and better schools. And look what I got back. Young people by the thousands leaving their universities, marching in the streets, chanting that horrible song about how many kids I had killed that day. And the poor, they, too, turned against me. When Congress cut the funds for the Great Society, they made me Mr. Villain. I remember once going to visit a poor family in Appalachia. They had seven children, all skinny and sick. I promised the mother and father I would make things better for them. I told them all my hopes for their future. They seemed real happy to talk with me, and I felt good about that. But then as I walked toward the door, I noticed two pictures on the shabby wall. One was Jesus Christ on the cross; the other was John Kennedy. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson And The American Dream

After his first heart attack when he was Majority Leader, Johnson mostly stopped smoking and drinking and became more health conscious. However, the day of Nixon’s inauguration, Johnson pulled out his first cigarette in more than a decade. One of his daughters pulled it out of his mouth saying “Daddy, what are you doing? You’re going to kill yourself.” He replied, “I’ve now raised you girls. I’ve now been President. Now it’s my time!”.

Johnson went into a self-destructive spiral while he was working on his memoirs and grappling with his legacy and Vietnam on his ranch and would only live 4 years and 2 days out of office dying at the age of 64 from his third heart attack after leaving office. He was known to play the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” on loop ruminating and being depressed about the war as an outcast ex-President while he saw Nixon dismantling all the domestic agendas that he had worked to put into law as part of the Great Society.

Robert Caro is ninety years old. Every morning, he puts on his suit and goes to his office overlooking Central Park and continues typing away on his Smith Corona typewriter that hasn’t been manufactured in decades. He is 951 pages or so into the manuscript of the final Johnson book. He has sat in the White House room where the Tuesday lunches were held determining the fate of the country 9000 miles away over sherry.

As Caro says, “Well, one of the points of this last book is to show the reader how a great power goes to war, how unjust a great power can be because of its greatness. That you can send 600,000 men to a little country. So I think that’s very important. … And I guess I say to myself, you know, if you can show people the horror of this, you will have accomplished something.”

I can’t wait.

It’s pretty remarkable how Japanese high-speed rail began over sixty years ago in 1964 with speeds of up to 210km/h. Today the Shinkansen tops out at 320km/h and while its network might be less impressive than that of the Chinese, it’s still advanced (and a whole lot more punctual) compared to most of the developed world.

After arriving at Hiroshima station, we took trams to the Atomic Bomb Dome. The building is near the hypocenter of the explosion and mostly survived due to its reinforced stone and steel structure. The city preserved it and built a memorial park around the area with a museum to document the bombing and its aftermath.

The park sits directly beneath the T-shaped Aioi Bridge, which was supposed to be the original aiming point for the bomb. However, the actual detonation occurred a few hundred meters to the southeast.

While Hiroshima will forever be immortalized in history, it isn’t just history for the 100,000 or so survivors of the Hiroshima bomb still alive today. For reference, the population of the city was estimated at around a million at the time of the bomb in August 1945 and around 100,000 died on the first day with a further 70,000 dying because of the effects of the bomb by the end of the year. This doesn’t include the many hundreds of thousands of people who continued to suffer throughout their lives because of the radiation from the bomb and died in later years.

One common misconception is that it’s somehow similar to Chernobyl but that clearly isn’t the case as the radiation levels went back to normal within a year or even less as the bomb exploded 500m above the ground. The city was also largely rebuilt within a few years and returned to pre-war levels relatively quickly. Also Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t the only Japanese cities to get reduced to rubble, Tokyo and a whole plethora of other cities were targets of extensive firebombing campaigns by the Allies that some argue were worse than the two atomic bombs in terms of human loss and suffering.

While the magnitude of the bomb and its lasting effect on the way humans think about conflict, not to mention the instantaneous erasure of hundreds of thousands of civilians, was not lost on me, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the way Japan remembers WWII.

I had just come from Tokyo where there is essentially no public acknowledgement about the war. Well, technically there is the Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines thousands of soldiers who fought for Imperial Japan (including people classified as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) and there’s a small museum attached with some aircraft. But that’s about it. Also, the shrine and museum are deemed controversial and apparently Japanese Emperors and Prime Ministers have mostly stopped visiting it. The war is otherwise absent from the country’s public consciousness other than the memorials at Hiroshima and Nagasaki which are monuments dedicated to Peace.

I’ll admit that I don’t know anything about post-war Japan other than that they were an industrial might that peaked in the 80s and 90s and kind of was in a place where China is today vis-à-vis the United States in those days. Then of course the housing and stock market bubble popped and the following three decades have been considered the ‘Lost Decades’ with its stagnant economic growth, low wages, low birth rates etc etc.

I would have thought that American influence would have led to some acknowledgement like there is in Germany with museums confronting their past mistakes and such but alas. Maybe it’s too soon or Cold War priorities or an East-West cultural difference or the fact that the Emperor who oversaw Imperial Japan continued to rule until his death in 1989 and that his grandson is the current Emperor.

It’s with this perspective that the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Park felt strange to me despite the art and stories throughout the park and museum advocating for peace and an end to nuclear weapons. The museum documents horrific stories of what the people who were ‘lucky’ enough to survive went through for the rest of their lives. The effects of radiation sickness, cancers, social stigma and more. After the Americans took over following the surrender of Imperial Japan soon after, they suppressed information about the true effects of the weapon and even the Japanese government failed to provide adequate medical support for decades which was partly due to ignorance about radiation’s long-term consequences.

The museum acknowledged the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which surprised me, given what I’d seen in Tokyo. But I guess they can’t not include that bit when they try to explain a version of why the Americans decided to use this new horrific weapon against them.

As you would expect, Americans constitute a majority of the international tourists to this place. There were McDonald’s and Starbucks outlets round the corner, families walking past photos of charred bodies and belongings of children killed in an instant. I can’t help but think of how ephemeral it all really is. I kept looking up at the sky southeast of the Atomic Bomb Dome trying to imagine how high up 500m would have been and how tiny the Enola Gay must have looked before the blinding light and fireball engulfed everything.

It truly is a miracle that humans have not used the atomic bomb since those two days in August eight decades ago and while I’m pessimistic about human nature in war, I hope that I continue to be wrong.

I saw this book shared in a Twitter post by PM Lawrence Wong and realized that despite being completely consumed by AI over the past few years, I have yet to read a book on Jensen Huang or Nvidia. Thus, I decided to read this and it was a pretty straightforward run-of-the-mill non-fiction book about a business leader written by a journalist. It wasn’t bad by any measure but it wasn’t that fun to read either. However, it does serve its purpose well as a sort of longer wikipedia page where you can mull over the life of the person running the most valued company in the world that is selling the shovels in history’s greatest gold rush.

Compared to his big tech founder CEO peers, Jensen Huang is unique by being kind of ‘old school’ in that he wears the same black shirt and leather jacket everywhere and is known for publicly yelling at his employees when they mess up which is kinda stevejobscore. Also, throughout the book he constantly mentions that his main mantra that keeps him going is reminding himself and his employees that the company is always 30 days away from going bankrupt. It’s an interesting spin compared to the Jeff Bezos “Day One” mentality which is more optimistic in nature but this clearly works as well. The author asked him whether the trillions in market capitalization that Nvidia has added reduced this belief in the mantra but Jensen says that he still believes in it and that the stress keeps him going every day.

Another quirk that I found interesting was his preference for whiteboards over powerpoint presentations during meetings as he says it allows people to formulate their ideas clearly and they don’t waste time. It also serves as a reminder for them to constantly reinvent new things and to not rely on their past successes. Again, this reminded me of Bezos who famously banned powerpoint presentations and instead made everyone have a silent reading period where they would read a prepared memo together before starting discussions.

While the history of Jensen and Nvidia and the development of AI into what it has become today was all interesting with little backstories of every major leader and company, the book ended on a high note of sorts with a Jensen rant about his thoughts on AI and the future which was my personal highlight of the book.

The author mentions throughout the book the theories and predictions that various people have about what happens when AGI is achieved and how it will affect the future of jobs or even humanity. These questions are pretty standard and every leader in the AI space has their own answer that they have repeated thousands of times. In earlier interviews with the author, Jensen gave his usual spiel about how he didn’t think that developing more advanced AI would end the species and that he was more so interested in ensuring Nvidia keeps improving and innovating. However in his final interview with Jensen, the author asks the same question again but in a different way and Jensen got tired and here’s the passage from the book about what then transpired.

“I just feel like you’re interviewing the wrong person,” he said, quietly. “I feel like you’re interviewing Elon right now, and I’m just not that guy.” I paused, unsure what to say, but it was too late. I’d hit the trip wire.

“Is it going to—is it going to destroy jobs?” Huang asked, his voice crescendoing with anger. “Are calculators going to destroy math? That conversation is so old, and I’m so, so tired of it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore! It’s the same conversation over and over and over and over and over again. We invented agriculture and then made the marginal cost of producing food zero. It was good for society! We manufactured electricity at scale, and it caused the marginal cost of chopping down trees, lighting fires, carrying fires and torches around to approximately zero, and we went off to do something else. And then we made the marginal cost of doing calculations—long division! We made it zero!” He was yelling now. “We make the marginal cost of things zero, generation after generation after generation, and this exact conversation happens every single time!”

“I tried to switch subjects, but it was no use. His anger was tinged with disgust. He began to lecture me in the voice that one would use with a wayward teenager. He’d placed high expectations in me, he said, and I had disappointed him. I had wasted his time; I had wasted everyone’s time; the whole project of the book was now called into question. The interview was attended by two of Jensen’s PR reps, but neither made any attempt to intervene—they weren’t about to draw fire.

Kirk had theorized that Huang’s anger was strategic. I can tell you, it didn’t feel that way in the moment. His anger seemed uncontained, omnidirectional, and wildly inappropriate. I was not Jensen’s employee, and he had nothing to gain from raging at me. He just seemed tired of being asked about the negative aspects of the tools he was building. He thought the question was stupid, and he had been asked it one too many times.

“This cannot be a ridiculous sci-fi story,” he said. He gestured to his frozen PR reps at the end of the table. “Do you guys understand? I didn’t grow up on a bunch of sci-fi stories, and this is not a sci-fi movie. These are serious people doing serious work!” he said. “This is not a freaking joke! This is not a repeat of Arthur C. Clarke. I didn’t read his fucking books. I don’t care about those books! It’s not—we’re not a sci-fi repeat! This company is not a manifestation of Star Trek! We are not doing those things! We are serious people, doing serious work. And—it’s just a serious company, and I’m a serious person, just doing serious work.”

“For the next twenty minutes, in a tone that alternated among accusatory, exasperated, and belittling, Jensen questioned my professionalism, questioned my interview approach, questioned my dedication to the project. He accused me of trying to psychoanalyze him; he told me how much he disliked answering my biographical questions, especially those that attempted to illuminate his mental state. “I don’t like these probing questions,” he said. “I don’t like talking about myself, OK?! I’m not into therapy.” He suggested that my questions were stupid; he called them “pedestrian.” He denied there was anything exceptional about himself, against all accumulated evidence. “Look, I’m—I am super normal,” he said.

“I have never met anyone like you,” I said.

“I’m super normal,” Huang said.

Gradually, the anger wore off. Huang changed topics a couple times, talking about upcoming products, asking after the welfare of his PR reps, and recalling the importance of the late John Nickolls to the CUDA project. At one point he brought up the Roman Empire. He continued to chide me gently—he was done with me—and I was ushered out the door. “I left the interview bewildered. I’d had plenty of tense conversations with executives, but I’d never had someone explode at me in this way. I was stunned—but also, if I’m being honest, I was a little giddy. To be targeted by the Wrath of Huang was in a certain sense an honor: a rite of passage that everyone who gained admittance to his inner circle underwent. Walking away from the conference room, I turned to one of the PR reps.

“That went well,” I said.

He laughed. “Oh, that?” he said. “That was nothing.”

I feel like this part alone made the book worth it to read. Yeah sure, it’s mostly a straightforward business book as I mentioned earlier but this interaction kind of sums up the core identity of Jensen. Well, at least the one that he wants to portray which I tend to believe.

Silicon Valley founders and especially AI founders grew up reading the great science fiction works of the late 20th century if they are older, or if they are younger, the rationalist writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, and their adjacent network of thinkers. But clearly not Jensen.

The thing I learnt from this book is that Jensen Huang succeeded not because he had the grandest vision of what the future would look like and sold the dream to investors but because he is a guy who worked hard at hard problems for decades day in and out with the mindset that suffering is good. He was sent to the U.S. at 9 with just his brother and ended up at a religious reform school for troubled kids in Kentucky after his newly immigrated uncle mistook it for a prestigious boarding school and got beaten up daily for being a weird asian kid. He worked graveyard shifts at restaurant chain Denny’s through high school and college at nearby Oregon State because he couldn’t afford tuition elsewhere despite excelling in school. He took night classes at Stanford for his masters while working at various semiconductor companies through his 20s.

Basically he didn’t get to where he is in the AI industry by reading science fiction, posting on forums or selling grand stories and being a hype man. He defeated his competitors ruthlessly in the late 90s, then enjoyed the dot-com boom before the bust which led to NVDA decreasing by 90%. But Nvidia didn’t stop there, they continued working tirelessly and reinventing the company constantly by betting everything on contrarian projects like CUDA and the strategic pivot to deep learning hardware which created the bedrock for this entire industry.

Maybe I am just falling for his propaganda. But it’s a good one and Jensen Huang comes across as extremely human and real which makes it very hard to hate on him as his company continues to take over the world and create our future.

Kolkata was only a four-hour flight away from Singapore and only when planning the trip did I realize that it was the capital of British India until 1911 and the second biggest city in the Empire (after London). I guess I should’ve known purely based on the number of times I have seen its name before when reading history from that era but oh well. Of course, it was then moved to New Delhi where it remains today.

Kolkata is often described as the “cultural capital” of India and well it didn’t disappoint. It finds itself in an interesting spot as it remains as the largest city not just in its state of West Bengal but in the entire region of Eastern India and its cultural and historical importance helps as well in attracting people from all the region making it a very large city.

Visiting the various temples, museums and sites in Kolkata and learning about the lives of the people who lived there like Rabindranath Tagore, Mother Teresa, Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and Subhas Chandra Bose was interesting. But unfortunately, Kolkata does also prove a lot of the negative stereotypes about India (some of which are rare and outdated in most other cities of its size). Objectively speaking, it’s a city that has been in perpetual decline since the state of Bengal was split in 1947 in the partition and the decades after when it was in political turmoil and unrest which led to it losing its economic and political standing but the culture somehow still remained because of its historical significance and events like the Durga Puja. I guess it makes for a fascinating case study and a great time capsule of what India was.

On the other hand, New Delhi was about what you would have expected a nation’s capital to be. I guess the most shocking thing was the pollution. During my time there, it was said that it had the lowest pollution levels in six months but every time I stepped out it felt like I was smoking second-hand smoke and the moment I left New Delhi, it took me a while to get used to seeing and breathing clean air outside. The India Gate (the arch) and its surrounding areas with monuments and memorials to soldiers reminded me of the national mall in Washington D.C. so I looked it up and turns out it was inspired by it and also obviously the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as well.

The biggest culture shock was taking the metro in New Delhi because it was so crowded during peak hours. We had already wasted so much time getting caught up in Delhi traffic because of constant roadblocks for security reasons as important personnel move around. We got our tickets at the ticket machines (side note: the usage of mobile QR code payment services everywhere in India is simply incredible), and then had to go through a metal detector and get our bags scanned before entering the metro (New Delhi had so much security presence everywhere with even police officers and traffic police carrying rifles at every street corner which I guess makes sense considering it’s the capital of the most populous country on earth. Also three weeks after we left, at the exit of the metro we took at the Red Fort, there was a terrorist attack with a car bomb blast killing over a dozen people with multiple other threats stopped which explains the security).

Anyways, I didn’t think entering a train would have even been possible because of how crowded it was. I felt like I was practically being floated into the train but it was still somehow a lot more comfortable inside than most of Singapore’s MRTs because the AC was on full blast. Thankfully they haven’t started making quality of life miserable for its people in the name of “climate change” and forcing 25C everywhere. Anyways, I was worried that I would miss my stop because I was caught on the other side of the door but somehow pushing against everyone floated me outside seamlessly and I reached my destination. I doubt frequency or anything changing could handle the sheer number of people in New Delhi but I guess the floatation system did its job as I got from one place to another whilst avoiding Delhi traffic.

As with Kolkata, visiting the famous temples and sites and museums was fun but the main attraction was actually 300km away. Taj Mahal is often synonymous with New Delhi so I would’ve thought it would be right there on the outskirts of the city but it takes about 5 hours (though most of it is just in Delhi itself trying to get out of the city and its traffic). Though the train would have only been 2 hours, we wanted to visit some historical temples en route (like the temple in Mathura built around the place Krishna was born) so driving made a lot more sense.

I was fully prepared to be disappointed by the Taj Mahal because oftentimes these places look a lot better in pictures because of the weather and photo editing but somehow it looked just as majestic and pretty in person.

Our guide was talking about how the Taj Mahal was only opened to the public about 50 years ago and how apparently Princess Diana and the photos she took over there in 1992 made it truly popular around the world. Then in 2007, it was added as one of the “Seven Wonders of the World”. I think the tourism board really outdid themselves by having everyone enter the main compound to see the Taj through a reddish structure that was in and of itself beautiful. There’s a keyhole sort of first view of the Taj Mahal and it was just ethereal. The weather certainly helped but the colors of the ivory-white marble just shined so incredibly bright that it looked unreal.

While paying for a guide was great, the real MVP was paying for a photographer over there. Obviously why go there if you can’t get a photo sitting or standing near the iconic seats next to the water like every famous person or politician who has visited it. While iPhone photos would’ve sufficed, the real issue was preventing people from getting into our shot. While a local would have some power in getting tourists scared, a person who looks local with a camera and a lanyard shouting at you who has money on the line gets people moving fast which makes for nice photos and worth the exorbitant prices they charge.

Anyways, that was my trip and somehow I didn’t learn my lesson about Delhi traffic after almost five days which led to a fun experience on the last day. I trusted Google Maps when it said it would take 30 minutes from our hotel to the airport because it was only ten minutes longer than what it took when we first arrived. It ended up taking 2 hours and we almost missed our flight and had to join a queue of people who were shouting at the special check-in counter because they too were stuck in traffic.

The delay was mainly due to once again the roads being blocked everywhere for special people to move around safely and this having been a common occurrence and having experienced so many traffic jams, I should have learnt my lesson but I didn’t. Luckily our driver got the mission once we said what time we had to reach the airport or else miss our flight and went on the most random side streets spamming his horn and cutting people off and we made it with a minute to spare before check-in closed and obviously missed it lugging suitcases around trying to find the counter. So we were referred to the special counter where we met our fellow travelers who had also misjudged traffic and everyone was screaming for their luggage to be checked in.

To be fair, we would have been pretty screwed if we missed our flight because it was the only flight going where we needed to go and it was the Friday before Deepavali weekend. It’s like missing a flight the Friday before Christmas or Chinese New Year weekend. While the shouting continued as people kept pushing each other at our special check-in counter, there was this one girl around my age who had enough and started shouting “EXCUSE ME HELLO IM THE DAUGHTER OF THE PILOT”. It took a laudable amount of self-restraint for me to not burst out laughing while everyone was stressed and I moved aside to catch my breath leaving my dad in charge of getting our tickets. However, the trick worked and the girl pushed through as she was screaming and got her bags checked and with her ticket in hand ran off to catch the plane her “dad” was piloting. So joke’s on me. I was considering doing the same but my dad being there would’ve given it away. Maybe mom would’ve worked? Idk. Anyways, eventually we made it and turns out the flight was delayed because of course it was.

Profiles in Courage by JFK. Longer post below but I loved this collection of short biographical stories on various people throughout American history.

Master of the Senate and The Passage of Power by Robert Caro. Finished the third and fourth books in the LBJ series by Robert Caro at the start of the year and I am still reeling from them. The greatest books I have ever read. Can’t wait for the final book which is 13 years in the making (Caro is 90 and has spent 51 years on the 4+1 LBJ books so far).

Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis. Finally read this book this year and while I have a pretty bad opinion of Lewis because of his book Going Infinite and all the inaccuracies in it, this was a fun read into Wall Street in the 80s.

The Man Who Solved The Market by Gregory Zuckerman. The story of RenTech and Jim Simons is always fascinating. Not only did he create the greatest hedge fund of all time but did so disregarding Wall Street so brazenly by creating his own path.

1776 by David McCullough. Picked this up in Boston and the most shocking thing is perhaps how young everyone who led the army was which would be crazy to imagine in any industry in the world today (even AI/Tech).

Milton Friedman by Jennifer Burns. Fascinating read into the life of Friedman who I knew so little about.

Liftoff and Reentry by Eric Berger. Eric Berger somehow managed to find fascinating anecdotes and stories about how this private space company succeeded against all odds. Stories that were somehow missed in the extensive Ashlee Vance and Walter Isaacson books.

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell. Nixon is so Shakespearean.

The Greatest Comeback by Patrick J. Buchanan. Saw David Sacks post this after the 2024 election. Enjoyed this book by a former Nixon aide about how Nixon won the 1968 Presidential election (after losing the 1960 election and losing in the 1962 California gubernatorial election and ‘retiring’ from politics for half a decade)

Grant by Ron Chernow. Chernow books are always great even if it was pretty heavy to lug around at a thousand pages. Grant is another character whose life arc is so improbable yet somehow true. There’s a great History channel miniseries based on this book as well.

The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I didn’t think a 1300 page biography about a NYC Park Commissioner could match the greatness of his series on Lyndon Johnson but somehow it did. Incredible tale of a man who wielded so much power and influence and (physically) shaped the defining city of the modern world. Caro is in a league of his own.

No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Story of FDR and Eleanor’s time in the White House during the WWII years which gives a fascinating perspective into the domestic front.

This book’s title is a quote from a speech that Eleanor Roosevelt gave to the 1940 Democratic National Convention when President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to run for a third term but in honorable American fashion couldn’t seem as though he wanted to run for a third term and thereby couldn’t reveal whether he was actually running or not running leading a confused Democratic coalition to nominate him for the President anyway and then fall into disarray as the realization of the magnitude of the party breaking George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s two-term tradition slowly seeped into them while trying to decide on a Vice President which led to FDR sending Eleanor Roosevelt to see what was going on knowing she would be able to fix anything if needed.

It reminded me of the stories of Ulysses Grant in the Ron Chernow biography where Grant didn’t show any indication of wanting to be the Republican nominee as was customary of the political men of his era and was therefore swept into the Presidency twice due to his wartime glory.

Back to 1940, Eleanor became the first First Lady to address a national party convention and calmed everyone down by stressing the importance of unity at home to take them through the ongoing war in Europe and got the party to decide on FDR and his Vice President Henry Wallace.

What was intriguing about this book was the surprisingly unique lens through which Goodwin explored WWII which is perhaps the most written about topic in modern history. She writes about it through FDR and his daily routines and conversations with the various interesting and revolving cast of long-term occupants of the second floor of the White House. Through this we get a very different and raw view of how FDR actually operated. The book also focuses on Eleanor and how she used the office of First Lady to its fullest extent by being a voracious campaigner of issues and basically creating a full-time job for the role which was previously just hostess of the White House.

FDR mainly focuses on the war effort from the White House due to his polio making it difficult for him to move around the country without alerting everyone to the fact that their commander-in-chief was standing on supported iron contraptions and getting carried from vehicles to wheelchairs. Thus, Eleanor acted as his eyes and ears as she constantly travelled around the country and even the world and reported her findings to FDR. She basically ran domestic policy as a cabinet member of sorts and focused on bringing attention to various issues whether that was civil rights for African Americans in the military, adapting to the evolving role of American women in the workforce, helping children escape from Europe etc. I couldn’t help but be reminded of her uncle Theodore Roosevelt and his intensity whenever FDR or the author made a comment about how she was obsessed with spending all hours of the day working and doing something productive.

This book is obviously well-written and great as can be gleaned from the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in History that Goodwin won for this. But what I think made this book most interesting and riveting was how it humanized the Roosevelts despite the stature they found themselves in during this great war.

Whether that was through FDR secretly resuming his relationship with Lucy Mercer after her husband died in 1944 (decades after Eleanor had discovered their original affair and he had promised to end it to save his public marriage and thus political career)1. Or through the relations of the President and First Lady with their children and their spouses who were drafted for the war effort. Or through the friendships that blossomed or mostly dwindled as the New Deal era came to an end with the Second World War era taking a front seat.

Overall, this book was a fascinating read into the Roosevelt White House during WWII and how the headquarters of the American (and sometimes British) government operated during those years. It was also a fascinating introduction to the life of Eleanor who I have to read about next.

one thing that i was really looking forward to when visiting san francisco was riding in a waymo. waymo is a completely autonomous electric ride-sharing vehicle service operated by google and unlike other competitors in the industry like tesla, they actually have self-driving robotaxis on the road.

as of now, it’s operational to the public in sf, los angeles and phoenix and it’s going to expand to more places like miami, atlanta, dc, tokyo in the coming months/years. i had seen so many memes about waymo from the sf people that i follow on twitter and i was incredibly envious as it seemed so futuristic and a fun way to travel.

first of all, waymo has a fleet of only 750 vehicles across phoenix, la and sf and somehow managed to reach 4m rides in 2024 and is on track to reach 10m in 2025. while their vehicles are more premium than the usual uber/lyft, it’s only a couple of dollars more expensive with the added caveat that because it’s a self-driving taxi it will take longer to drive safely to your destination. it’s like a very cautious driver which i find more than offset by how insane and adorable the ride is.

despite there only being a couple hundred vehicles in its fleet, they are easily identifiable because they are big white jaguar cars with a 360° banner display on top that display your initials after you book a ride. otherwise, they just roam around the streets of sf peacefully yearning for a passenger to be useful or go to a charging station when they are running low on battery. the best part about an autonomous self-driving future is obviously not just the utopian lack of human interaction with a driver but also the safety. it was found that after 25.3 million autonomous miles driven, waymo vehicles have an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human drivers per mile driven.

anyways, enough of all these fun stats. riding in a waymo is pure magic. it’s like this abundance of techno-optimism bundled in a moving mechanical being that is just so pure. if i were a crying sort of person i think i would have cried but alas, i just wrote some tweets in all caps for dozens of likes talking about how life-changing and magical it was. in fact, throughout my short two day stay there i tried to find as many excuses as possible to waymo everywhere. the best rides were going down this little hill overlooking the city where the waymo had to make these turns up and down the hill which was simply incredible. another cool ride was going to the golden gate bridge in a thirty-minute ride which was wonderful with the sun setting while travelling through the lush greenery of presidio park.

as alluded to before, i think there is something really significant about the waymo being adorable and people talking about it online as if it were a pet dog or cat. as far as i can tell the only other robot that has won this accolade is roomba because it is a round circular vacuum robot that is ‘dumb’. it would go around your house knocking into stuff and walls and map your layout before saving that and using it for future cleanups and automatically head back to its charging station after its work was done vacuuming everything. it was simple.

waymo is that but with the added complexity of human traffic with human lives at stake if something were to go tragically wrong. maybe it’s also because i have never experienced full self-driving or even tesla autopilot-esque features before, but during those waymos i felt like i saw the light that is autonomous vehicles and why that idea has been sucking dry the greatest minds of our generation for the past decade and more. i thought about musk continuously promising that full self-driving will be made available to the entire tesla fleet “very soon” for years and constantly pushing back timelines. i thought about george hotz and his comma ai, a startup which has built an open source autopilot-esque self-driving kit for people to install in their cars to make it drive by itself.

waymo beat all their competitors to become the first robotaxi company that actually offers their services to the general public and it has practically become a must-try for visitors to the city.

while ideas for how to write this post had been ruminating in my mind for the past couple months, i got reminded of waymo because of the new openai update that significantly improved their image generation model. since its release a week or so ago, it has gone super viral especially with the 'studio ghibli’ trend where people would just ask chatgpt to make their personal images adorable in the style of the famous japanese anime art style. this past week was actually the highest traffic week for openai and the demand (proportional to the gpus they have) probably matched or even surpassed the original launch of chatgpt in november 2022.

and once again, the theme of adorableness comes up. i guess it’s just the opposite of what some people consider the end result of building agi to be: humans being replaced.

while i kinda thought of this, it was mainly inspired by a substack post i read by the great tweeter signull. he wrote a post titled “the revolution will be adorable” and it’s about the studio ghibli trend. although it’s most likely that people will forget about this trend in like five more days (it’s already died down), i think the idea remains.

another wonderful post about this studio ghibli trend was by the esteemed internet blogger scott alexander who wrote a post titled “the colors of her coat” in the astral codex ten substack. he wrote about how people tend to get one-shotted by hedonic adaptation and quickly got tired of ghiblifying everything. then he wrote about how hundreds if not thousands of people had to work together in the 15th century to get some guy in europe a rare blue dye to add to a painting. he wrote about how we should learn to appreciate the magic of the thousandth sunset just as much as the first sunset and while it’s hard to explain, he just has a way with words.

anyways, all of this to say, i think waymo is literally the closest thing i’ve felt to sci-fi irl which makes it magic. also there is literally no reason why they can’t bring this to singapore and i can’t wait for a future without interacting with a human being when being driven somewhere.

Careless People is an exposé memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams who is a former Facebook director who worked in their global policy and government relations department. She writes briefly about her own life growing up in New Zealand, surviving a horrific shark attack surfing incident in her teens and her family, but it mainly revolves around her time rising up the ranks at Facebook, interacting with Zuckerberg and meeting world leaders.

This book focuses on a lot of topics such as Facebook’s hostile working environment against women/mothers, her allegedly being sexually harassed by chief Facebook executives, Facebook leadership not caring enough about content moderation which leads to horrific content on the site that directly leads to violence and crimes around the world and more. However, the two topics that I found interesting were 1) How Wynn-Williams created a policy job for herself in Facebook in 2010 and 2) Zuckerberg’s obsession with expanding to China.

I

Firstly, let’s get into her origin story. She’s a New Zealander who studied law and then went to work at the United Nations in NYC and then later moved to the NZ embassy in Washington DC. In 2010, she became obsessed with Facebook and its mission of connecting the world. While there was a Facebook office in DC, the nascent team mainly focused on US government law and domestic issues that the social network had to face at that time. Thus, there was no one who was focusing on the global impact of Facebook and no one who connected Zuckerberg with world leaders.

Wynn-Williams decides that with her experience working in the UN and in the NZ embassy she could contribute to FB’s global policy and through her connections finds a way to pitch this idea to the women running the domestic policy department in DC. Her ideas get dismissed and she doesn’t hear from them again. Then Arab Spring happens and Facebook and its impact on the world is making headlines everywhere.

Wynn-Williams gets a call from Facebook saying that the DC team remembered that she was talking about the Middle East using Facebook and the potential impacts of that during her interview and that with Arab Spring, they realise that she was actually right and Facebook needed a global policy team and that they would like to hire her. She immediately says yes because she has put her life on hold for a year to get this dream job at Facebook and joins as the founding member of that team.

At this time, Facebook is still growing at a staggering rate and Zuckerberg starts to meet with world leaders reluctantly so Wynn-Williams, as one of the few people in the entire policy department, was writing memos for Zuckerberg to read before interacting with world leaders and introduces them to each other.

II

Now moving on Zuckerberg’s obsession with China. A constant theme of this book was the idea of Zuckerberg and his lieutenants being obsessed with growth and getting more users. One idea was Internet.org which was basically a ploy to get more users by bringing the internet to people who have never used it before and only allowing Facebook and related apps on the “internet” so that these people’s first and perhaps only introduction would be to the Facebook website. This internet.org idea is the main reason why Zuckerberg is flying around to developing countries with his policy team to persuade governments around the world to join internet.org to bring the ‘internet’ to their people. Eventually, governments caught on to what Zuckerberg was trying to bring to their people. Also it didn’t help that his solar powered drones that would bring the internet to these places ultimately failed as well. However, this allowed Wynn-Williams to travel with Zuckerberg and his entourage around the world meeting leaders.

Zuckerberg’s other idea to get more users was to convince China to allow Facebook to operate there and I didn’t really realise the extent to which he went in order to get China (i.e. the CCP and President Xi Jinping) to like him and his product. While I knew he was learning Mandarin and gave speeches in it, as a naive ten year old I thought he was just going on a journey of self improvement. Turns out he just wanted access to China’s population in his quest to "connect the world”. Some anecdotes which were revealed in this book were that he would casually bring up reading Xi Jinping’s Thought books to employees, asked Xi if he would do him the honour of naming his unborn child at a White House dinner (WHAT!), kept trying to provide special exclusive versions of Facebook with censorship controls to the CCP and so much more.

Wynn-Williams also wrote a lot more about the extent to which Facebook allegedly circumvented conventional Facebook practices in order to satisfy the CCP enough so that they would finally allow Facebook yet despite all his efforts, China still blocked Facebook through their Great Firewall.

III

Overall, I found this book surprisingly well written for an “ex-employee exposè memoir” and it was interesting to read about what Zuckerberg and Facebook culture was like in the 2010s. Wynn-Williams would finally leave Facebook in 2017 and towards the end of the book she focused more on reporting the sexual harassment she faced to management and getting ignored or being threatened with no stock compensation after years as an executive and more. She also touches on the role that Facebook played in Trump’s 2016 election which was interesting. She talked about how after Trump’s election, Zuckerberg refused to believe that Facebook played a part in it. Also after Sheryl Sandberg realised what happened, she was impressed and made a comment about wanting to hire them, then after realising that the mostly liberal Facebook employees were shocked at her statement, walked it back and said that those Trump campaign staffers probably have better jobs in the administration. Anyways, the book was well written and I would recommend it if you are at all interested in how Facebook’s policy team was run and for random Zuckerberg tidbits (his favourite President was Andrew Jackson because he just did things??). I also found it insightful for its commentary on how the Facebook team decided to moderate content globally because it was kind of a new thing in the mid 2010s for a social network to get so big that it allows instantaneous transfer of information to millions of people around the globe and caused real good and harm to people. One story was that of a viral fake post that was causing riots in Myanmar but the one Irish Facebook contractor in charge of Myanmar was out for dinner in Ireland and didn’t have access to his computer so the post was up for several hours longer than it should have been and despite many calls from the country to Facebook, Wynn-Williams had to just watch from America as nothing was being done to prevent the spread of misinformation. She ends off with a warning about how Facebook doesn’t care about its impact on the real world and even when it was shaping real world events, the leadership decided to not care about anything other than acquiring more users which led to destruction in certain parts of the world. Hence, careless people.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

―F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

This post was based on Nixon: a Life by John A. Farrell

The year is 1968 and Nixon is running for President (again).

After two terms as Vice President under the venerated WWII hero General Eisenhower, Nixon won the GOP nomination in 1960. However, he lost against the Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy . Later he would get further humiliated after running for Governor of California in 1962 and losing.

History would change its course when just hours after Nixon left Dallas, JFK and his VP Lyndon B. Johnson would arrive as part of their official visit to Texas. JFK would be slain by an assassin’s bullet elevating LBJ whose escalation of the Vietnam War would provide an opening for Nixon’s political resurrection.

LBJ with his newfound powers would pass sweeping domestic legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and declare an unconditional war on poverty through his Great Society Programs. These achievements led to his landslide victory in the 1964 election where he won the highest share of the popular vote in American history. However, his own term in office would be forever marred by his administration’s decision to double down on the war in Vietnam leading to tens of thousands of American deaths and millions of Vietnamese deaths. The war would consume his presidency, shattering not just his credibility but that of the office of the American President forever.

This unpopularity would lead LBJ to not seek his second term and drop out in 1968. He would endorse his VP Hubert Humphrey in his campaign to win the democratic nominee. The only other serious contender on the democratic side was JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy. However, RFK would also tragically get assassinated cementing Humphrey as the democratic nominee.

Now in 1968, Nixon again wins his party’s mandate to run for POTUS and despite his loss in 1960 (and his further humiliation in the 1962 California Gubernatorial Election), Nixon now had a decent shot at winning the November 5th election due to the failures of the Johnson administration in Vietnam.

In mid-October 1968, just three weeks before the election, Nixon learned of a new development in the Johnson administration’s dealings with Vietnam that worries him. He has moles in the administration (one of them being Henry Kissinger) and finds out there is an imminent announcement of a complete halt on bombing in North Vietnam and peace talks in Paris that could include South Vietnam.

Nixon realised that this announcement right before the election could lead to Humphrey winning as wins in the Johnson administration (of which Humphrey was VP) with regards to Vietnam would inadvertently get him more votes. While all sides were almost reaching a deal and an announcement of the upcoming peace talks becoming more of a reality, Nixon asks his staffers to get Anna Chennault to act as a secret intermediary to the South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to tell him to boycott peace talks and promise better terms under a Nixon administration.

LBJ found out about this as he was using the NSA to secretly monitor communications between the South Vietnamese embassy and Saigon. Moreover, the FBI and CIA had Chennault under surveillance as well. LBJ privately calls this “treason” as he realises Nixon was secretly colluding with a foreign government to break down peace talks to win his election.

On the night of 31st October 1968, just five days before the election, LBJ stunned the nation by publicly announcing new breakthroughs in peace talks. Then Thieu abruptly withdrew from peace talks after previously agreeing to them and creating a massive diplomatic crisis days before the election.

Nixon and Johnson would correspond over the next few days and through these conversations that were released as part of the Presidential Tapes, we get to see a glimpse of the actual humans behind these two political machines. LBJ knows that Humphrey has already lost with the behind the scenes manoeuvring of Nixon but tries to tell him that he knows what happened and tries to move past it because neither of them can admit to what transpired—colluding with foreign leaders in the middle of a war and secretly taping allied embassies.

On November 5th 1968, Nixon narrowly defeated Humphrey by just 0.7% of the popular vote (less than 500,000 votes) and the Vietnam war would prolong for years until Kissinger and Nixon would work together to finally end it.

This episode would not be revealed until Presidential tapes were declassified especially after Nixon’s more egregious covering up of the Watergate scandal. LBJ decided not to leak this information despite knowing about this to not further undermine confidence in the office of the President and because he didn’t want to reveal that the NSA, CIA and FBI had been collecting all this information and feeding it to him.

Farrell argues that even by late October 1968, with the election looming just days away, peace was unlikely given the incompatible agendas of Saigon and Hanoi, the chances for peace in the fall of 1968 were overrated anyways. However, historians in general agree that the election could have been tipped over to Humphrey had the peace talks not been broken so abruptly due to “seating arrangement disagreements” by South Vietnam.

There are so many moments in Nixon’s life which are pure shakespearean in its drama and the fact that he is the only American president to resign from office (otherwise he would have easily been removed from office by the Senate) just adds to his lore. However, I find this incident fascinating because not only does it link war and elections but it does so in a very simple and direct manner. I wonder how much manoeuvring there is behind the scenes for peace talks with the more well known wars of our era today and who is running around with orders from political leaders trying to garner votes in exchange for delaying or announcing peace talks that could potentially lead to a ceasefire. It’s all so fascinating.

Before he was President, Senator John F. Kennedy 'wrote' Profiles in Courage, which went on to become a bestseller and won him the Pulitzer Prize for biography. It is a short biographical work exploring the stories of Senators in the United States who were courageous by going against their party mandate in the name of justice, righteousness, or the constitution of the United States of America.

I picked up this book at JFK's Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, which I wrote more about in the previous post. This book was kind of JFK's first mainstream introduction other than his famous WWII PT Boat sinking story and cemented his image as not just a handsome war hero but as an intellectual of sorts who could guide the American people despite being young himself—not to get ahead of ourselves but of course he would later become the youngest elected President ever.

However, what’s perhaps more interesting than the stories of courage in this book is the lore behind this book. My first introduction to this book was through David Nasaw’s The Patriarch which is a biography of his father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Snr. In that book, Nasaw talks about how Kennedy Snr became one of the top five richest Americans and then used his wealth to influence his nine kids’ political futures and created the Kennedy Political dynasty that we know today, hence “The Patriarch” title.

In that book, it is mentioned that Kennedy’s main speechwriter and aide Ted Sorensen basically ghostwrote the book (Sorensen would confirm this decades later). Moreover, one of the most influential New York Times journalists, Arthur Krock, who had been a close personal friend of Kennedy Snr. (and on the Pulitzer board) played his part. Thus, the coveted Pulitzer Prize for biography which gave credibility to Kennedy’s intellectualism was basically bought by his rich father.

Drew Pearson, the most prominent investigative journalist of the era, on a Mike Wallace interview in December 1957 bluntly claimed that “John F. Kennedy is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him”. This statement exposed what was by then an open secret in Washington circles that the Senator’s aide had written the book and his father bought him the coveted Pulitzer.

Kennedy Snr. heard about this and immediately rang his lawyer and yelled, “Sue the bastards for fifty million dollars”. His lawyer and his son, Robert F. Kennedy, showed up at ABC and demanded a full retraction and apology. While Wallace and Pearson stuck to their guns, ABC eventually apologised.

Decades later, journalists and historians would debate and try to uncover the extent to which the Former President had actually written the book that would cement the basis for his philosopher-king image and the Kennedy clan even secured a sworn affidavit from Sorensen that downplayed his role in the book. However, later in his own autobiography in 2008, he would basically admit to having played a major role in the book.

JFK’s Presidential Museum basically starts with Profiles in Courage in 1957 and then moves on to the 1960 Presidential campaign and all his achievements during his short tenure as President. This is obviously quite ironic considering that JFK would be one of the last American Presidents who was actually looked up to for his values, one of the key ones being courage as demonstrated during the WWII PT Boat ordeal, Bay of Pigs fallout, Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights and Berlin Wall Speech.

While we can’t completely judge a historical figure based on one action they took three years before they were (barely) handed the mandate to lead the most powerful country in the world at one of its most pivotal periods in history, episodes like this expose the less explored parts of history that are hidden away with money and power.

Instead of hammering on more about Kennedy, let’s explore a bit about what the book actually contained and why it’s not hidden further (it’s not a bad book by Sorensen and his researchers).

As mentioned before, Profiles in Courage was written when Kennedy was a Senator and he was actually recovering from a major back surgery to get rid of his back pain which originated from his famous WWII PT Boat sinking saga. Senator Kennedy writes a short biography of eight US Senators who against all odds, stuck to their beliefs and while they may have seemed foolish during their time and even committed political suicide and irrevocably ruined their careers, history would eventually prove them right.

While the book provides a surface level wikipedia-esque summary for each of the eight Senators’ lives and the time period they lived before the courageous act(s) that would change the course of the U.S. Senate and thus history, I still found it enthralling due to the deeply held beliefs so central to these people that were at stake and could be saved with the power of one Yea or Nay.

I am reminded of the Thomas Carlyle quote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. This book was basically a brief history of the U.S. Senate through the eight senators spanning from the American Revolution to the Second World War. The stories of courage and the importance of the Senators’ votes in changing or not changing America were fascinating. I would probably recommend this book if you are interested in understanding American politics or power but as mentioned before, it is brief and it’s main benefit is that it’s nudging me to actually read more about who Sam Houston was or the stories of the Great Triumvirate consisting of John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster who I have heard loads about in various books but never got to understand what they actually did in the American government.

To conclude, the story behind this book was more fascinating than its contents and reveals the less glamorous ways in which power operates in politics. While the senators were courageous in their own ways, in this episode America’s beloved President was not, and the fact that the Kennedy clan has maintained this story even decades after his death through manipulation and false narratives is just one of the many ways the story of history is told to serve power.

In the end, Profiles in Courage sits in the Presidential Library as a perfect prologue to the Kennedy legend: the young philosopher-king who would face down nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stare down segregationists for civil rights and fall to an assassin’s bullets in a moment that would freeze American television screens and their hearts. It’s a narrative that is so perfect and cinematically crafted, that questioning the authorship of a mere book feels almost gauche. And perhaps that’s the point. The Kennedys understood more than most that in America, a beautiful story, well-told and well-funded, will always triumph over mere truth. After all, who are we to let facts interfere with a perfect all-American myth?

One of the (many) highlights of my recent trip to the United States was visiting the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. I arrived at the museum right when it opened at 10 a.m., hoping to blitz through it before catching a noon flight to Washington, D.C.—and I was not disappointed.

To be frank, I hadn’t read much about JFK before. My main interest to visit actually came from reading The Patriarch by David Nasaw, a biography of Kennedy’s father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy Sr. was the founder of the Kennedy dynasty as we all know today. Though he came from somewhat humble beginnings as the son of a local Boston politician, he grew into a billionaire financier and dominated early 20th-century Wall Street as a speculator. Later, he dipped into the Roaring 20s Hollywood as a studio owner and navigated New Deal era Washington D.C. as a major donor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also served as the first Chairman of the SEC, chaired the Maritime Commission, and was U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain at the outbreak of World War II.

Soon after, Kennedy Sr. had a very public fallout with FDR and the Washington establishment, largely due to his isolationist stance—even after Pearl Harbor. He was seen as a Nazi sympathizer for predicting Britain would fall under Nazi rule. Public sentiment toward him plummeted sharply, which ended any chance he might have had to run for public office. Despite that, he continued to thrive financially (he was one of the richest men in America at the time) and devoted himself to orchestrating the careers of his sons, with the goal of making one of them President of the United States.

The museum begins with a 20-minute video about JFK, which I found amusing knowing how much his father influenced his early and later career (Kennedy Sr. would outlive four of his nine children). However, the introductory film that brought everyone up to his 1960 Presidential Election campaign barely mentions the role of his father and the rest of his family with the exception of Robert Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to learn more about JFK’s early years. I’ve recently started reading Robert Caro’s seminal work The Years of Lyndon Johnson—I’ve just finished the second volume—and I couldn’t help but notice how JFK was already throwing shade at LBJ during his short but meaningful presidency.

Seeing the photographs and historical items related to JFK was wonderful, but what struck me most was how important “legacy” is when it comes to U.S. Presidents. Kennedy was arguably the last great American President who was widely revered by Americans and the world. By all accounts, his presidency could have faded into obscurity because of its brevity (who knows Zachary Taylor or William Henry Harrison)—and scandals like the Bay of Pigs—but his words and reputation live on thanks to his actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights movement, Space program, and his remarkable charisma. Robert Caro points out in his second volume on LBJ that Johnson’s Vietnam War policy was a major factor in tarnishing the global image of the U.S. presidency. Watergate and subsequent missteps by modern administrations played their parts too, but LBJ’s Vietnam legacy was the first domino to fall in how the world viewed American leadership. Which in turn makes JFK the last ‘likeable’ American President who commanded not just the power and stature that comes with the office but global admiration.

Kennedy’s youth, wealth, and good looks certainly helped elevate him in the public’s esteem. Yet beyond all that, I found him surprisingly eloquent. Not just in his famous speeches but also in debates before he became a Congressman or Senator. In many ways, JFK was the last American President the world truly looked up to. His presidential library is a strong testament to his enduring stature—further evidenced by his nephew, who, riding largely on the Kennedy name, seemed poised to gain a not-insignificant share of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election vote as an Independent candidate until he dropped out of the race to support the Republican candidate which has led to him being nominated for Donald Trump’s cabinet. Sixty years later, the Kennedy name still resonates deeply with Americans.

While in D.C., I visited Arlington National Cemetery to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On the way, I noticed signs leading to the JFK memorial, where I found JFK’s final resting place alongside his wife and children. There was also his eternal flame near the grave which added even more stature to the place. His siblings, who also served in World War II (an expectation set by Joseph Kennedy Sr. after he himself avoided service in WWI), are buried nearby. JFK’s military service earned him national sympathy and was promoted throughout his political career especially during campaigns.

During World War II, JFK served as the commander of a torpedo patrol boat called PT-109 in the South Pacific. In August 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank his craft, throwing crew members overboard. Despite being injured, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island and even carried an injured crewman—swimming for hours with the life jacket strap literally clenched in his teeth. His leadership and quick thinking saved lives and earned him both the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. This tale being recounted in The Patriarch was riveting as Kennedy Sr. was frantically using all his power and influence in Washington and the Press to find out about what had happened to his son. When he found out that his son had escaped and had a heroic and almost mythical military tale, Kennedy Sr. used his financial backing and influence of the Press to get stories about JFK’s pacific ordeal out to the public creating a mythical aura about the young Jack Kennedy even before he entered politics. This story would be the foundation from which Kennedy would swiftly ascend to the highest office in America.

Overall, the trip to the JFK Presidential Library and the subsequent visit to his gravesite in Arlington were moving experiences that brought to life the incredible reach of the Kennedy legacy. It underscored for me just how pivotal JFK’s presidency was and why his reputation endures, both in the United States and the world.

ON THE EDGE is a book by Nate Silver who is an American statistician, writer and poker player who is best known for his election predictions. Every four years, he becomes the leading expert on American politics, placing bets and making predictions about who will win the U.S. Presidential Elections based on his models. He first rose to stardom with the 2008 election, where his model correctly predicted the outcomes of 49 states. In 2012, he correctly predicted all 50 states. In 2016, Silver’s model gave Trump a 29% chance of winning, which was far higher than other pollsters. Thus, despite not predicting the outcome, he earned credibility for going against other pollsters and acknowledging that Trump had a potential path to victory. In 2020, he gave Biden an 89% chance of winning and proved correct again.

This book was published in August 2024 and I read it in the lead up to the elections in November, hoping to glean some insights from a former professional poker player about risk and predictions. I had previously read another book in this genre which was Superforecasting by Dan Gardner but that didn’t go well as I found it dull past the introduction. As I got into Silver’s book I realised that it wasn’t just about politics and making predictions based on polling data, turns out it was a book leading up to and after the ZIRP during the pandemic. It was more so a guide on Nate Silver’s life and his experiences dealing with risk and the people who are experts at it. The book is filled with stories from not just Vegas but also Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Effective Altruism (EA), Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and more. Silver frames these decisions — from the World Series of Poker tournament tables to SBF’s Bahamas penthouse — through the lens of expected value (EV).

This book reminded me a lot of Going Infinite by Michael Lewis which was published in 2023 which explored the turbulent rise and fall of SBF and FTX from an insider’s perspective1. It also covers the same time period and examines SBF as its main character. While in Lewis’ book he is the main character, Silver explores the character of SBF as a sort of final form living being that exhibits the values of risk takers he espouses throughout the book. SBF is the ultimate embodiment of whatever is wrong with the mindset and in my view Silver explains SBF a lot better than Lewis despite both of them having interviewed and talked to the guy before his whole scheme fell apart.

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but think that I had to finish this book by election day or else I was not going to finish this book. This book was very much focused on “The Current Thing” and the only reason I managed to finish this was because of how much attention Silver was getting in the lead up to the election. It also helped that during the last few months of the election, various polls, models and public prediction markets were in a tie between Kamala and the Donald helping lend more attention to every word that Silver wrote in his substack.

Eventually the day before election day, Nate Silver’s much awaited final forecast for the election gave Trump and Harris an almost equal chance of winning the Electoral College (50.015% for Harris, 49.985% for Trump) which was absolutely hilarious to witness on Twitter as everyone was losing their minds and meme’ing him for basically predicting a coinflip. Anyways, enough about the time period in which I read this book — what did I actually learn from this book?

The main idea that Silver introduces and constantly references throughout the book is the idea of The River vs The Village. He describes it like this:

The place where I fit in is what I call “the River”. It’s a place for people who are very analytical but also highly competitive. The archetypal activity in the River is poker. I’d been a professional poker player from 2004 to 2006, and the first trip I took by plane after the pandemic was to a casino in Florida — which was every bit as much of a shitshow as you’d expect — to play in a World Poker Tour event.

There are other communities in the River, though: Silicon Valley, Wall Street, sportsbetting, crypto, even effective altruism, all of which are covered extensively in the book. And I found I had a lot in common with these people too, even if I sometimes disagree with their politics. There are traits like decoupling, contrarianism and a high risk tolerance that I share with the River, for better or worse. And these seem to be correlated with extremely high-variance outcomes: tremendous success or tremendous failure (as in the case of Sam Bankman-Fried, who is sort of the antihero of the book).

The rival community to the River is what I call the Village. This term is more familiar: it’s basically the liberal establishment. Harvard and the New York Times; academia, media and government. The Village is politically progressive and, I would argue, increasingly partisan — though it can also be highly competent and it’s pretty good at winning elections.

Silver uses this River vs Village framework to structure what is essentially a blog-post-style narrative covering the past two decades of American River lore from poker in the early 2000s all the way up to OpenAI and AGI and beyond. While the book is fascinating, its biggest flaw is that it reads like an overly long blog post. The frustrations of reading a “very long blog post” become apparent in the way it meanders.

The adage that “this book could’ve been a blog; this blog could’ve been a tweet” rings painfully true. Though it’s a fun read, Silver could have made the book more timeless by avoiding shallow blurbs and the blogging tone that will make it feel dated very quickly. The concepts he explains are interesting, but the self-help-style writing undermines their depth. While it makes complete sense given his background as a blogger and journalist, it was nonetheless disappointing.

Overall, Silver’s examination of risk-taking culture in The River was a fascinating read and it’s an interesting perspective on what is going on at The Edge. It’s an obvious read for those who want to indulge in some nostalgia for the chaos of ZIRP or relive gambling vices from the last two decades but there’s also some value here for those who want to learn more about the intersection of forecasting, gambling and tech culture. Sure, there’s meandering prose but it’s worth it. It’s a great blog post.

Man’s Search for Meaning, first published in 1946, is an autobiographical book by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. This seminal book, which quickly became a bestseller, recounts the horrors Frankl experienced in four different Nazi concentration camps and explores his method of finding meaning in all forms of existence. He wrote this book in nine days just weeks after he was liberated from the concentration camps.

Frankl separates the book into two parts. The first part deals with his personal experiences during the Holocaust and how he survived the concentration camps. The second part deals with his idea of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that he founded. Logotherapy is the idea that searching for a meaning in life is the primary motivational force of an individual.

While I have heard great things about this book for years, I didn’t find it as impactful as I expected. While I generally agree with Frankl’s main idea that the search for meaning is incredibly important for life, the book felt oddly simplistic and brief in recounting his life in the concentration camps.

Frankl repeatedly talks about how everyone had grown so incredibly numb to all forms of human suffering after assimilating themselves into the camps which could explain why the book lacks emotions and deals with the countless unjust deaths in a somewhat detached manner.

Some of the more interesting ideas are that of the decent and indecent man, life having meaning continuously even in the worst of human suffering, having love as the ultimate goal, importance of hope in staying alive but not too much hope that one believes in delusions.

Frankl continuously talks about how having a meaning can lead to people surviving. He says that this meaning gives people hope that makes them survive even the worst conditions known to man. He also says that once a person loses meaning, they start to slowly die and eventually succumb to illness or fail in the face of pressure and die.

Frankl personally talks about how he had a manuscript for his life’s work up till that point that he hid in his coat when he was first transported to the concentration camp. Like the rest of his belongings, he had to leave everything behind before entering the camp else he would face death. He talks about how during his illness in camp or when he had time, he would try to recreate the manuscript from memory on small scrap pieces of paper or its equivalent. He said that this gave him the greatest meaning and helped him to survive.

He also talks about thinking of his wife and how his love for her brought meaning.

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way— in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory." In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner's existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered... My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."

Another story from the book that was profound was the story of someone who had a dream about the exact day of his liberation. When he wasn’t freed on that day, he lost all hope and here’s what happened.

I once had a dramatic demonstration of the close link between the loss of faith in the future and this dangerous giving up. F, my senior block warden, a fairly well-known composer and librettist, confided in me one day: 'I would like to tell you something, Doctor. I have had a strange dream. A voice told me that I could wish for something, that I should only say what I wanted to know, and all my questions would be answered. What do you think I asked? That I would like to know when the war would be over for me. You know what I mean, Doctor - for me! I wanted to know when we, when our camp, would be liberated and our sufferings come to an end.'

'And when did you have this dream?' I asked.

'In February, 1945,' he answered. It was then the beginning of March.

'What did your dream voice answer?"

Furtively he whispered to me, "March thirtieth."

When F told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and convinced that the voice of his dream would be right. But as the promised day drew nearer, the war news which reached our camp made it appear very unlikely that we would be free on the promised date. On March twenty-ninth, F suddenly became ill and ran a high temperature. On March thirtieth, the day his prophecy had told him that the war and suffering would be over for him, he became delirious and lost consciousness. On March thirty-first, he was dead. To all outward appearances, he had died of typhus.

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body's resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness—and thus the voice of his dream was right after all.

The observations of this one case and the conclusion drawn from them are in accordance with something that was drawn to my attention by the chief doctor of our concentration camp. The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year's, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the explanation for this increase did not lie in the harder working conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of weather or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they would be home again by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance and a great number of them died.

As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners

Moreover, while I felt the first part was interesting and useful to think about various ideas that he dealt with, the second part feels more like an advertisement for his theory of logotherapy especially when he talked about helping his clients in their normal day to day lives.

The contrast between his lived experience experiencing one of the greatest horrors in Nazi concentration camps and the struggles of normal working day people was stark and jarring. I think this was an updated edition which would explain things but still the juxtaposition of these two parts in the same book remains bizarre.

Overall, I would recommend reading the first half of this book for Frankl's experiences in the concentration camps and how hope can help one survive even in the darkest of times. The second part focusing on logotherapy, might only be of interest to those studying psychology.

While I didn’t find Man’s Search for Meaning as impactful as its reputation had led me to expect, I think that its ideas are still deeply profound and insightful. Maybe I will glean more from this book if revisit it in the future with more life experience.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a non-fiction book by David Grann that chronicles the famous American Osage murders and the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I first watched the Martin Scorsese movie on Apple TV and wanted to learn more so I decided to read the book that it was based on.

The Osage people originally resided in the Ohio Valley but were forced to move multiple times due to European and American westward expansionism in the form of Manifest Destiny. The Osage moved to Missouri before relocating to Kansas because of the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s. Later, the Osage sold their Kansas land for $1.25 per acre and relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s. Thus the Osage finally found their home in Oklahoma.

In 1906, each Osage member was allotted land and was given headrights which are basically shares that meant that they had ownership in the profits gleaned from minerals underneath their land. The land and the minerals underneath that the Osage were allotted was not particularly notable until oil was discovered at the start of the 20th century. As one would expect, everything changed.

The Osage suddenly became incredibly wealthy from their oil profits. The United States Congress decided to pass a bunch of laws that intended to ‘protect’ the Osage and their wealth by requiring "minors and incompetents" to have a white male guardian who would manage their wealth. The 'incompetence' of the Osage was determined based on blood. Full-blooded Osage were assigned guardians while mixed Osage rarely were. This guardian had the final say in all purchases big or small. While some guardians were honest, most just used this power to exploit the Osage and embezzle their newfound wealth. This also led to many Osage women marrying white men so that they could be their guardian.

In the 1920s alone, the Osage received $200 million in oil proceeds. Adjusted for inflation that is $3.6 billion today. Adjusted for GDP growth, that is $7 billion today. Keep in mind that the Osage reservation covers 1.47 million acres of land and there were 2229 registered Osage in 1906 during the allotment. Thus, each Osage member was allotted 657 acres of land. Thus assuming that oil was found equally across the land, each member received anywhere from $1.5 to $3 million annually. This coupled with the Roaring 20s and all the extravagance of that time period helped as well.

Due to these riches, the white population had no qualms with doing whatever it takes to exploit the Osage for their money. It also helped that they didn't see them as equal because of race. Whether it was through being a guardian who stole their money, charging exorbitant Osage rates for goods, or even marrying and murdering them to inherit their headrights.

As mentioned previously, headrights are shares that allow the Osage to profit off of minerals and most importantly oil underneath their land. Headrights could not be sold and the only way that they could be transferred was by inheritance. The main characters in the book are Bill Hale (self proclaimed King of Osage Hills) and his nephew Ernest Burkhart. Hale had been in Osage land for decades and become a cattle ranch owner and a political boss who was popular with both the Whites and the Osages in Osage county. When his nephew returned from World War I with no future prospects, he invites him to Osage and tells him of his scheme to get Osage headrights by marrying and killing them.

Burkhart would marry an Osage, Mollie, and then proceeded to be involved in plots with his brother, uncle and other white county criminals to take out all three of her sisters and her mother. Finally they would kill Mollie herself and Burkhart would inherit the headrights of the entire family. Then he would transfer it to his uncle and reap the rewards. This whole plan is quite surreal as it required Burkhart to share a bed with Mollie, raise children with her all while killing off her entire family one by one and eventually her.

Moreover, David Grann also focused on the early days of the FBI and how their investigations led to the capture of Hale and Burkhart. In trying to solve the dozen or even hundreds of murder cases, local chiefs failed, private investigators failed, state legislature failed, even the federal government failed in trying to assist the Osage in early stages until finally the Bureau of Investigation (later called FBI) was sent in to assist.

This case was the FBI's first major case and it was a pivotal moment for the institution. They used modern forensic techniques and undercover operations to gather evidence that that led to the conviction of several perpetrators.

While I'm barely scratching the surface on this Osage story, the whole thing is surreal. It's a classic tale of rags to sudden riches to rags again. Moreover, this case helped define the modern FBI and it was just the beginning of the reign of J. Edgar Hoover and his agency. As Director of the FBI, Hoover ruled for 48 years under eight different U.S. Presidents. He transformed the Bureau from a modest troubled agency into a powerful, highly respected institution that changed U.S. law enforcement.

I found that the movie was engaging with its visuals and aesthetics but didn’t really convey the story fully. This is expected of movies compared to books but it left out a lot of details regarding the FBI and the present state of the Osage. While the ending scenes were great, it could have been longer. Moreover, while the book itself is non-fiction and does not go into the details of Ernest and Mollie’s relationship, the movie could have done so much more in building these characters and their relationship. While it showed Ernest in distress over what he was doing in some scenes, the relationship and its effects on both of them when the murders unfolded could have been expressed better. Also, the movie was quite long but I didn’t mind since I found the aesthetics of a wealthy American county during the Roaring 20s fascinating.

In conclusion, while I could spend this whole post discussing the murders and the story of what happened to the Osage during their reign of terror and how it still haunts their descendants to this day, I highly suggest you either read the book or watch the movie as it is a riveting tale.

The following is a book review of Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday and thoughts on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

Before I begin, I must say I am not really a fan of these sorts of books as I think the writing style is too simplistic. It also doesn’t help that it’s usually fast paced and lacks depth in both examples and analysis. While these types of books are easy to write and earn a chunky book advance for the author, I doubt they would stand the test of time. However, the blog post writing style of this book brings me some comfort after I got tired of reading thousands of delightfully detailed but dry pages about the life of Theodore Roosevelt and his quest to garner power in American politics.

Courage is Calling makes the case for courage being one of the virtues that everyone must strive to possess to be a great person. Holiday explores ideas such as facing fears, being brave, being heroic and more through the lens of history. He references examples from thousands of years ago right up to the recent pandemic. Overall, Holiday’s book is an easy, light and fun three hundred page read about courage that is supported by its wide range of historical examples that are fascinating.

While I had been deliberating reading this book for months and it sat unread in my to-read list, I decided to read it in one sitting the day after Donald Trump’s attempted assassination. This was because his immediate reaction to the shooting was questioned on whether it was courageous or not. Thus, I thought there would be no better way to judge this recent but already historical event but by comparing it to past historical examples that exemplify courage, cowardice or even foolishness.

To give some context as to why courage was brought into question pertaining to the former President’s assassination attempt, here’s what had happened. Donald Trump, former American President and Presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee for the 2024 election, was giving a speech at a rally in Pennsylvania when shots were fired at him from a rooftop nearby. At that precise moment, Trump had tilted his head to view a chart on a screen and the bullet which would have otherwise shot through his head and killed him instantly missed his head by just a couple of centimetres. It instead shot a small piece of his right ear.

Trump fell to the ground and immediately secret service pushed him to the ground and used their body to shield him from further bullets. Further shots were fired and missed Trump. They instead killed or severely wounded members of the crowd. The crowd starts screaming in panic. As soon as the secret service agents get confirmation that the shooter has been killed, they get Trump to stand up. Trump asks them to let him put on his shoes and then they try to get him away from the stage into his armoured vehicle.

At this point, Trump says “wait wait wait” and pushes himself above the secret service agents holding him down. His right ear is filled with blood and his face is smeared with blood from his ear. He pumps his fists in the air repeatedly and shouts “Fight!” three times. The crowd which was in shock starts going wild and starts cheering “USA” after seeing that Trump is fine. During this moment, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Evan Vucci captures a historical image of Trump.

Regardless of what you think about Trump, this image goes so hard. Former President Trump shouting with his fists in the air with a bloodied face. Secret service agents holding him down. American flag in the background. Blue sky. It’s perfect. It reminds one of the historic photographs of the battle of Iwo Jima or the moon landing.

The vibe is simply impeccable.

There’s a famous Mike Tyson quote that I find relevant to this occasion, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”. Similarly, everyone has a plan until they are at their rally and get shot in the right ear and fall to the ground. I seriously doubt that Trump or any other human who has just been shot at and is bleeding and in pain could have been thinking anything about the media or how the photographers were going to take an iconic photo or portray him as a hero.

I doubt he was thinking about the perfect American flag behind him and how pumping his fists and appearing strong could flip a few swing states red and he could become the second President in American history after Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms in office.

There’s a photo of him facing the ground that went viral as well. At this point, the crowd was screaming and several supporters were severely wounded and might even have been dead.

In Courage is Calling, Ryan Holiday showcases a bunch of examples of people being courageous in events that would shape their lives in seconds. During these moments which Holiday calls “callings”, people don’t have time to ponder and deliberate on their decision, they instinctively make a call based on gut feeling which is shaped by every single action that they have made in their life up till that point and act courageously. Similarly, there could not possibly have been enough time for Trump to think about what he was doing and what its effects would be.

Moreover, considering the last time that a President, Former President or Presidential candidate was shot was Ronald Reagan in office over 43 years ago, I doubt Trump had plans for how to act should the moment come to maximize his chances of getting elected.

While we will never truly know what was going on in his mind, what we do know is how he reacted and that is represented in that now iconic picture. Here are some quotes from Trump the day after the shooting.

“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” said Trump, who was sporting a large, loose white bandage that covered his right ear.

“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump said. “I’m supposed to be dead.”

“They took him (the shooter) out with one shot right between the eyes,” the former president said as he pointed to the bridge of his nose.

“They did a fantastic job,” he added. “It’s surreal for all of us.”

Trump also addressed the incredible photo of him raising his fist and saying “Fight” three times as the agents tried to get him off stage and into an armored SUV.

“A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” Trump said. “They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.”

He added, “I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot.”

The doctor at the local hospital, which has a trauma center, told him he’s never seen anyone survive getting hit by an AR-15, Trump recalled.

“By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” he said.

The truth of the matter is that when he was in the greatest danger a President or human can face, he didn’t quiver or crumble. He resisted the grasp of the secret service agents holding onto him and showed insurmountable strength and courage when he pumped his fists in the air with blood on his face to calm the crowd and show that he was still standing strong. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is the first biography in a trilogy by Edmund Morris depicting the tumultuous and intense life of the 26th President of the United States.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1980 and was followed up by Theodore Rex (2001) and Colonel Roosevelt (2010). This first book deals with Theodore’s life up until the point where he ascends to the Presidency. The second book focuses on his two terms as President while the final book focuses on his life after holding the highest office in the land.

Reading this biography took multiple attempts but eventually I got past the dry pages of TR in the Dakota badlands cattle ranches making questionable investments while at the same time dealing with the tragic loss of his first wife days after giving birth to their first child. This book depicts in extreme detail how TR found a place for himself firstly in New York politics and then in Washington before taking oath as the youngest President in American history.

While reading this book, one can't help but feel that TR has a sort of mythical vibe. His unwavering energy and intensity in every aspect of his life is simply unheard of. Not only was TR dominant in intellectual circles but physically as well. His various side quests include being a cowboy in the badlands, best-selling historian and writer, colonel leading soldiers into battle and more. Not to get ahead of myself here but this doesn't stop when he's in the White House either. As President, he was constantly getting injured engaging in martial arts like Jiu Jitsu and boxing. He also spent his time away from the White House hunting and fighting wild bears.

Anyways, back to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. TR's personality and drive is one that is unmatched even by other American Presidents. He was a politician, soldier, statesman, father, conservationist, naturalist, writer and so much more. His wide range of knowledge and expertise came from his unwavering thirst and desire to learn more. He was famously known to read a book a day as well. Although it must be noted that he actually skimmed through most books but we can let this slide as he had a photographic memory and it adds to the mythical vibe of TR.

I am going to be repeating this word a lot but I can't think of any another word that describes TR better than "intense". TR was a man of action and constantly on the move. This was the essence of why this man who spent his whole life working tirelessly to garner power in politics didn't want to become Vice President during President William McKinley's reelection campaign in 1900 after his existing Vice President died in office due to heart failure.

Now let me set the scene for TR's political career before he famously becomes Vice President and eventually President after McKinley gets assassinated.

TR’s career in politics goes as follows. He starts off as a Member of the New York State Legislature and makes a small name for himself in the Republican party. Then he faces the tragic loss of his wife after she gives birth to their first child. To make matters worse, his mother passes away on the same day. TR retreated to the West and works on his cattle ranch in the Dakotas to rejuvenate. When he comes back, TR marries his childhood friend Edith Kermit Carow then works at the Civil Service Commission in Washington and worked tirelessly on pushing reform policies and enforcing the law. Then he gets appointed as the New York City Police Commissioner and makes a name for himself by reducing crime significantly. He even goes down to the streets in the middle of the night to make sure that police officers were awake when on duty and strikes fear into New Yorkers hearts. His Commissioner job would end when there would be a political stalemate in the board and TR couldn't make or enforce decisions anymore as he no longer had majority influence over the board.

At the advice of TR’s best friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, in his first term President McKinley would appoint him as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Secretary of the Navy John D. Long. TR was already well-versed in America's naval infrastructure and had previously at the young age of 23 written the definitive history on the naval battle between Great Britain and America titled "The War of 1812". His book was used in the Naval Academy to teach cadets about American naval history. John D. Long was old and in bad health when TR was appointed so he delegated most of his work to TR who was more than happy to operate as de facto Secretary of the Navy. TR would basically be in charge and make decisions. TR was always on the offensive and directed orders to naval fleets to be constantly on the ready for war. This led to Admiral George Dewey who was leading American fleets near the Philippines to win the Battle of Manila Bay against the Spanish. Dewey became a national hero and credited his victory to TR's orders.

As the Spanish-American war was beginning, in true Rooseveltian fashion TR wanted to have an active role and gain military glory instead of giving orders from afar as a boring Washington politician. He used his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to ask around in order to be allowed to lead a group of men into war against the Spanish if the time ever comes.

I can't help but recall how American Founding Father and First Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wanted to do the same. During the revolutionary war, he was George Washington's right hand man and aide-de-camp but constantly begged him to lead a group of men into battle. He famously even argued with the Commander-in-Chief and got his wish by leading his men into victory at the Battle of Yorktown which was the last land confrontation with the British that signalled the end of the Revolutionary war. Hamilton’s quest for military glory would not stop there. Decades later, even after a more than successful political life defending the United States Constitution, getting it ratified and single handedly dreaming up and building the foundations of the modern American financial system, Hamilton still wanted to lead the army. During the Adams’ Administration, the US was in a Quasi-War with France in 1798 and Hamilton was put in as second in charge under George Washington to train American troops should a land confrontation occur. I found TR's desperation for military glory even after having political power similar to that of Hamilton.

TR would get his wish when a land confrontation against the Spanish in Cuba seemed likely. TR resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy to raise troops for war. He became second-in-charge (Lieutenant Colonel) of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment under Colonel Leonard Wood and trained them briefly in America on basic military matters before they were sent to Cuba for the fight of their lives. TR’s unit became known as the Rough Riders and their fight in the Battle of San Juan Hill was highly popularised in the American press as it was one of the final battles of the Spanish-American war. Right before the battle began, Colonel Wood was promoted to lead multiple larger units, thus TR was promoted to Colonel Roosevelt and this rank would remain with him for the rest of his life. Even after he became President, he said that he was most proud of leading his men to victory in San Juan Hill and would for the rest of his life constantly tell stories of that fateful day in excruciating Rooseveltian detail.

Anyways, after returning home from an American victory, TR was hailed as a national hero and ran and won the New York Governorship. After decades in politics and gaining popularity amongst Republican party leaders and their voter base, TR and everyone around him knew he was destined to be the Republican Nominee for President in 1904.

However, President McKinley was running for reelection and needed a VP as his VP had died of heart failure the year before. McKinley desperately needed someone in the Republican party who would boost his chances for President and was generally agreeable to his policies.

GOP members and party bosses all around the country (even those who despised TR) wanted TR to be VP. The New York GOP leaders and old guards who constantly blocked TR's reform policies and made it no secret that they despised him were some of the most ardent supporters of him becoming VP. They realised that the only way to get TR and all his energy out of the state was to push him into a role that was largely powerless and ceremonial as the Vice President role was at the turn of the 20th Century.

While the Vice President role was obviously politically important and demanded great respect, it was a role that was more passive, subservient and one where the holder of the office could not do much politically. Herein lies the issue that TR had with the Vice Presidency.

For someone of TR's stature, especially after national stardom after the Spanish-American war, the VP role makes sense. But for someone of his intense drive and constant movement, the VP role was incredibly restrictive. TR also feared that after four years of being VP, he would be largely forgotten and would not be able to ride the wave of his San Juan victory in a 1904 Presidential campaign.

Moreover, he felt that he was losing political power by going from Governor of New York where had direct control over a state in making reform policies to just being a national figurehead and puppet under McKinley. While countless other American Presidents have served as VP before, TR was incredibly reluctant and despised the nomination. At his core, TR felt that the party was conspiring to limit his power and destiny by putting him as VP. However it was not just Party leaders who wanted him to be VP but even his closest supporters like his wife Edith Roosevelt and friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

After increasing speculation and opinions expressed by other Republican politicians in the news, TR went so far as to publicly announce that he was not interested in the VP role but didn’t rule out the possibility entirely, thereby still leaving it wide for speculation. Even on the day of the Republican National Convention, the party was in disarray as to who would be voted for VP. While TR attended the convention and received wide applauses everywhere he went, he was still making up his mind as to whether he should put his name.

Eventually after much persuasion and begging, TR came to a decision and said he would accept the nomination if the convention offered it to him but otherwise he would continue to serve another term as Governor of New York. Eventually, the mysterious powers that wielded power over the Republican party nominated TR and put his name in the goblet of fire and TR won the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee unanimously.

This whole saga of TR not wanting to be Vice President was written beautifully in detail by Edmund Morris towards the end of this first book. While the main story of TR’s life has yet to begin in the form of his world order changing Presidency, this event really shows the character of TR like none other.

While the stories of TR in the badlands fist fighting people in bars or fighting bears in the woods or walking the streets of New York after dark catching policemen sleeping on sentry or leading his Rough Riders to victory on San Juan Hill capture some essence of TR, the strong reluctance and back and forth to accept the Vice President role shows him in his purest distilled sense.

There are so many other examples that show TR’s pure drive and intensity but not wanting to be Vice President of the United States, preferring instead to have more control and power as Governor of New York is frankly unheard of. Although this whole thing could have just been a charade and orchestrated by TR for future historians and readers to espouse high praise on his moral character, it doesn't appear that way. If it was, then it was masterfully played and has me convinced at least.

As I was reading the biography of Joseph Patrick Kennedy — The Patriarch by David Nasaw, the most interesting part to me especially regarding the earlier years of Joseph Kennedy was certainly the way in which he accumulated his wealth. While he was not poor by any means when he first started out, his rise to wealth and power is one for the history books and makes for a riveting read.

Joseph Kennedy is most known today for being the father of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK), one of America’s most beloved Presidents who was assassinated in 1963 while in office. While Joseph Kennedy isn’t a famous historical figure today due to being outshined by his children—such as President John F Kennedy; Attorney General and Senator Robert F Kennedy; and Senator Ted Kennedy— he was famous for being one of America’s richest and most politically influential men from the 1920s to 1940s.

I first heard of Joseph Kennedy due to him being the inaugural chairman of America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was created in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash to enforce laws against market manipulation. At the same time however, Kennedy made millions (billions in todays money) from insider trading during the Roaring 20s in the stock market. Later he would short the market during the Great Depression and make tremendous profits. He was also rumoured to have profited from American prohibition by being involved in illegal smuggling of alcohol during the Great Depression.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appointment of Kennedy was gravely frowned upon even by his most ardent supporters. However Kennedy with his vast business experiences and wealth helped to ease the concerns of Wall Street as the SEC went about to regulate the wild west of Wall Street. As the first Chairman of the SEC, Kennedy helped enact many new regulations for financial securities and imposed restrictions on the selling of securities by board members, essentially making insider trading illegal, which is hilarious.

While Kennedy would remain influential in America first for his fame in Hollywood as a successful businessman and later as the rich friend of FDR who served as Chairman of the SEC, Maritime Commissioner, and Ambassador to Great Britain at the onset of WWII, his fall would come in the form of supporting Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, isolationism, and being publicly pessimistic about the outcome of WWII for the Allies. While this was the right position to take, Kennedy would remain stubborn and remained loyal to his appeasement beliefs even after Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill waged war against Adolf Hitler with FDR’s support. Until the very end, he would not trust Winston Churchill, and his various attempts to promote appeasement would be politically costly and remove him from the history books for picking the wrong side. This reminded me a bit of the legacy of Charles Lindbergh, who actually was a friend of Kennedy.

Kennedy would commit political suicide by talking behind FDR's back, making his own opinions heard instead of representing Washington's view at a critical moment during US-UK relations and fight back against the President for petty reasons. In the end, FDR summarised the thought process behind Ambassador Kennedy best.

“Roosevelt explained to his son-in-law that Joe Kennedy was an unreliable ally, and would always be—not because he was ambitious, which he was, not because he enjoyed wielding power, which he did, but because all he cared about was preserving the fortune he had accumulated and handing it on to his children. “The truth of the matter,” Roosevelt continued, “is that Joe is and always has been a temperamental Irish boy, terrifically spoiled at an early age by huge financial success; thoroughly patriotic, thoroughly selfish, and thoroughly obsessed with the idea that he must leave each of his nine children with a million dollars apiece, when he dies (he has told me that often). He had a positive horror of any change in the present methods of life in America. To him, the future of a small capitalistic class is safer under a Hitler than under a Churchill. This is sub-conscious on his part and he does not admit it.”

Anyway, in this post, I will seek to find out exactly how Joseph P. Kennedy made his wealth and answer the questions of whether his methods were legal and moral. I will also go deeper into why I am so fascinated by this character in history and what I learnt from reading this biography.

Origin

Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born into a political family in East Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Patrick Joseph Kennedy, was an important figure in the Democratic Party in Boston and served in both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the state Senate. Throughout the book, he is described as the sort of man who prefers to work in the background and was incredibly honest. Quite a contrary to what his son's reputation would become but I am getting ahead of myself here.

P.J. Kennedy didn't really inherit any wealth from his Irish Catholic immigrant father Patrick Kennedy and thus he made his wealth from scratch. As the only surviving male of his family, he started work at fourteen and became a successful businessman with a whiskey importing business and multiple liquor stores. His business and political connections would serve as the foundation for Joseph Kennedy and allow him to have a proper formal education and later go on to Harvard.

Bank President

After graduating from Harvard, Kennedy would work at the Columbia Trust Bank where his father was a co-founder and held a significant share of due to his influence in the East Boston political scene. At age 25, he borrowed money from family and friends to buy out shares from other shareholders and became the largest shareholder. He would then make himself bank president and paraded himself in the local newspapers for being the youngest bank president in the country. In reality, 'Bank President' as a title sounded cooler than it actually was when one came to realise the miniature scale of the family owned bank in East Boston.

"Columbia Trust had been founded in 1895 and controlled since then by a small group of East Boston stockholders, P. J. Kennedy among them. When in late 1913 the largest of the stockholders died, the founders were faced with the choice of either raising the money to purchase his stock or becoming minority owners of their own bank. Joe volunteered to help raise the funds. He successfully borrowed from family members, including his relatively well-off uncles on his mother’s side, and Eugene Thayer, who was president of the Merchants Bank of Boston, and used these loans to purchase bank stock, much of it in his own name. With control of more bank shares than anyone else, he had himself elected bank president and promoted family friend and mentor Alfred Wellington to the position of treasurer and vice president. He then brought in two new directors whom he could count on to support him."

Kennedy would then embark on his journey as a stock speculator and would personally manage the bank assets through the tumultuous market conditions and Wall Street shenanigans that began at the onset of World War I. As the markets fluctuated throughout 1914, Kennedy was involved in a number of real estate and stock market dealings. While he had already been giving himself the most favourable loans when applying for mortgages and for personal stock market investments, he was generous enough to extend this preferential treatment to his real estate customers when they were applying for mortgages and loans. The book recounts various tales of Kennedy giving himself loans to buy stocks and benefit from the stock market boom of late 1914 and 1915.

The Columbia Trust Bank would serve as a solid financial foundation for Kennedy and as the economy and bank grew he would further leverage his real estate and stock market holdings with loans. Even in his later dealings in Hollywood and Wall Street, Kennedy would continue to use the bank assets as his personal bank account for all sorts of reasons. While that may seem like it would cross many regulatory lines in today’s world of finance, it was certainly not all that illegal a hundred years ago. However, Kennedy made an effort to ensure that only he knew about this special arrangement, and everything was done behind closed doors for added measure.

"In December 23, 1920, he wrote Ethel Turner, the assistant treasurer of Columbia Trust, who acted as his personal secretary and accountant, outlining the parameters of the deal “so that your records may be clear.” The financial manipulations were so complicated and the terms of the $20,000  loan from Columbia Trust so shaky that he asked Miss Turner to “kindly destroy the letter” after she had read it and executed his instructions."

“In the years to come, Kennedy’s biographers, in attempting to find out how he financed his early ventures, would leap to the conclusion that his investment capital came from bootlegging operations. This, as we shall see later, was not true. Columbia Trust, which the Kennedy family would hold on to until 1945, was his primary source of investment capital in the early years. Kennedy also funded his investments with loans from Shawmut, where Bob Potter was vice president; from Brookline Trust, where E. B. Dane was president; and from Chase National in New York City, where Eugene Thayer had been named president. His initial loan from Chase National was $85,000 for three months, which he renewed every three months for the next year. When Thayer left Chase National in early 1921, after what appears to have been a breakdown of some sort, Kennedy still owed $77,500 on his loan. Thayer visited the loan officer and “asked him to put the soft pedal on for you, and I think they will.” With Thayer’s help, Kennedy got another two months to pay off the three-month loan he had taken out fifteen months earlier.”

"Relying on the coffers of Columbia Trust and borrowing from other banks was a risky way to do business—and Kennedy knew it. As long as he was able to juggle collateral and loans, moving paper from one account to another, one bank to another, he could survive. His experience as an assistant bank examiner was invaluable in this regard. He knew precisely how far he could go without calling attention to himself or his bank”

SEC Chairman

He's just like me for real. Anyways, back to the issue at hand. The real question is this. Was all this legal? Absolutely f*cking yes.

While Kennedy still had to dodge some laws and find loopholes, as evidenced by his secrecy about the whole getting-loans endeavour, most of it was common practice at the time and would remain legal until the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression. In 1934, the FDR administration would regulate Wall Street as part of its New Deal program to prevent another stock market crash through stringent financial regulation and outlawing market manipulation.

FDR would appoint his friend and campaign donor Joseph Kennedy to Chairman of the SEC. Kennedy worked tirelessly for months to bring about new regulations and enforce these policies under the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and more.

For amusement sake, let’s look deeper into these laws, particularly the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. By let’s look deeper, I mean ask a Large-Language-Model to find laws that Kennedy would have broken. For example, Section 20 prohibits banks from being affiliated with firms that engaged in securities trading and Section 16 limited the types of securities national banks could deal with.

As mentioned previously, Kennedy would have without a doubt breached these laws through his practice of using bank loans for personal investments and favouring loans to his associates. He would also been barred from making speculative investments with depositors money. To be frank, anyone with a basic idea of how financial regulations work know that what Kennedy was doing would be illegal in today’s modern financial word and you don’t need to do research to figure that out.

Anyways, Kennedy as master of insider trading and market manipulation, used these practices to make himself one of America's richest men and then quickly turned to the other side to regulate them with an iron fist at the onset of the Great Depression. This was because of his deep fears that the Great Depression would lead to a socialist revolution in America which would end the free market and capitalistic America that had made him incredibly wealthy. He was also afraid for the personal well-being of himself, his nine children and his nine trust funds he hoped will leave each Kennedy child with enough wealth to last generations. His personal experiences certainly helped make the regulations of the SEC robust and and shaped financial systems for generations to come.

Moving on from his time as Bank President and the legality of that operation which Kennedy would make illegal during FDR’s first term, let’s focus on his time in Hollywood.

Hollywood

In 1926, Kennedy started off in Hollywood as a complete outsider and in what little press he got, he was mentioned as president of a small bank in the Boston area. Kennedy's skill was not in production of films or directing but in making the business more cost efficient through elaborate structuring. He learnt this from his time as assistant general manager of Fore River, a Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Massachusetts, during World War I and as Bank President of Columbia Trust Bank.

In modern terms, what Kennedy was doing at Hollywood is akin to what private equity or investment banking firms do today. He identified undervalued production studios, made large investments, cut unnecessary costs using his connections, restructured companies through mergers, gave himself a tidy salary and stock and then finally once the act was done, sold the shares for a large profit.

The descriptions of Kennedy's dealings in Hollywood are fascinating from a financial perspective due to how simple and primitive it seems relative to todays complex markets but the main ideas stay the same. What Kennedy did in 1920s was identify a rapidly growing market during the greatest bull market of his time and grow to become an industry titan. Kennedy used his keen eye for undervalued assets, understanding of corporate structures, using innovative new technologies at the time like sound systems, and strategic sales to make himself incredibly wealthy. To be more specific, it is estimated that he was worth about $5 million in 1925 and $50 million in 1930. These figures would be $90 million and $940 million today adjusted for inflation. However, I despise using inflation calculators and so to put his wealth into perspective, let's use the rich list.

From this newspaper published in 1925, we can see that the richest man 'Mr Henry Ford' of Ford Motors was worth $600 million. Kennedy was worth $5 million then. Therefore, he was worth more like $1.75B in 1925. In 1930, J.D. Rockefeller was the richest man and worth $900 million. Thus, Kennedy was worth around $12B in 1930. However, another way of measuring would be proportional to America's GDP. Kennedy was 0.005% compared to the GDP in 1925. He was 0.05% compared to the GDP in 1930. Thus he was worth $1.4B in 1925 and $15B in 1930.

Alright now that we have three different estimates of his wealth that were painstakingly found through searching the internet for sources and pleading with gpt-4o to assist me. I hope this underscores the sheer magnitude of wealth that Kennedy made in the film industry. Now let’s get into the details of what exactly he did in Hollywood.

In 1926, Kennedy acquired control of the Film Booking Office of America (FBO) which was at the time a struggling film distribution company. He focused on what he knew best which was structuring the business efficiently to cut down on production costs. He also used his negotiation skills to get better terms with theatres and cut unnecessary costs. This steadily increased the value of FBO but Kennedy’s adventures were just beginning. Later in 1927, Kennedy merged FBO with Pathé Exchange, a leading film distribution company that was more established than FBO. This further improved operational efficiency and increased market share. For his final play in the film industry, Kennedy would merge FBO and Pathé exchange with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theatre chain and Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) photophone division to create RKO Pictures. Through this merger, Kennedy would create one of the first vertically integrated Hollywood studios that controlled production, distribution and exhibition under one corporation.

These sections of the book were quite interesting with lots of information about the merger and how Kennedy navigated Hollywood and the press. It was interesting to see how relatively simple things were a hundred years ago when Hollywood and the film industry were quite nascent. One of the more interesting anecdotes was that Kennedy's RKO was a pioneer in sound films and used RCA's photophone technology to put them at the forefront of this rising technology in the film industry.

As would be expected of Kennedy, he would later sell his shares in RKO at a significant profit in 1930 before the market downturn and go short the market as he was expecting significant downturn after many years of prosperity and froth in the market. There are some accounts of public investors in RKO and other large investors getting really angry at Kennedy for his decision to sell his entire stake during the market downturn, especially after the stock market crash of 1929. After exiting from Hollywood completely, Kennedy would seek refuge for his newfound wealth in primarily real estate for the rest of his life.

Whiskey Imports

One rumour of Kennedy was that he made his wealth during the Great Depression by being a bootlegger to the mafia — selling illegal alcohol during prohibition. The author, David Nasaw, says that while had searched all the historical sources he could and conducted dozens of interviews to find everything he can about Kennedy, nothing pointed towards him being a bootlegger. He claims these rumours only started surfacing in the late 1960s after JFK's and JPK's death and were created by political opponents to erode trust in the powerful political family by tarnishing their reputation.

However, Kennedy did benefit from the end of prohibition which was brought about by President FDR during his first term. I love this story. While the Twenty-first Amendment (repealing prohibition) had been approved by congress, it wouldn't take effect until it had been ratified by three quarters of the states and no one knew how long it would take, however Kennedy decided to profit from this in the stock market.

“In June 1933, Kennedy joined a syndicate organised by Elisha Walker with Kuhn, Loeb; Lehman Brothers; and Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation to purchase sixty-five thousand shares in the Libbey-Owens-Ford Company, with options for tens of thousands more. With the repeal of Prohibition now set in motion, investors were lining up to purchase “repeal” stocks. One of the most popular was Owens-Illinois, which made glass bottles. Libbey-Owens-Ford was an entirely separate company, which manufactured plate glass for automobiles, not bottles, but its name was close enough to the bottle glass company to fool unwary investors.”

“The syndicate, of which Kennedy was the largest individual investor, placed its Libbey-Owens-Ford stock orders in the hands of two pool managers, who divided them into several parcels and began trading them wildly on the New York Stock Exchange. As one of the pool managers later admitted under questioning by Ferdinand Pecora before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, the enterprise was constructed on the correct assumption that if the pool managers pumped up volume by buying and selling shares to one another, investors would take notice and start buying shares of Libbey-Owens-Ford on the mistaken belief that they were buying shares of Owens-Illinois, the bottle manufacturer. Kennedy profited enormously from the stock pool and invested some of his profits in Owens-Illinois. He also bought sixty-three hundred shares of National Distillers at an average price of $8.64. By year’s end, after the repeal of Prohibition, National Distillers was selling at $26 a share. National Distillers specialized in blended ryes and bourbons, which could be produced domestically, as could gin and, of course, beer. Scotch whiskey would have to be imported. There was no shortage of Americans poised to compete for the right to import Scotch whiskey as soon as it was legal to do so. But none had the advantages Kennedy enjoyed. He was known in London banking circles as the American who had purchased and revitalized the British film company FBO. He was fabulously wealthy, with abundant cash to spend. He was a brilliant businessman and a consummate salesman and promoter who could be counted on to get the whiskey into the right hands—for the right price. And perhaps most important of all, he had connections to the Roosevelt administration, which would determine import duties and issue licenses.”

For his new business venture, Kennedy would go on to recruit FDR's son, Jimmy Roosevelt, and bring him along to London to show his influence in Washington. He was awarded lucrative contracts to import whiskey and Jimmy who was just starting out in the insurance business benefitted from getting contracts to insure the imports from fire.

Kennedy's new enterprise, Somerset Importers, secured one of the first New York licenses for import of wine and spirits just days after prohibition was lifted. The company became a family cash cow with profits reaching $536,000 in 1934 and surpassing a million in 1936. Kennedy would run the company until 1946 when he sold the company so that it wouldn’t affect John F. Kennedy’s campaign for congress.

Real Estate

As mentioned earlier, after his adventures in Hollywood during the Roaring 20s, Kennedy mainly focused on real estate. One of Kennedy's more profitable real estate investments was the purchase of the Merchandise Mart for $12.5 million in 1945. The building had cost the previous owners $30 million to build. The Merchandise Mart was at the time the largest building in the world with a total area of 4 million square feet. It generated substantial rental income for the family and funded most of their lifestyle, political campaigns and endeavours for the next half a century until it was sold in 1998 for $625 million.

The Kennedy’s would also famously own valuable real estate all across the country with the main focus being their estate in Hyannis Port which is the center stage for the Kennedy family.

Musings

The Kennedy family would not be where it is today without Joseph P Kennedy and what I find so fascinating about this man is his relentless pursuit of money and power not for himself but for his children. Many other great men of history chase money and power not for others as they sometimes claim but to quench their insatiable ambition for fame, power and money. While Kennedy had those same ambitions, he fundamentally wanted his children to rise above what he achieved which is no easy task for an Irish Catholic East Bostonian man who would spread his wings across Wall Street, Hollywood and Washington.

He rose his way up from East Boston to become one of America’s richest men through timing the greatest market booms of the Roaring 20s and shorting to the depths of the Great Depression. He went into Hollywood with a mission and became one of America’s richest men in just four short years changing the film industry. He profited from insider trading and market manipulation before outlawing them through regulation as the first SEC Chairman. He was America’s Ambassador to Great Britain at the most pivotal of times as Hitler was waging war against the European continent. He was in the room where it happened corresponding with Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill during World War II.

However at the same time, one major theme throughout the book was his nine children. In between his adventures across the country and the world, regardless of how busy he was, he spent time focusing on each of his children. He gave them access to the best resources possible and went out of his way use his connections to give them the best life experience possible. Throughout his life, JFK spent a lot of time suffering from various illnesses and diseases and it would be Kennedy who would spend time with him while his wife took care of the other children. JFK took especially strong interests in the education of his children and pulled strings to land his sons a place at Harvard and to give them a global education by sending them across the world to learn. Throughout the book, David Nasaw constantly refers to letters that Kennedy wrote the nine kids that was always personalised and showed his care for his children. He was a man would fight against Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to promote his own idea of isolationism and appeasement for the sake of his kids never having to fight in World War II.

However, just so that this post doesn’t sound like I’m writing a love letter to Joseph P. Kennedy (I am), it must be noted that this whole caring for children thing can also be part of ambition and legacy building for Kennedy. He clearly wanted his sons to become President of the United States and to become the most powerful people in the world.

David Nasaw explores this motive of Joseph Kennedy through being an outsider. One aspect was by Kennedy being an Irish Catholic. While I am not particularly well versed in the history of Irish Catholics in America, throughout the book there are examples of the Kennedy’s facing difficulties because of their faith and stories of how they faced difficulties being taken seriously in politics because of it. Kennedy laments this fact when he is actually disappointed and saddened by the election results when John F. Kennedy wins the 1960 Presidential Election. This was because he realised from the polls that 5% of the democratic party voter base who would usually have voted democrat, didn’t vote for his boy because he was a Catholic. Kennedy was an outsider wherever he went, from Boston to Wall Street to Hollywood to Washington to London. Wherever Kennedy went, he was an outsider. He desperately wanted to join the in-crowd but to no avail. Eventually he had to create his own in-group with him at the very top. But that too came crumbling down with the Kennedy curse and the tragic death of Joe Jr. in World War II, Kick in a plane crash and President JFK and Attorney General RFK getting assassinated.

To address the question at the start of this post regarding the legality and morality of Kennedy’s wealth, it’s pretty apparent that Kennedy did not break any rules or laws when it came to making money. Kennedy did skirt the rules and exploited loopholes but none of it was illegal. Moreover, it should stated that Kennedy would have received significant backlash from various political opponents while he was working with the FDR administration should he have committed crimes to make his wealth. While Kennedy’s reputation didn’t benefit from him being wealthy, there isn’t any proof that he made his money through illegal actions.

However, a lot of his practices were certainly immoral but morality depends on who you ask about it. One can’t help but be impressed and find the whole Kennedy ordeal ironically hilarious. In my opinion, Kennedy was just an outsider who played the game brilliantly and won enough chips to become the creator of the game itself. While he had an incredible number of flaws that can’t be overlooked, that’s not really the point of this post focusing mainly on his financial history and the legacy he left behind pertaining to it.

Also it must be noted that Kennedy was a bagholder for appeasement. the man who timed the Roaring 20s and Great Depression in the stock market didn’t realise when it was time to let go of the appeasement belief and it led to his political downfall and his reputation never recovered after getting ousted as Ambassador by FDR. Maybe if his ego and selfishness hadn’t gotten the better of him, he could have gotten the Secretary of the Treasury role that he so desperately wanted and maybe even President if he waited long enough.

My admiration of Kennedy largely stems from the fact that he achieved the ideal life that I strive towards and dream about making a reality in the future. He made a lot of money so that his children would never have to work a day of their life in pursuit of money and can instead receive the best possible support to work towards creating an impact for the greater good of the community. I can’t recommend this book enough, I wish I had read this earlier when I first picked it up two years ago but maybe I would not have appreciated certain parts without some additional life experiences. Anyways, here are some concluding quotes towards the end of the book that are wonderful.

“Joseph P. Kennedy had finally, through his son, accomplished all he had hoped for. The Kennedy family had completed its four-generation journey from outsiders to insiders, but at a cost greater than Kennedy had ever imagined. The Catholic Church, its American hierarchy, and the Vatican, instead of supporting the family’s journey from East Boston to the White House, had stood in its way. And this the patriarch would not forget or forgive.”

“The (inauguration) speech was electrifying. Jack had had many collaborators, advisers, and editors—and solicited and reviewed drafts from Adlai Stevenson, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Ted Sorensen, among others. Still, the words he delivered from the Capitol steps on January 20 were his, including the one sentence that was most remarked upon at the time—and continues to be fifty years later: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The thought was not a new one. It had been included in earlier speeches, including the acceptance speech in Los Angeles. It would be fruitless indeed—though many have tried—to figure out exactly how this particular thought got put into these particular words. The resemblance is nonetheless striking between this idea as expressed in John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inaugural address and his father’s lifelong insistence that his children enter public service and do something worthwhile, that they devote themselves not to making money—he had done that for them—but to the greater good of the larger community.”

“As the lead-off car with the president approached the reviewing stand, Joseph P. Kennedy stood up and took off his hat in a gesture of deference to his son. “It was an extraordinary moment,” Eunice would later remark. “Father had never stood up for any of us before. He was always proud of us, but he was always the authority we stood up for. Then, just as Jack passed by and saw Dad on his feet, Jack too stood up and tipped his hat to Dad, the only person he honored that day.”

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Walter Isaacson is one of my favorite authors ever. He has written biographies about Benjamin Franklin (2003), Einstein (2007), Steve Jobs (2011), Jennifer Doudna (2021), Elon Musk (2023) and of course Henry Kissinger (1992).

As you can notice this book was one of his earlier works and it focuses on the life of Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. National Security Advisor under the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations.

Kissinger is a complicated historical figure to say the least. He was a Jew born in Bavaria, Germany in 1923 and his family fled to the United States in 1938 to avoid Nazi persecution. He later served in the U.S. Army during WWII and afterwards went to Harvard (x3). He then proceeded to gain a foothold in intellectual circles through working with Nelson Rockefeller and rose the ranks as an expert in nuclear arms and foreign policy before being recruited by the Nixon campaign as National Security Advisor (1969-1975). He would eventually become Secretary of State under both the Nixon and Ford administrations (1973-1977).

I

The Diplomat

Kissinger is widely considered to be one of the most prominent and influential statesmen history has ever seen. In 1971, he secretly visited Beijing and paved the way for the historic 1972 visit by Nixon to China which ended a quarter century of no diplomatic ties between the two nations.

He aggressively pursued a policy of détente (a French word meaning "relaxation" used for the easing of hostility between countries) with the Soviet Union during the Cold War leading to Nixon visiting Moscow to discuss nuclear arms control with Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev just a few months after meeting Mao.

During this time, Kissinger secretly commuted back and forth to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese Leader Lê Đức Thọ to broker peace during the Vietnam War. In 1973, these two would be jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Paris Peace Accords which was intended to bring an end to the Vietnam War. Lê Đức Thọ would refuse the award saying that “peace had not yet been established in South Vietnam” and Kissinger would 'reluctantly' accept it and donate the cash prize to scholarships for children of servicemen killed in Vietnam. Although it is suggested that he had been gunning for the award to feed his insatiable desire for fame and gain recognition for his efforts.

II

War Crimes

When Kissinger is mentioned these days, the first thing that comes up is his direct involvement in various U.S. military decisions that are widely regarded as war crimes. This book was written in 1992 and while it does mention in detail the thought process (and more often than not the lack of rational thinking) behind certain key decisions leading to civilian deaths, it's not the main focus on of the book.

For example, the Cambodian and Laos bombings during the Vietnam War leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths were orchestrated by Nixon and Kissinger to bring an end to the Vietnam War. During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 , it is said that Nixon and Kissinger ignored the atrocities committed by the Pakistan military against Bangladesh civilians due to US-Pakistan ties which were critical for their trip to China. It also helped that Nixon had personal biases against India’s President Indira Gandhi.

“Because he was anxious not to disrupt this crucial channel or seem ungrateful to President Yahya Khan, the distortion of American policy toward Pakistan became yet another hidden cost of Kissinger’s fetish for secrecy ... The conflict thus illustrated two of the basic themes of his diplomacy: the primacy of realism over moral concerns, and the tendency to see disputes through the prism of the Soviet-American competition.”

The book quickly glosses over Kissinger's involvement in Chile with his support for the 1973 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected President leading to widespread human rights abuse. It also doesn't go into detail about Kissinger and Ford's approval of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975 leading to widespread civilian deaths.

III

Watergate

Although the Watergate scandal is an event that would forever tarnish the legacy of the Nixon administration, it remained in the backdrops of this book. Isaacson focused on the events of Watergate through Kissinger's eyes. During the peak of the controversy, Kissinger would fly (often unnecessarily) around the world on his diplomatic tours to avoid the controversy and questioning back at the White House. He would also not consult the President when making decisions as Nixon was too busy dealing with Watergate.

Kissinger's part in the Watergate scandal would be in the form of promoting an aura of secrecy within the administration. Throughout the book, there are countless examples of Kissinger spying on other departments within the government and going to great lengths to avoid getting different departments and people involved in foreign policy decisions.

As National Security Advisor, he would often use backchannels for communication to his team and even foreign officials. Through this, he kept the State Department and other agencies uninformed about key events. He basically took over the role of Secretary of State from William Rogers who made little to no major policy decisions and was kept in the dark while Kissinger ran the show.

IV

The Media

Another theme present throughout the book was Kissinger's love for attention. Whenever Kissinger's name comes up on social media or traditional media these days, it's filled with comments calling him evil and a war criminal. So it was a quite a shock when I was reading this book and learned that he was actually famous and quite celebrated during his time in power. He often outshined Nixon and Ford at events (to their dismay) and painstakingly crafted his image by talking to the press at every possible moment.

One hilarious story was about a journalist lamenting about how didn’t get any attention by Kissinger when part of his press entourage during the Middle East Shuttle diplomacy even after writing positive articles about Kissinger. Other more Kissinger-attuned journalists told him to write a negative column about Kissinger to get his attention and it finally got his attention. Kissinger called the journalist and gave him his spiel to make sure that his points were not misunderstood.

He was also famous for portraying an image of a playboy by arranging dates with Hollywood stars because he loved to get attention even when not brokering international peace during the Cold War. His whole dating Hollywood stars thing was also a facade as he would often just go on one date in public restaurants to get public attention and later ignore the actresses.

Kissinger's secret with women was not all that different from his one with men whom he wanted to charm: he flattered them, he listened to them, he nodded a lot, and he made eye contact. But unlike the way he was with most men, Kissinger was exceedingly patient with women who wanted to talk. "Very few men in the 1970s actually listened to women," according to Bette Lord. "Henry talked to you seriously and probed for what you knew or thought." He was someone who could, and would, make a Jill St. John feel intelligent or a Shirley MacLaine feel politically savvy. "Next to Ingmar Bergman, he is the most interesting man I have ever met," said Liv Ullmann. "He is surrounded by a fascinating aura, a strange field of light, and he catches you in some kind of invisible net."

V

Influence

After politics, Kissinger was relentless in his pursuits to remain relevant and also maintain his opulent lifestyle. While Harvard was more than welcome to receive him back as a tenured professor, it obviously wouldn't come with the twenty-person secret service detail, luxury hotels and private planes to whisk him around the world at a moments notice that he had been accustomed to.

However, for about five years after Gerald Ford lost the Presidency to Jimmy Carter, he focused on writing various books but soon realised that he was probably not going to be summoned back as Secretary of State. Thus, he turned to the world of consulting to sustain his lifestyle. He started Kissinger Associates and used his fame and connections to help businesses and was paid tens of millions of dollars per year for it. Kissinger was one call away from any President of any country and used this to help his clients.

Throughout the book, Kissinger is said to have looked up to Klemens von Metternich who was an Austrian statesman and one of the most important diplomats of the 19th century. He was Foreign Minister of Austria from 1809 to 1848 and played a leading role in European diplomacy. Kissinger saw him as a role model to base his own approach to diplomacy. His staunch belief in the balance of powers and the need for stability came from observing Metternich's role in Europe during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

Even until right before his death at the age of 100 in 2023, Kissinger met with people such as China's Xi Jinping and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. He was also called 'a wise and talented statesmen' by Russian President Vladimir Putin after his passing. His sphere of influence nearly half a century after his exit from office is simply unheard of.

This book was overall a really interesting read. Although it was released over three decades ago, it remains an important source in learning about who Henry Kissinger really was. Isaacson's style of writing and storytelling makes this information dense book a rivetting read.

This is a different type of book. Okay it's not really a book. As the title suggests it is a collection of 38 Letters by John D Rockefeller to his son, John D Rockefeller Jr.

This book reminded me of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Funnily enough, while I have not read the book, I have heard about how great it is from Ryan Holiday's books. Meditations is said to be so great as it a collection of personal writings and reflections by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

John D Rockefeller didn't intend for these letters to be public. He wanted to give some advice to his son. Also it must be noted that these letters were from 1897 to 1922, making Rockefeller between the ages of 58 and 83 and he was giving advice to his son who was a grown adult managing his businesses.

Some interesting things from this book were how much Rockefeller talked about how it was his destiny to dominate industries and win. Throughout various letters, he constantly reinforces the fact that second place is actually last place.

When he got his first job at age 16, he celebrated that day as "Job Day" and continued to celebrate that day for the rest of his life as a reminder of the day his adult life began.

He also claims that from a young age, he vowed to be the richest man and that it was his destiny to reach the pinnacle of wealth.

"Stupidly hard work may still get nothing after all the hard work, but if you think of working hard for your boss as a ladder to serve yourself one day, it is undoubtedly the beginning of wealth creation. The feeling of being your own boss is so great, it is beyond words. Of course, I cannot always be immersed in the pride of being amongst the trade agents at the age of 18. I warned myself: “Your future depends on the days that pass by. Your end goal in life is to be the richest man in the United States. Where are you? It is still far, far away. You must continue to work hard for yourself.” Being the richest person is the basis for my efforts and the strength to spur myself. In the past few decades, I have always been a believer in the pursuit of excellence. The one sentence I most often motivates myself with is: For me, second place is no different from last place. If you understand it, you will think that it is not surprising that I ruled the oil industry as the indisputable king."

Another fun part is when he talks about greed. He writes to his son about how the public and media tried to tarnish his philanthropic image by talking about how greedy he was to have that much wealth.

He goes on a long rant to his son about how he would never mention in it public but that greed made him the richest man in the world. He writes about how greed is a good thing and that it made him successful enough to donate money to charitable causes.

"Those who love muckraking always regard greed as a demon. But in my opinion, opening the lock of our greed is not the same as opening the Pandora's Box, and releasing the beating greed all the time is equivalent to releasing the potential of our lives. From a bookkeeper with a weekly salary of only five dollars to the richest person in the United States today, it was greed which made me achieve this miracle. Greed is the force that drives me to create wealth, just as it is the force that drives social evolution."

"Many people have asked me the same question: “Mr. Rockefeller, what supported you on your way to the top of wealth?” I cannot express my true feelings because greed is despised by people. However, the fact is that greed is the support that supported me to become a generation of millionaire, that is, I aroused my greed and deepened my greed."

"John, I am the focus of my life, I decide what suits me, so I do not care what those people say, my heart is still peaceful. To some people, I always seem to be a businessman with despicable motives. Even if I invest in charities that benefit the people, It will be regarded as a trick by them. They suspect that the motivation of my charities is to pursue self-interest, or a form of atoning my sins, but they do not see it as a selfless spirit of public welfare. This is really funny. I want to tell you very sincerely that your father will never make you feel ashamed. Every penny in my pocket is clean. The reason why I became rich is my superior mind and strong career. The heart is rewarded. I firmly believe that God has clear rewards and punishments, and that my money is given by God. And I can always make money. If God helps, this is because God knows that I will return the money to society for the benefit of my fellow citizens."

Also letter 36 was an enjoyable read. It was the letter he wrote after the Panic of 1907 had passed. He writes about how much he despises President Theodore Roosevelt as the federal court had just issued an unprecedented fine to Standard Oil and ordered the dissolution of the company.

Rockefeller proceeds to criticise the Roosevelt administration for not understanding how wealth is built, how much good Standard Oil had done for Americans and how wealth is a form of responsibility. He commented on how he used his wealth to make large bank deposits to restore confidence in the U.S. financial system and how J.P. Morgan (the guy) saved America from yet another financial calamity.

Yet as he writes,

"I am very happy that a financial crisis that almost caused a national crisis has finally passed! Now, I think our President, Theodore Roosevelt, can go to Louisiana to continue hunting with peace of mind, despite his surprising incompetence in this crisis. Of course, Mr. President did not do nothing. He supported Wall Street with “worries”. God! Our taxpayer was so blind that he sent such a New Yorker into the White House. Frankly speaking, the mention of Theodore Roosevelt's name and everything he did to Standard Oil makes me indignant. He is the narrowest and most vengeful villain I have ever seen. Yes, this villain succeeded. With the power in his hands, he became the winner of an unfair competition that was initiated by him. The federal court issued the huge fine that was unprecedented in American history and ordered its dissolution of our company. See what this despicable man has done to us! However, I believe that his so-called punishment will not succeed after all, but he will feel greatly disappointed, because I believe that all our companies are not rubbish. We have an outstanding management team and sufficient funds. We can resist any risks and attacks; our wealth will come from their healthy bodies. Wait and see! There will be times when we secretly cheer. However, we are indeed hurt and treated extremely unfairly. Theodore accused us of being a villain with huge wealth, and the judge insulted us as if we were notorious thieves, as if our wealth were conspired to plunder. Wrong! Those stupid guys do not know how big companies 116 are built, and he does not want to know. Every cent of our money is permeated with our wisdom, and we have paid a load of sweat every step forward. The cornerstone of our business building is laid by our lives. But they do not want to listen, they want to be biased, only believing in their own inferior judgments, insulting our business ability, and even ignoring the fact that we use the cheapest and best quality kerosene to illuminate the United States."

Also just lmao.

"But I did not see myself as a saviour, let alone pretentious. Only fools are pretentious because of money. But because I am a citizen, that knows that I have huge wealth, and I also bear huge public responsibilities because of it. What is more noble than having huge wealth is to serve the motherland in accordance with the needs of the motherland. John, we indeed have money, but at any time, we should not spend money arbitrarily. Our money is only used to create value for mankind, and we must not give any selfish people a little bit of benefit. Of course, we will never donate money to republicans to support their election campaigns anymore. Theodore Roosevelt has already hurt us."

Malcolm Gladwell is a well known author who is best known for his book Outliers where he preaches the 10,000 hour rule to become an expert at a field.

In Talking to Strangers, Gladwell explores the way, in which we interact and understand people we don’t know. He aims to challenge our assumptions about how we communicate with others, revealing the hidden biases and misunderstandings that lead to unfortunate circumstances.

As someone who prefers historical examples over current events, I was more drawn to the instances involving Neville Chamberlain, the CIA, and the Cubans during the Cold War. These historical anecdotes added depth and context to the book's central theme, whereas the more recent, news-related examples felt less impactful and somewhat forced.

Throughout the book, Gladwell mainly explores the concept of "default to truth", suggesting that humans are naturally inclined to believe what others tell us, even when there are signs of deception. He also discusses the role of alcohol in social interactions, citing research that shows how even small amounts can impair our ability to read facial expressions and body language accurately.

Although the book presents some interesting research and case studies, I couldn't help but compare it to Gladwell's previous work, particularly his bestseller Outliers, which I found to be more engaging and thought-provoking. The conclusions and arguments in Talking To Strangers feel oversimplistic and rushed at times.

Coincidentally I read this tweet by Nat Eliason right after finishing this book and I agree wholeheartedly. Talking to Strangers is a quintessential pop non-fiction book.

In conclusion, Talking to Strangers has some fleeting moments of insight but it falls short of the high expectations set by Gladwell's previous work. In other words, it’s mid.