John Carney

Dungeon Master. Economics and Finance editor. Formerly: WSJ, DealBreaker, B.I., CNBC, and Wall Street lawyer

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Book Recommendations:

JC

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The best teacher I ever had was a man named James Tobin. He taught us about freedom, government, history, and rebellion...in the FOURTH GRADE. He just wrote a book. I'm going to read it. Maybe you should also. https://t.co/6goxXlioI9 (from X)

Tom Wingfield lives in a small Virginia town, famous as the birthplace of U.S. presidents and Sonny Rawlins, America's most celebrated college coach. For thirty years, Tom has kept secret the truth about Rawlins. But a news story sets off a chain of events that engulfs Tom and his family in a media storm. Only one thing can save Tom and the life he has built. He must enter Sonny's Monster House one more time.

JC

Recommended by John Carney

Love this. Made me really miss actually hanging out with Mary and Josh. Everyone go buy Mary's book. https://t.co/oGrnCavo6v (from X)

From the host of NPR’s Planet Money, the deeply-investigated story of how one visionary, dogged investor changed American finance forever. Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. $10,000 and countless casino bans later, he was hooked: so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino. Over the course of decades, Bill Gross turned the sleepy bond market into a destabilized game of high risk, high reward; founded Pimco, one of today’s most powerful, secretive, and cutthroat investment firms; helped to reshape our financial system in the aftermath of the Great Recession―to his own advantage; and gained legions of admirers, and enemies, along the way. Like every American antihero, his ambition would also be his undoing. To understand the winners and losers of today’s money game, journalist Mary Childs argues, is to understand the bond market―and to understand the bond market is to understand the Bond King.

JC

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Congrats to @peterschweizer for climbing back up to the top of the NYTimes best seller list with his book RED HANDED. Fourth week in top spot! https://t.co/qli3axPGdM https://t.co/aAFvklEjmA (from X)

#1 New York Times Bestseller Peter Schweizer says that, in a quarter-century as an investigative journalist, this is the scariest investigation he has ever conducted. That the Chinese government seeks to infiltrate American institutions is hardly surprising. What is wholly new, however, are the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Presidential families, Silicon Valley gurus, Wall Street high rollers, Ivy League universities, even professional athletes—all willing to sacrifice American strength and security on the altar of personal enrichment. In Red-Handed, six-time New York Times bestselling investigator Peter Schweizer presents his most alarming findings to date by revealing the secret deals wealthy Americans have cut to help China build its military, technological, and economic might. Equally as astonishing, many of these elites quietly believe the Chinese dictatorial regime is superior to American democracy. Schweizer and his team of forensic investigators spent over a year scouring a massive trove of global corporate records and legal filings to expose the hidden transactions China’s enablers hoped would never see the light of day. And as Schweizer’s past bombshells like Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires, and Clinton Cash all made clear, there are bad actors on both ends of the political spectrum. Exhaustively researched, crisply told, and chilling, Red-Handed will expose the nexus of power between the Chinese government and the American elites who do its bidding.

JC

Recommended by John Carney

@caro @gerardtbaker @unclegrambo @Spencerjakab By the way, @Spencerjakab is amazing. He's got a new book about meme stocks out that everyone should read. https://t.co/zWTGYbe6Vu (from X)

From Wall Street Journal columnist Spencer Jakab, the real story of the GameStop squeeze - and the surprising winners of a rigged game. 'Jakab adeptly skewers the popular but dangerously wrong narrative of Reddit's David thumping Wall Street's Goliath, and shows how the casino always wins in the end. DeepF***ingRespect for an important book with lessons far more durable than GameStop's stock market levitation.' Robin Wigglesworth, author of Trillions During one crazy week in January 2021, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit's r/wallstreetbets forum had seemingly done the impossible - they had brought some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street to their knees. Their weapon was GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly became the most-traded security on the planet and the subject of intense media coverage. The Revolution That Wasn't is the riveting story of how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, and the real architects (and winners) of the GameStop rally. Drawing on his years as a stock analyst at a major bank, Jakab exposes technological and financial innovations like Robinhood as ploys to part investors from their money, within the larger story of evolving social and economic pressures. The surprising truth? What appeared to be a watershed moment - a revolution that stripped the ultra-powerful hedge funds of their market influence, placing power back in the hands of everyday investors only increased the chances of the house winning. Online brokerages love to talk about empowerment and 'democratising finance' - while Wall Street thrives on chaos. In this nuanced analysis, Jakab shines a light on the often-misunderstood profit motives and financial mechanisms to show how this so-called revolution is, on balance, good for Wall Street. But, Jakab argues, there really is a way for ordinary investors to beat the pros: by refusing to play their game.

JC

Recommended by John Carney

@moorehn I love that book and that film. I did my high school thesis on Thomas Hardy and I think Return of the Native was my favorite (although memories fade and my tastes change so perhaps I am wrong or it would not be today). (from X)

Book Excerpt: during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"Bruaria." Then folRead More

JC

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@JamesSurowiecki @yeselson @mattyglesias I’ll add, “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement” with a forward by Cornell West and edited by Crenshaw, et. al. Particularly, the introduction to that book is a great guide to the underlying ideas. (from X)

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement book cover
Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Garry Peller, Kendall Thomas

What is Critical Race Theory and why is it under fire from the political right? This foundational essay collection, which defines key terms and includes case studies, is the essential work to understand the intellectual movement Why did the president of the United States, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, take it upon himself to attack Critical Race Theory? Perhaps Donald Trump appreciated the power of this groundbreaking intellectual movement to change the world. In recent years, Critical Race Theory has vaulted out of the academy and into courtrooms, newsrooms, and onto the streets. And no wonder: as intersectionality theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw recently told Time magazine, "It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it." The panicked denunciations from the right notwithstanding, CRT has changed the way millions of people interpret our troubled world. Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement's most important essays. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from scholars including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Dorothy Roberts, Lani Guinier, Duncan Kennedy, and many others. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice.

JC

Recommended by John Carney

Gotta love the lib-triggering title of @LouDobbs new book. The Trump Century: How Our President Changed the Course of History Forever @realDonaldTrump 4 eva https://t.co/NU9CsHgB1i via @amazon (from X)

How did Donald Trump almost single-handedly reverse America’s decline? As the 21st Century began, the world’s only superpower was economically adrift, policing the world at the expense of American lives and trillions of dollars, weighed down by one-sided trade and security agreements with Europe and China ratified in a different era. Elites of both political parties battled over who would manage America’s decline from preeminent world power. In The Trump Century, the indomitable Lou Dobbs explains how Trump has steered the debate every day he has been in politics, greatly expanding what Washington thinks is possible. By 2016, the globalist elites demanded no one speak about limiting illegal immigration or securing our borders. The elites told you communist China would soon be like us, and the PC orthodoxy told you what you could or could not say. You were told America’s Middle Class could never grow again and wages would be stagnant into perpetuity. Trump reversed all of that as radical Democrats and the Deep State conspired to overthrow his Presidency, as the deadly pandemic raged, and orchestrated street protests and violent riots dominated news headlines. He not only made America great again but created a new standard for all future Presidents and likely has set the American agenda for the next hundred years. The Trump Century opens a window into Trump’s thinking on the economy, foreign policy, and border security and will energize his allies when they realize the future they’ve shaped.

JC

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@jdavidsonlawyer You should. It's the best book written on the topic despite being fiction. You'd enjoy it. But you'll enjoy it even more if you start with the first Paul Christopher book and read each of McCarry's novels in order of publication. (from X)

The Tears of Autumn book cover
Charles McCarry

A re-release of the best-selling thriller originally published twenty years ago finds influential secret agent Paul Christopher pursuing a dangerous theory about the assassination of JFK, an investigation that threatens American foreign policy. By the author of Old Boys. 20,000 first printing.

JC

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@byrneseyeview Classic Myths to Read Aloud to Children is a pretty great book. Even if you already know a lot of these stories, they are told here in very accessible ways. https://t.co/x3FVK2jTQX (from X)

The most complete collection of myths for kids aged five and up, this is the perfect book to raise your child's level of cultural literacy--and your own! With vocabulary and pronunciation guides.