What I’ve Been Reading
Thoughts on the books I read in Q1 2025
This article is a new installment in a series of “mini reviews” of my reading. Previous installments in the series, along with other compilations, appear below:
2024: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2023: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2022: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2021: Q3 • Q4
2020: Complete Reading List • Summer Book Recommendations
2019: Holiday Book Recommendations
2018: Holiday Book Recommendations
Full Listing of All Book Reviews Published Since 2009
The Lessons of History
Authors: Will and Ariel Durant
Year of Publication: 1968
Length: 102 pages
Will and Ariel Durant spent nearly a half century working on The Story of Civilization, an eleven-part series published between 1935 and 1975. The series was intended to make history accessible to everyone rather than just to academics. Although the books were very successful when initially published, they have been out of print for many years. My only prior exposure to the Durants was a few years ago when I read Fallen Leaves, a compilation of essays written by Will Durant and published long after his death in 1981.
The Durants wrote this short book after a lifetime of historical inquiry to serve as a sort of summary or distillation of what they learned. Of particular interest was whether the lessons from history can be useful when it comes to predicting future events. To the extent that human nature changes slowly over time, our behavior can be predicted to some extent, but as technology advances far more quickly than adaptations to human nature, predictions can only be taken so far.
The book is divided into chapters that could be read as stand-alone essays. The chapter on war is very interesting. The authors note that war has been nearly constant in human history. Of the 3,421 years of recorded history up to the time of publication in 1968, only 268 years saw no war. The decades since the book was published have seen constant war, yet somehow the world has avoided nuclear Armageddon so far. There is no evidence to suggest that our luck will hold out indefinitely without constant vigilance.
American Journey
Author: Wes Davis
Year of Publication: 2023
Length: 308 pages
The personal mobility made possible by the automobile transformed American life during the first quarter of the twentieth century. This book tells the story of the automobile adventures shared by Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs during the 1910s, a time when road travel was primitive and far more risky than it is today. Trains still reigned supreme for long distance travel.
Almost everyone familiar with business history knows about the careers of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone. John Burroughs is a more obscure name for many twenty-first century readers. A naturalist and author, Burroughs knew luminaries such as Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Muir. Born in 1837, Burroughs was very much a man of the nineteenth century and he was highly skeptical of the automobile in his writing. This distressed Henry Ford who was a longtime admirer of Burroughs, so Ford decided to send the naturalist a Model T as a present. After initial skepticism, Burroughs came to appreciate the mobility offered by the Model T given that age made it hard to get around on foot.
The book is not a history of Ford Motor Company or a replacement for reading Henry Ford’s autobiography which I reviewed two years ago and recommend. But there is quite a bit of interesting business history mixed in with the story of the journeys the men took. However, the personal aspect of the relationship between the men is the best part of the book. Although they had different backgrounds and political views, there was mutual respect and tolerance for dissent that often doesn’t exist in our time.
Much of the controversy of the mid-1910s was related to America’s entry into the First World War. Edison and Burroughs were in favor of U.S. involvement while Ford was not. However, once war broke out, Ford was instrumental in wartime production. Unfortunately, this period also saw the emergence of Henry Ford’s notorious antisemitism, arguably the biggest stain on an otherwise remarkable life.
Xenophon
Xenophon was a man of many talents who lived from 430 BC to 355 BC. As a young man, Xenophon participated in an audacious expedition of mercenaries hired to help Cyrus overthrow his brother and claim the throne of Persia. During a long expedition through lands currently known as Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, the ten thousand Greek mercenaries fought bravely but Cyrus was killed in battle. The duplicity of the Persians allied to the Greek force soon became apparent and the Greeks found themselves stranded in the desert over a thousand miles from the Greek-speaking world. They could not return the way they came because they had depleted the land of supplies as they marched forward, so they had to take the long way back, through modern-day Kurdistan and Armenia where they faced vicious opposition. Xenophon took on a leadership role as one of the generals and published a book known as Anabasis as his memoir.
In addition to his military background, Xenophon was also a philosopher heavily influenced by Socrates, who he knew as a young man prior to the Persian expedition. Socrates left no written record of his work and Plato is most known for preserving Socrates’ philosophy in writing. However, Xenophon also recorded much interesting information about Socrates and, in the process, expressed his own thoughts as well.
Xenophon might be best known for Hellenika which starts as a continuation of the history of the Peloponnesian War at the point where Thucydides abruptly ended his account in 411 BC. Xenophon extends his history to 362 BC, covering several decades after the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. He was well placed to write this history as a participant with many perspectives. Although Xenophon was Athenian, he was exiled and given refuge by the Spartans.
The Expedition of Cyrus (Anabasis). Translated by Robin Waterfield. 224 pages. This edition is published by Penguin Classics. I would have preferred the Landmark edition but it is out of print. Landmark’s editions of Thucydides and Herodotus are excellent, especially the detailed maps.
Conversations of Socrates. Translated by Hugh Tredennick and Robin Waterfield. 362 pages. This volume contains Socrates’ Defense, Memoirs of Socrates, The Dinner Party, and Estate Manager.
Hellenika. Translated by John Marincola. 501 pages. Published by Landmark, this book contains excellent maps in multiple locations of the text along with numerous footnotes, making the history much easier to follow. There are also several helpful essays in the appendix.
The Last Days of Socrates
Author: Plato
Translator: Christopher Rowe
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 211 pages
This Penguin Classics volume contains four of Plato’s Socratic dialogues which relate to the trial and death of Socrates: Euthyphro, The Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo. Although I previously read and wrote about The Apology and Crito, I decided to read them again along with the others included in this book. My motivation was to compare Plato and Xenophon’s depictions of Socrates. Although Plato’s later dialogues are often suspected of putting words into the mouth of Socrates that more accurately represent Plato’s world view, it seems like the events surrounding Socrates’ death are historically accurate. Phaedo is particularly interesting since it represents that final day of Socrates’ life which he spends doing what he most loved: engaging in philosophical debate with his friends right up to the point of drinking the hemlock.
Read my article on Plato’s Apology and Crito
Gateway to the Great Books, Volume 3
Editors: Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins
Year of Publication: 1963
Length: 727 pages
In 1963, Gateway to the Great Books was published “to lead you on, to fortify you, to encourage you, to seduce you into the habit of reading, and in particular into the habit of reading Great Books of the Western World.” Robert Hutchins explains that the ten volume set is meant to serve as an “attractive, instructive, entertaining interlude or supplement” to those who are interested in the Great Books.
At times during the quarter, I found myself with an hour to read which isn’t quite enough time to really get into many of the longer works on my list. So I turned to this volume of the Gateway set which is dedicated to “imaginative literature” and, for the most part, contains shorter works that can be read in an hour or two.
The volume contains works by a variety of authors. I particularly enjoyed Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, and although “enjoyed” is definitely not the right word, I appreciated reading the always haunting The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy for the second time.
Buffett & Munger Unscripted
Author: Alex Morris
Year of Publication: 2025
Length: 473 pages
We are fortunate that Alex Morris decided to take on the task of reviewing every Berkshire Hathaway meeting going back to 1994, distilling the material, and organizing it in a logical way that can be easily referred to. As he writes in the preface of the book, his goal was to unlock this material for the benefit of investors and the business community. He chose to focus on business and investing topics exclusively, which omits many topics related to politics and life lessons. I never get tired of reading about Berkshire Hathaway and thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Read my full review of Buffett and Munger Unscripted
Autobiography of Jack Ringwalt
Author: Jack Ringwalt
Year of publication: 1990
Length: 50 pages
A reader kindly sent me a scanned PDF copy of Jack Ringwalt’s autobiography which was published in 1990 on the fiftieth anniversary of National Indemnity Company’s founding. The book was published in memory of Jack Ringwalt who died in 1984. The story of how Warren Buffett purchased National Indemnity is well known to those familiar with Berkshire Hathaway:
“I really do not believe that our conversation took over fifteen minutes and no price was mentioned by either of us except the $50. I, of course, wondered what would have happened if I would have mentioned $60 or $75, but I am sure that Mr. Buffett will never tell me.”
The account of National Indemnity’s sale only takes a few pages at the end of this short history. It makes for interesting reading and it is unfortunate that the autobiography is not widely available. Unfortunately, I am not able to share the copy I received and will avoid quoting more from it. Perhaps National Indemnity or Berkshire Hathaway might consider reissuing this history at some point.
The Comedies of Aristophanes
Aristophanes lived from 446 BC to 386 BC and wrote at least forty comedies, although only eleven have survived intact. I intended to read one or two of the plays of Aristophanes following my reading of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides last year. However, I enjoyed reading the first couple of comedies and ended up reading them all. At times, I felt lost but the notes in the books, listed below, usually helped to get reoriented. As with all Ancient Greek plays, we find ourselves swimming in unfamiliar waters, immersed in a culture alien to our own. Humor can be highly subjective while tragic situations seem to translate well over the centuries, making ancient comedies more challenging to understand.
One notable difference between the tragedies and the comedies is that tragedies deal with events from Greek mythology that took place in the distant past from the perspective of the audience while the comedies often dealt with current events directly or indirectly. Comedies were critical of political leaders as well as other notable personalities in Athens, including Socrates. The humor can be crude and strange, but through reading the plays, one can get a better sense of what the Ancient Greeks were like as people. If you know what makes people laugh, you’re on the way to understanding their personalities a little better.
I have been writing journal entries about each of the plays I read over the past several months but stopped publishing articles in public. I have found that writing my thoughts on each play, even privately, helps my understanding in a way that reading passively would not. I also find myself referring back to old journal entries when I come across references to plays that I know that I have read but have since forgotten. My Great Books journey is evolving into a more private enterprise than I anticipated, but the reality is that I’d be out of my depths to attempt to write in public on subjects where I’m a total amateur!
The Birds and Other Plays. Translated by David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein. 336 pages. This volume contains The Knights, Peace, The Birds, Wealth, and The Assemblywomen.
Frogs and Other Plays. Translated by David Barrett. 275 pages. This volume contains Wasps, Women at the Thesmophoria, and Frogs.
Lysistrata and Other Plays. Translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. 295 pages. This volume contains The Acharnians, The Clouds, and Lysistrata.
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