Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers (Jason M. Barr)

Skyscrapers serve multiple purposes, with space for offices, retail, and living often rolled into the same tall building. In Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers, author Jason M. Barr explains the usefulness of skyscrapers in our modern history and advocates for their continued evolution as human progress marches on.

The skyscraper is in its second century of existence, from its humble beginnings in Chicago in the 1880s. As technology and construction design improved, taller and taller buildings gradually took over the skylines of major cities. While there have been pushes against tall building construction over the years, whether by city legislation or gentlemen's agreements, the skyscraper gradually won out in many urban areas. For example, Philadelphia had a gentleman’s agreement that no building could be taller than the top of William Penn’s hat at the top of its City Hall. Since that agreement was broken in the 1980s, 12 buildings have since exceeded the 548 foot height of Penn’s hat. Some of the tallest buildings on Earth now exceed 2,000 feet, and Barr even predicts that the first kilometer tall (over 3,100 feet) building will grace our presence at some point soon.

Some cities have pushed back against tall and supertall building construction, which Barr delves into with a discussion about the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) and “Yes In My Backyard” (YIMBY) movements, property prices, and housing affordability. While some of this discussion is helpful in painting the picture of property prices, Barr drifts a bit too far into income inequality issues and away from the core issues of office and housing supply vs. demand that typically drives property values in many major cities. 

While the economic validity of skyscrapers is certainly a worthy topic of discussion, it felt like those issues needed more depth if they were going to get proper consideration. The story of the skyscraper, on its own, is certainly a very worthy topic without trying to weave in additional socioeconomic discourse.

MY RATING: 4

LOST: Back to the Island (Emily St. James and Noel Murray)

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since LOST premiered on ABC. For six seasons, LOST was the water-cooler TV show, and super-fans still dissect its mysteries and unresolved questions to this day. 

In LOST: Back to the Island, Emily St. James and Noel Murray recap many episodes of the show, providing thorough criticism of the good and bad. They also provide interesting analysis of why LOST became so popular, as well as controversies that still surround its legacy.

If you've never watched LOST, do yourself a favor and don't read this book before you binge the show. You'll be thoroughly confused. But for long-time fanatics (like me), LOST: Back to the Island takes us on a wonderful trip down memory lane. 

MY RATING: 4

Sonny Boy (Al Pacino)

There are not many actors as renowned for acting as an art form than Al Pacino. The only other two that come to mind are Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, and Pacino has been often compared to both. Sonny Boy is Pacino's long-awaited memoir, and oh, the stories he has to tell!

From his boyhood in the Bronx to his golden years in his 80s, Pacino shares the good, the bad, and the ugly. He's known, of course, for some of the best known films in history: The Godfather trilogy, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scarface to name a few. He's very honest about how he decides to take a role (sometimes it's just for the money as he admittedly does not handle money well), and the behind-the-scenes stories of each film are delicious. But despite being nominated multiple times, he never won an Oscar for his work until 1992's Scent of a Woman. But he has won two Tony Awards and two Emmys.

In his memoir, Pacino comes across as humble and honest. One would think that he would feel constant competition with people like De Niro, but he says that couldn't be further from the truth. 

I do wish Sonny Boy had better editing. The book rambles at times, especially at the end when he returns to telling more stories about his youth. It's also written in a very conversational tone, which doesn't always work well in book form. I'm sure it does in the audio version though, which is read by Pacino himself.

MY RATING: 3.5

The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People (Paul Seabright)

Organized religions are businesses to a degree. Like your local Starbucks or McDonalds, your local church has to raise funds to pay a minister and staff, plus manage a facility (or rent a space), and get a message out to attract followers. Unlike most businesses, churches are theoretically not supposed to be a profit-seeking venture (although some ministers have really forgotten this point). 

Whether you belong to a major organized denomination within Christianity or any other major world religion, there’s a degree of business savvy that is needed to maintain the organization of that religion. Paul Seabright’s book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People discusses organized religion in the 21st Century using business as a parallel.

Much has been made of the decline of organized religion in Western Europe and North America. In the United States, mainstream denominations are declining in attendance as Americans are either forgoing church altogether or shifting away from one denomination to a non-denominational movement of some sort. While this decline is happening for many reasons, one concept that Seabright misses is the movement in some evangelical circles of what I’ll call franchise churches (think “Journey” or “Epic” as two examples). These are churches that are non-denominational, generally similar from one city to another, and in some cases with a pastor beamed in throughout the chain of churches to deliver the Sunday sermon. These churches have grown at the expense of denominations that have either suffered through scandal or political issues that have driven wedges between churches and between its membership.

Seabright correctly mentions that organized religion isn’t dying everywhere - Latin America, Asia, Africa are seeing some of its strongest growth globally at the expense of traditional belief systems. This is partly due to missionary efforts but also growing economic strength. With more money comes more options to spend. And giving ten percent of your pay or even “two mites” to your local congregation means there are plenty of opportunities for religion to make gains in these communities as a place to follow a belief system and be in a community. 

The Divine Economy is an interesting book that accurately captures big picture trends with organized religion; however, it missed the mark somewhat in not mentioning where in the West gains are being made at the expense of mainstream denominational decline.

MY RATING: 3.5

Money & Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World (Paolo Zannoni)

Debt, whether we like it or not, is a part of life and has been a part of finance for centuries. Banks have provided a convenient mechanism for debts to be exchanged, generally secured by other individuals or by governments to ensure that banks remained solvent. Paolo Zannoni’s Money & Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World highlights seven examples when governments and finance came together.

Starting back in Italy, with merchants of Pisa, Venice, and Naples, before weaving the way to the early years of the Soviet Union, this book describes different innovations in finance that helped solve a critical problem facing a community, a nation, or its merchants and traders. Financial institutions throughout modern history often did not function like the brick and mortar bank you see today; however, their function (to help move capital or commerce) was as critical then as it is now. 

Money & Promises is a great history of banking and finance. Zannoni’s instructiveness in explaining how debts are the real driver of exchange (and less so cold hard cash) through these seven different stories is effective, intelligent, and insightful.

MY RATING: 5

Willie, Waylon, and the Boys (Brian Fairbanks)

“Outlaw Country,” just like country music, has evolved markedly from the initial core “group” of musicians. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash are often grouped in this subgenre based on their country supergroup “The Highwaymen.” Much of this “outlaw” brand stems from their fierce musical independence and desire to produce music without the interference of buttoned-up Nashville production companies. In Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Changed Country Music Forever, Brian Fairbanks discusses this desire for musical independence, but takes it a step further into a political realm that drifts from the intent of outlaw country’s origins.

Each of the four individuals in “The Highwaymen” had winding roads before becoming recording stars in country music, largely through their determination to call their own shots and work with those in Nashville who were willing to take chances on music. This part of Fairbanks’s book is probably the strongest - the musical creativity of each of these men was able to beat back the “Countrypolitan” sounds that Nashville recording executives wanted. Through their ability to break barriers musically, Nelson, Jennings, and Cash were able to reach huge levels of success and in vastly different ways. One example is how Cash found a third musical peak late in his life recording with producer Rick Rubin. 

Had the book simply focused on artist independence in country music and one’s ability to do it their way, while keeping politics to a relative minimum, I feel this book would have been much stronger. The original outlaw country genre had a diaspora of political opinion. Jennings was rather apolitical in public (although the author tries to peg him as “far right” without offering anything to back it up). Cash and Nelson had their causes but didn’t necessarily identify with one party or another in their career peaks, while Kristofferson was a liberal. Reading through the author’s lens, you sense a left-of-center view in how he defines what passes as outlaw country in today’s era. Outlaw country isn’t simply being critical of conservative views and being marginalized; it’s music that is country without apology and without being consulted to death by a major recording label executive. One’s politics shouldn’t be a litmus test.

MY RATING: 3.5

We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance (Mara Kardas-Nelson)

The idea of microfinance - known internationally as giving small loans to poor individuals typically to help them with a business - has exploded in use over the past fifty years. Muhammad Yunus was one of the early pioneers of this financial product and arguably its loudest champion. Despite its intent to help individuals solve a problem or need, it has also indebted many others. Mara Kardas-Nelson offers a very candid and honest look at both sides of the microcredit coin in We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky.

Kardas-Nelson relays two stories in her book. The first is the rise of microcredit as an industry - from Yunus’ Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to Accion in the US to Fedecredito in El Salvador - and how policy decisions and smooth talking helped pave the way for a burgeoning market for loans. The drawback is that many of those loans were high interest or high fee, which meant that repayment was often difficult and many individuals ended up worse off than before. The other stories weave through Sierra Leone and a family that was heavily in debt due to microcredit and how through bribes and the legal system they faced more challenges with a high interest rate in repaying their relatively small loans.

The author does a good job showing the pitfalls of lending without any sort of regulations and safeguards to protect individuals. She also briefly mentions the importance of education, although financial literacy in general could have been amplified more heavily. Her solutions (universal basic income) may not be a panacea to fix poverty among the poorest of the global population, but at least Kardas-Nelson presents a very authentic reality on how lending can be quite predatory, even under the guise of good intentions, and that lenders who do engage in microfinance need to do better in this regard.

MY RATING: 4.5