I’ve followed John Lovell’s work on YouTube pretty loosely. I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that he was just another former special ops soldier able to turn his prior experience into a moderately lucrative training and online influencer business. That path seems fairly common and I certainly have no shortage of recommendations from this ilk on YouTube. Either I was wrong about Lovell’s depth or he has adapted considerably from when I first discovered him. While I still find the Warrior Poet Society to be a little corny sounding, Lovell’s philosophy on life is an inspiration and I really love that he approaches the community he’s trying to build in such a welcoming way. Since finishing this book, I’ve even started to listen to his podcast more often. The Warrior Poet Way, though, is just a no nonsense book on finding balance in your life that covers a broad range of important foundations: marriage, parenthood, self improvement, and purpose. Lovell is also very careful to generalize his advice beyond his own personal decisions. He’s a proud devotee to Christianity, that is his purpose, but his advice is, first and foremost, to have a purpose. He does not insist that his readers adopt his purpose or any of his priorities. I think this makes the book (and his podcast) more effective, and more interesting, that a lot of what you find in this genre. But don’t let me mislead you, this is a book about masculinity and Lovell doesn’t stray far from what you might expect to find in social conservative cultures, but Lovell’s advice is far more balanced, and offers the perspective of a devoted and humble father, not the typical macho red-pill puffery that has become so popular. Alongside, The Married Man Sex Life Primer, I’d probably recommend this book to other family men.

Like the previous book about Friedman, this one also comes from the Essential Scholars Series. Unfortunately, this one was entirely lacking in the discipline and clarity that I reported after reading about Friedman. This book reads more like that author laying out his view of a Hayakian view of government and society and then occasionally gesturing towards Hayak as a reminder that it’s all based on his thoughts and writings. The focus of this book is very much not on Hayak. The viewpoint presented does seem to be one that would Hayak would recognize but so little of it is tied back to Hayak.

Several books from the Essential Scholars Series were offered to me, for free, on Amazon. Given the cost, I added them to my Kindle for future reading. This one covering the work of Milton Friedman was particular interesting to me and I recently started reading it each morning as I drank my coffee. I’ve been intentionally replacing social media gawking with light reading. Like the book about Nietzsche that I recently completed, this book was also one where the author offers a concise summary of the works of a prominent figure. Despite the price, this one is pretty disciplined in laying out the work of Friedman. It simply works through his greatest hits: The Permanent Income Hypothesis, Inflation, Unemployment, Price Theory, and the overall thesis of his famous book Capitalism and Freedom. Additionally, each chapter concludes with directives on how to dig deeper into that particular topic within Friedman’s writings. It’s well structured and serves as a really effective entry into Friedman’s writings and thoughts.

This is a relatively brief and somewhat generic summary of Nietzsche’s beliefs. I’ve read Nietzsche just enough to be able to regurgitate some highlights but not enough to describe his contributions cohesively. This was a relatively cheap attempt on my part to get an overarching grasp of Nietzsche’s writings without enduring the long slogs through the original sources. I rationalize this approach by telling myself that if I do wish to dig deeper, these summary books will give me a better idea of where I’d begin my journey. I still stand behind my rationalization. I do think I’m now better equipped to explore Nietzsche deeply if I wanted. I was motivated to read this book by an exchange on Twitter where Nietzsche was described unequivocally as “right wing.” This, from what I knew of Nietzsche did not seem like a relevant characterization. Reading this book was a way to quickly check my understanding and I think my skepticism was correct. Nietzsche doesn’t fit well into any political ideology but almost any ideology could find some common ground in his writings. If Nietzsche was anything, he was nuanced and not overly concerned about perceived inconsistencies in his thought. I think this genre was worthwhile and I’ll probably look for a few more summary books.

This book is like many technology books, a repackaging of existing blog posts published to take advantage of the fact that software progresses faster than publishing. When a programming language, like Swift, releases a new version, it immediately renders all of the existing inventory on the topic obsolete. Publishers are, therefore, motivated to fill the void as quick as possible. This is such a book, but it’s certainly not the worst in the category. It walks through the construction of three simple apps. Those three tutorials are well done and well edited and, I think, they do a decent job of conveying the basics of SwiftUI. It only covers the bare minimum of the basics, though. This book by itself isn’t enough to start building macOS apps, but it wasn’t a total waste. By the current standards of tech publishing, that’s actually pretty good.

What an ugly but practical language is Swift. Over the holiday break, I was able to revive some of my enthusiasm for software and with that renewed enthusiasm came the desire to start learning again. There was a time when I was minimally competent with Cocoa and Objective-C and this seemed like a decent time to reach the same sort of minimal competence with Apple’s new stack of tools. Swift is, indeed, a bit of a mess but it has to inherit the baggage of a wildly successful ecosystem so avoiding a mess was a practical impossibility. As was the case with Cocoa and Objective-C, there is much to be admired about Apple’s design instincts, especially when they are constrained by reality. Next up on the reading list is a book about SwiftUI.

I was interested in this book for a couple of reasons. First, I was taking several weeks of vacation and was interested in reminiscing about my time at Google and all the amazing projects and teams I had the privilege to observe. This book also features a few friends and gave me an opportunity to see their work through the ideas of the people who worked with them directly. Second, I really needed to separate myself from my current work environment, where it seems nothing is possible and nothing gets done, and consider why it feels so dreadfully different from projects like Android or Chrome. The book was enjoyable and, at least for the moment, it has revived my enthusiasm about building software and about working hard. Whether the enthusiasm will persist through my first week back to work is another question entirely. I think, perhaps, it must if i’m to have any lasting impact there.