I summarise non-fiction books with more detail and critical analysis than you'll find elsewhere. Join my newsletter to get new summaries delivered straight to your inbox!
October monthly round-up
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I'm happy to say I cleaned up both the All Summaries and Blog Posts archives this month so you can now sort by things like author, title, date, rating and topic. I've kept the old pages for now in case of teething issues—please let me know if you see any! During October, I posted 2 book summaries and 3 blog posts: Book summaries
Blog posts
My next summary will be for Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a thought-provoking book pushing back against "modest epistemology"—the idea that you should defer to "experts" or "the crowd" since the average person won't be able to outperform them. It was interesting to read this shortly after The Scout Mindset. The two books don't exactly contradict each other (and I found both to be valuable), but there's definitely a conflict in the general 'vibes'. Thanks for subscribing! Until next time, To Summarise |
ToSummarise.com
I summarise non-fiction books with more detail and critical analysis than you'll find elsewhere. Join my newsletter to get new summaries delivered straight to your inbox!
It's been a while since my last summary and newsletter. Since I'm not publishing as often, I'm only sending out the newsletter quarterly for the time being (instead of monthly) - just an FYI. Anyway, I've published a new summary: Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. They won a Nobel Prize in 2024 for their work arguing that institutions are key to understanding why some nations succeed and others fail. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary...
My latest summary is for Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C Scott. The book explores how states simplify and standardize complex societies to make them “legible” to distant rulers. In doing so, the state ends up reshaping reality to fit its narrow view. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS States try hard to make their subjects legible: State power is...
In the past, I've sent monthly updates, but I haven't been publishing enough in the past several months for that. So you're getting a quarterly update instead for now. This quarter, I posted only 1 book summary and 1 blog post: Book summaries Essentialism by Greg McKeown (23 mins). This can be a useful read, if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed and hoping to get your priorities straight heading into 2026. You've probably heard much of the advice before, but I still find I need the reminder...