Showing results by author "Swift Reads" in All Categories

Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018) explores the crucial social problems likely to beset humanity in the coming decades. The text is a protracted reflection on globalization, technology, climate change, and cultural conflict. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)...

 The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great (2019) explains how Western nations used philosophical and religious values to create governments that protect individual liberty while encouraging collective action. Author Ben Shapiro argues that countries like the United States became prosperous because they adhered to two primary sources of moral and intellectual thought: Judeo-Christian values and ancient Greek reason... 

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1994) by Barack Obama chronicles his quest to understand how the varied threads of his upbringing, including his father’s absence and his multiracial and multinational roots, shaped him and his understanding of his place in the world. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham, a white woman, and Barack Obama Sr., a black economist from Kenya. Obama Sr. and Dunham met while studying at the University of Hawaii....

In The Big Short (2010), journalist Michael Lewis traces the stories of a handful of misfit investors who predicted the 2008 financial crisis. In the parlance of Wall Street, to “short” something is to bet against an investment or company through the purchase of a complex high-finance product.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)  

Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is a memoir about how an uneducated young woman raised in the remote mountains of Idaho came to earn a doctorate from Cambridge University. Raised outside of society, in a violent household run by Mormon fundamentalists, Tara never saw herself as a person with choices or prospects...

The 6 Keys: Unlock Your Genetic Potential for Ageless Strength, Health, and Beauty (2018) by fitness guru Jillian Michaels, with Myatt Murphy, is a guide to aging gracefully. Michaels researched the latest in scientific breakthroughs on living a healthy life and learned that most scientists and physicians focus on singular areas of health.... Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018) presents the thoughts of theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking on 10 major scientific and philosophical debates, including whether a deity exists, whether intelligent life exists in space, and whether humans should seek out a new home outside of Earth.

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (1997) details how a small coffee roastery in Seattle became a monolithic corporation with a worldwide reputation for providing affordable luxury beverages. Author Howard Schultz, now retired CEO and chairman of Starbucks, recounts how he grew the company into an internationally recognized chain after joining Starbucks in the early 1980s and buying it later that same decade...

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope (2018) by best-selling author Anne Lamott is a collection of essays on finding glimmers of optimism even amid great turbulence. Just before her sixty-first birthday, Lamott wrote these essays to share the wisdom she has gleaned from her many decades of living with her grandson and niece. Listen to this in-depth summary by Swift Reads to learn more.

Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers is an expansive account of the days, months, and years leading up to World War I. Clark’s central contention is that scholars’ continuous preoccupation with the question of who was responsible for starting the war stems from an erroneous understanding of the events....

Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (2018) explores how Apple creates its products through the perspective of a programmer who worked at the corporation for more than a decade. Author and software engineer Ken Kocienda uses stories from his time at Apple to demonstrate how the company pushes its employees to solve seemingly impossible programming problems...(Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, by Ben Reiter, tells the dramatic story of how the Houston Astros transformed from being the worst team in professional baseball to the best. Reiter first made the bold prediction that the Astros would win a World Series in a Sports Illustrated cover story in June 2014. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)  

In From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America (2019), Howard Schultz examines how his upbringing in a working class New York family influenced his actions when he became chairman and CEO of Starbucks. Schultz uses his eventual professional success to argue that the United States still can be a land of opportunity if those with means are willing to give chances and resources to those without. 

This is a summary of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (2018), which explores how animals developed on earth before the Paleogene period, when mammals emerged as the dominant life form. The narrative begins by describing the dinosaur’s ancestor: a small, unimportant creature struggling for survival in the Permian period, more than 250 million years ago....

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told By the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom) (2018) is an account of how a region of California became the central hub for technological innovation in the latter half of the 20th century. Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible. 

Fear: Trump in the White House (2018) details the political and personal tribulations that faced an ever-shifting cast of White House staffers during the turbulent first year and a half of Donald Trump’s presidency. Renowned journalist Bob Woodward uses his access to Washington insiders to create a revealing portrait of an administration increasingly crippled by its need to guide, delay, and even hinder Trump’s whims. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)  

Full Disclosure (2018) by Stormy Daniels is the adult film star’s tell-all memoir, with special emphasis on her relationship with Donald Trump. While her association with Trump was brief, its aftermath has been long and painful, with no end in sight.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)