Single Sentence Summaries for Every Book I Read in 2023

Continuing the annual tradition, here are my single sentence ‘summaries’ (more like personal takeaways) for every book I read in 2023.

Previous years versions: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.

Rated 5/5: Chip War

Rated 4.5/5: Art and Business of Online Writing; Moral Animal; Courage to be Disliked

		Love or hate them, Amazon’s undeniable meteoric rise offers valuable business lessons: from redesigned fulfillment centres to AWS, Kindle to Prime, and more.
		Blogging, having your own website, and writing online are three completely different things.
		From Golden Ratio fractal symmetry to emergent complexity, mathematics is the common denominator between aesthetics and the nature of reality.
		“Depression is an invitation to take our embodied selves a lot more seriously than we tend to do when we’re in the up-up-and-away mode.”
		Nixon-Kissingerian US of the early 70s brushed aside brutal atrocities in Bangladesh and India, while supporting the Yahya regime in Pakistan, as part of its grand strategy to forge new relations with China.
		Microchips are the new oil in global geopolitics, and Asia its key battleground.
		Unlike oversimplified classical definitions, network effects are better understood as 3 distinct forces: Acquisition Effect (product taps uses network to drive low-cost and viral user growth), Engagement Effect (increases user interactions), and Economic Effect (improves monetisation and conversion as network grows).
		In contrast to Freudian aetiologic psychology (obsessed with deterministic, causative possession), Alderian teleologic psychology of use emphasises individual possibility and responsibility in overcoming trauma.
		Well designed products and processes account for affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, feedback, and mental models of the system.
		Throughout history, the transitions between new dynasties and new civilizations have often been driven by major climate events.
		“Our healthcare system still too often treats diseases rather than attending to illnesses – a unique expression of that disease in a particular human being.”
		When there is trust in a team, conflict becomes a harmonious pursuit of truth.
		While Australia has selectively forgotten its past, rinsing its convict stain from the moral fabric of the nation state, its unique history should be remembered, in all its beauty and terror.
		Good strategy diagnoses the challenge, and articulates clear guiding policies to deal with the change, supported by a set of coherent actions.
		Contrary to the prevailing post-war orthodoxy, emperor Hirohito was far from a military-controlled figurehead, and quintessentially embodies the rise and fall of imperial Japan.
		Six key innovations – glass, refrigeration, sound, sterilization, time measurement, and artificial light – catalyzed a multitude of subsequent inventions that have fundamentally shaped the modern world.
		We must be mindful of the unintended biases that emerge when using various metaphors to describe organisations (machine, organism, brain, cultural system, political system, psychic prison, instrument of domination, and transformative flux).
		“If you ponder the utter ruthlessness of evolutionary logic long enough, you may start to find our morality, such as it is, nearly miraculous.”
		Greek mythology tropes persist as profound influencers on Western society and culture.
		Unlike Western tycoons, Russia’s first oligarchs drew their early sustenance by exploiting the collapse of the Soviet state.
		Cultivating a well-developed and interconnected web of business mental models is instrumental to effective problem-solving.
		Wicked problems are underpinned by 3 barriers (conceptual, institutional, and social), therefore an effective entry point solving them is a transdisiplinary enquiry based on 3 principles (partiality, plurality, and provisionality).
		British demand for tea undoubtedly played a significant role in the course of Asian history over the last 3 centuries.
		“You may know the answer and you may be right, but when you just blurt it out, you have robbed the team of the chance to come together.”