100 Books in 2018: History, AI and Fiction (Part 2)
Part 2 of my 100-book reading challenge — exploring Ottoman and Mongol history, behavioural economics, AI, government, and Chinese diaspora fiction.
This is the second part of my 100 books in 2018 journey.
📚 A Fresh Appreciation of History and Historians
It started with curiosity about the Ottoman Empire.
I picked up a 40-hour lecture series from The Great Courses covering 1299 to 1918 — six centuries of an empire most people know almost nothing about.
A story about Tamerlane destroying the Sultan’s military led me to Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Two Jack Weatherford books later, I had a completely different view of the man.
What Genghis Khan Actually Built
Forget the stereotypes. Genghis Khan established:
- ⚙️ Engineering innovation
- ⚖️ Gender equality (relative to his era)
- 🌍 Cultural diversity and religious tolerance
- 🏛️ Stable political systems
- 📬 Postal and transport networks
- 🛤️ Foreign trade (the Silk Road)
- 📋 Record-keeping and banking systems
He thought about legacy in a way few leaders ever have. His descendants, unfortunately, didn’t maintain the same commitment — the Mongol Empire ended with the Yuan Dynasty, about 150 years after its founding.
📚 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
📚 The Secret History of the Mongol Queens
The power Genghis Khan gave to women is fascinating. Mongol Queens ran domestic affairs while men fought distant campaigns. Many were savvy political players and arguably more influential than the male Khans.
The fall of the Yuan Dynasty made me wonder about what came next — the Ming and Qing dynasties. Another lecture series covered China’s fall and rise from the late 1800s through Nixon’s visit in 1972.
💡 The lesson: Following curiosity thread-by-thread beats any reading list.
🧠 Behavioural Economics and Human Psychology
Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project sat on my shelf for years before I finally read it. It’s about Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky — the psychologists who challenged every assumption economists held about human rationality.
🧠 For deeper reading, Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is a 30-year research compendium. It’s not exactly beach reading, but it’s foundational. Start with Richard Thaler’s Nudge — it’s more accessible.
📚 Nudge
Thaler won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017. His concept of “nudging” is now everywhere — influencing how you make decisions without you realising.
While exploring Thaler’s recommendations, I found The Design of Everyday Things — a 1988 book that remains startlingly relevant. Essential for designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and anyone who needs to influence behaviour.
📚 The Design of Everyday Things
🤖 Threading Together Education, Technology, and AI
These books don’t share an obvious theme, but they’re deeply connected.
What School Could Be showcases American schools doing education right — preparing young people for a world of “Capitalism Without Capital.”
The second book explains how data and technology are reshaping work. Workers without the right skills — and the ability to keep learning — will be left behind. The consequences won’t be pretty.
🤖 Kai-Fu Lee’s AI Superpowers is the must-read of 2018. He explains why current AI advances aren’t signs of approaching artificial general intelligence — computers are just massive and powerful now, crunching more data with fewer resources.
The final chapters are beautiful — a reminder of what humans need to thrive in an AI-powered future. (Spoiler: it’s probably not what you think.)
🏛️ Big Government is Not That Bad
Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk takes you inside American government — meeting civil servants doing important, undervalued work:
- 🚀 Who maintains missile silos with nuclear arsenals?
- 🌦️ How many lives does the National Weather Service save yearly?
- 🌾 Which department provides cash flow to rural farmers?
- ⚡ How much does the Department of Energy invest in renewable research?
The Entrepreneurial State challenges the myth that innovation comes only from the private sector. Mazzucato argues compellingly that governments are essential partners in innovation.
📖 I Read Some Fiction Too
My fiction preferences are selective — I gravitate toward Chinese diaspora stories. Tiffany Tsao’s Under Your Wings was the most memorable.
Here’s my original review:
Under Your Wings is fascinating fiction written by a closeted entomologist. The book peers into what life inside a formicarium (ant farm) habituated by crazy rich stereotypical ethnic Chinese in Indonesia might be.
Not just the opulence hooked me — it was the flawed characters. Every single one was imperfect. Wealth was the only cocoon shielding them from how broken they were inside.
You could tell from the beginning — no happy ending this time. But the mystery arc kept me entertained until the end.
The geeky insect references blended nicely into the story. Was Estella the cocoon Gwendollyn left behind as she metamorphosed into a butterfly? Or was it the other way around? Were they ever two different individuals?
In the end, nothing mattered — like a formicarium tipped over. Everything is gone as if nothing happened. The cycle of life continues.
📚 Under Your Wings — My Goodreads Review
After watching Crazy Rich Asians, I reread Kevin Kwan’s trilogy. The books are far richer than the movie — especially the underrepresented element: multiple strong female characters completing Kwan’s puzzle.
The multiple dimensions of “Asian-ness” each female character represents are complex. Together, they form a fun-to-read insider’s ethnography of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia).
📚 Crazy Rich Asians 📚 China Rich Girlfriend 📚 Rich People Problems
The second book is weaker than the first and third. I wish Kwan would write more about Astrid Leong — Gemma Chan gave the perfect impression in the film.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. May you have a productive book year ahead!
More reading lists:
Let’s be friends on Goodreads if you’re keen to share what you’re reading.