The 5 Books I Read In May 2022 | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, like we always do early in each month, I report back on the books

00:00:06.240 | I read during the preceding month.

00:00:10.040 | So we are in early June while recording this.

00:00:12.360 | So we will report back on the books I read in May.

00:00:15.680 | My goal as longtime listeners know is to try to read five books every month.

00:00:21.200 | If you want more details on how I do that, we actually have a video online at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia

00:00:27.240 | where I go through the different techniques I use to read five books a month and how other

00:00:31.200 | people can do it too.

00:00:33.440 | All right, five books I read in May 2022.

00:00:36.800 | Number one, I returned to Born Standing Up by Steve Martin.

00:00:43.280 | That's Steve Martin's professional memoir.

00:00:45.480 | I have read this before.

00:00:46.840 | I read this way back in 2009, soon after it came out.

00:00:52.160 | I wrote about it way back then in the early days of my blog.

00:00:56.040 | It was actually in an interview that Steve Martin did with Charlie Rose about Born Standing

00:01:00.560 | Up that he used the phrase, "Be so good they can't ignore you," which I then used or adapted

00:01:05.440 | to be the title of my fourth book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:01:08.920 | So it was a very influential book in my life, but I have not been back to it since.

00:01:14.000 | It's been over a decade since I read it.

00:01:16.080 | So I went back and I read it and it was great.

00:01:20.360 | There was a lot I had forgotten and I was able to extract a lot more rich detail.

00:01:25.680 | And again, what makes this a good book is that it is focused just on his professional

00:01:30.000 | career.

00:01:31.000 | Steve Martin's point with this book was he didn't think enough detail is often given

00:01:35.920 | in celebrity memoirs about how people actually build their careers.

00:01:39.680 | So this was just about the craft, how he built up his act, what went well, what didn't, his

00:01:45.680 | breaks, his steps back, how he moved forward again.

00:01:48.800 | So I thought it was very interesting.

00:01:50.080 | The main takeaway that hit me on the second time through was the power of sticking with

00:01:56.480 | it.

00:01:57.720 | It took Martin years for his act to break with a lot of steps backwards.

00:02:03.160 | And he was incredibly focused during those periods on continuing to polish and develop

00:02:07.620 | his act.

00:02:08.620 | And it was actually in the end, the confidence and expertise that was developed by that relentless

00:02:13.800 | focus and drive to improve that tipped him.

00:02:17.080 | His act was interesting, but once he became world-class at delivering it, that's what

00:02:21.580 | actually made it a world-class act because it was the confidence and precision that's

00:02:25.320 | necessary for his type of humor to work.

00:02:27.840 | So I was really struck by his focus.

00:02:30.400 | All right.

00:02:32.760 | Next I read Blood and Treasure, a newish biography of Daniel Boone by Rod Drury.

00:02:44.440 | Where's it Bob Drury, no Rod Drury, someone Drury and Tom Clavin.

00:02:51.360 | And I read it in part.

00:02:53.080 | I don't know if you know this about me, Jesse, but I am descended from the Boones.

00:02:58.200 | I did not know that.

00:02:59.960 | Maybe I give off that frontiersman style genre.

00:03:04.840 | I'm not descended from Daniel Boone.

00:03:06.480 | I'm descended from his brother, which we figured out at some point, his brother who shows up

00:03:12.240 | off and on in the book.

00:03:16.000 | So this was my, my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, let me see if I have this right.

00:03:23.320 | I think her mom was a Boone.

00:03:26.020 | So we're, we're actually not too far off the actual Boone line, but not from Daniel himself.

00:03:31.360 | And I do remember that growing up, we went to a Daniel Boone historical site and there's

00:03:34.480 | a register to sign if you're a descendant and they said, you're a descendant of his

00:03:38.840 | dad and his brother, but not of him.

00:03:41.340 | So we weren't, we weren't able to sign the book.

00:03:44.040 | Very well written.

00:03:45.040 | I actually really enjoyed blood and treasure.

00:03:47.040 | Must've been very difficult to research.

00:03:48.240 | I mean, the whole book is about the complicated shifting allegiances, alliances, and fail promises

00:03:58.320 | between all of the various different Indian tribes at this period of the colonial history.

00:04:04.120 | Daniel Boone's life was completely intermixed with the, the fight for land between the American

00:04:11.460 | colonists, the British, and the various Indian tribes that were there, or this tribe would

00:04:16.400 | take over that tribe and this tribe would come in.

00:04:18.300 | So it was, it was really a book about 18th century Indian tribal politics.

00:04:24.280 | So a complicated book to write, but very interesting.

00:04:28.960 | These were tougher people back then.

00:04:30.460 | These long hunters.

00:04:31.460 | They would just go, like, I'll be back in a year.

00:04:34.580 | Like I have a rifle and I'll be back in a year.

00:04:36.780 | I'm just going to hunt for a year.

00:04:38.820 | Like where are you going to go hunt?

00:04:39.820 | Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to hike to the other side of the Appalachian mountains and

00:04:44.380 | then I'll hunt over there.

00:04:46.140 | And then I'll come back with, with all of, all of the skins.

00:04:48.420 | I mean, these were, that was a tougher, tougher period, but I am a Boone.

00:04:54.240 | So I get through proxy, a lot of credit.

00:04:59.980 | Then I read why faith matters by rabbi David Volpe.

00:05:05.580 | I read this because I heard Lex Fridman interview him and I thought it was a, he was interesting.

00:05:11.300 | It was a really good interview.

00:05:12.300 | I thought it was really interesting.

00:05:13.300 | So I said, what's his most famous book was Volpe's most famous book.

00:05:16.500 | I think it's why faith matters.

00:05:17.500 | And I read it pretty good.

00:05:19.060 | So this was a, it's a post nine 11 book.

00:05:22.660 | Volpe wrote why faith matters as a response to the post nine 11 new atheist.

00:05:27.940 | So you remember those two early two thousands, you had Sam Harris, you had Hitchens Dawkins,

00:05:36.580 | and I guess Daniel did it maybe had a book in there too, breaking the spell.

00:05:39.940 | There was this sort of anti-religious new atheism that arose.

00:05:45.260 | And this was a response to that.

00:05:47.420 | It was a pretty interesting book from a roughly from a Jewish perspective, but, but relatively

00:05:54.100 | ecumenical, very accessible.

00:05:57.100 | I thought there was some interesting points in it.

00:06:00.540 | Then I went back and again, this is a reread, but a reread from my childhood.

00:06:04.420 | So I don't think it counts lost moon by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

00:06:11.140 | This book came out in the nineties when I was a kid.

00:06:13.540 | It is the book about Apollo 13 written by the Jim Lovell who Tom Hanks played in the

00:06:20.180 | movie and a professional science writer, Jeffrey Kluger.

00:06:24.300 | So Apollo 13, the Ron Howard movie was based off of this book was the main source material.

00:06:33.860 | Another cool book.

00:06:34.900 | They wrote it, they wrote it, narrate cinematically.

00:06:39.540 | So it's like in the room, in the room, real time narrative.

00:06:44.340 | Like this person said this, this person grabbed this thing, which is probably the right way.

00:06:47.860 | And it goes back and forth between mission control and the capsule.

00:06:52.300 | But it's written embedded in the action itself.

00:06:55.740 | So, you know, then Lovell hit the switch and this happened, not, there's not a, as not

00:07:00.580 | a third person narrator voice of like, then what was happening on the da da da da.

00:07:04.880 | So it really moves.

00:07:06.560 | And it's a crazy story.

00:07:07.560 | I mean, what happened on the, on the command module and what they had to do to save it.

00:07:14.500 | And Kluger just went back through transcript and transcript and they really picked apart

00:07:19.100 | what happened and the tick tock of how it unfolded and who said what.

00:07:23.140 | And so it's really an achievement as a book.

00:07:24.500 | I just, as a nonfiction writer, I can say this was, it's a fantastic story, obviously,

00:07:28.900 | I mean, stuck in space and you have to get saved.

00:07:32.460 | But to write this book is not an easy feat.

00:07:36.740 | I mean, it took a huge amount of research.

00:07:38.820 | So it's a real achievement as a book and incredibly interesting to read.

00:07:42.400 | So forget the movie, you gotta, you gotta read the book Lost Moon.

00:07:46.300 | And then finally I read the Lost City of Z by David Gran.

00:07:53.780 | So David Gran is a New Yorker writer.

00:07:56.700 | He's sort of a, I don't know if he's a target of envy, but he's sort of what you, sometimes

00:08:03.360 | what you imagine when you imagined when you're at Columbia journalism school and you're thinking

00:08:07.460 | what you want to do as a writer, what you imagine often is David Gran.

00:08:12.860 | So what he does for the New Yorker is he does these long form journalistic pieces where

00:08:19.340 | he usually goes on some sort of adventure with interesting people with interesting things

00:08:25.940 | happening.

00:08:28.180 | So there'll be some, you know, I think he did stuff with like white supremacist in jail

00:08:36.060 | at some point, there was like a murder in the, another book thing he did, another article,

00:08:41.600 | there was a murder among the Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts.

00:08:46.340 | Like there's this whole world of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts that think that Sherlock

00:08:52.100 | Holmes was real.

00:08:53.100 | And there was this murder and David Gran is over there in England and gets in beds with

00:08:58.480 | these groups and it's really like the Baker street regulars.

00:09:01.260 | And anyways, Lost City of Z is a half of it is the story of Percy Fawcett, one of the

00:09:09.100 | last of the great British adventurers and explorers who disappeared trying to find this

00:09:17.300 | supposed giant city in the Amazon.

00:09:21.060 | So it tells the story, but the interleaves with David Gran going to the Amazon and actually

00:09:26.260 | putting together a team and going in himself to try to find some evidence of what they

00:09:30.660 | found.

00:09:31.660 | And, and, you know, spoiler alert turns out there were really large civilizations in the,

00:09:40.100 | in the Amazon, but a lot of it was hard to find because it was built with wood and a

00:09:46.180 | lot of that had decayed.

00:09:47.180 | But now with modern techniques, we can see there was all these sophisticated cities.

00:09:49.900 | So Percy Fawcett was right, but there's no way he was ever going to find it in, you know,

00:09:54.060 | the 1920s.

00:09:55.060 | Anyways, David Gran is great.

00:09:57.380 | He's the goat at these types of things.

00:09:59.260 | These things move, they're well researched.

00:10:00.780 | He inserts himself into it, sort of classic adventure narrative, nonfiction, New Yorker

00:10:04.660 | type stuff.

00:10:05.740 | So that book was fun.

00:10:09.340 | I should be more David Gran like Jesse.

00:10:11.700 | I need to actually like go, you know, on the trail of a murderer.

00:10:15.940 | Oh, a famous David Gran piece was hunting the giant squid.

00:10:20.180 | So he's out there on this boat with this guy, this eccentric guy, he's like convinced that

00:10:24.460 | they can catch a giant squid and he's out there in the storms and they're trying to

00:10:27.540 | find a squid.

00:10:28.540 | He loves that type of stuff.

00:10:29.540 | He puts himself, puts himself in the danger.

00:10:32.340 | Do you know him?

00:10:33.340 | Never met him.

00:10:34.340 | How old is he?

00:10:38.340 | Older than us, but I don't know, probably not that much older.

00:10:41.820 | We should look it up.

00:10:42.820 | I wonder how old he is.

00:10:45.060 | I should flex that more.

00:10:47.300 | I feel shy and nervous about it.

00:10:49.180 | I feel like I, but I should maybe flex more of the potential ability to talk to other

00:10:54.300 | New Yorker writers and say, just, can I call you?

00:11:00.420 | Can I call you?

00:11:01.420 | It feels a little bit, I don't know, Eddie Haskelly.

00:11:07.140 | Excuse me, Mr. Gran.

00:11:10.540 | I also do some writing for your esteemed publication there, sir.

00:11:14.180 | And uh, 55 years old.

00:11:16.460 | Okay.

00:11:17.460 | 55 years old.

00:11:18.940 | And uh, I would like to talk to you on the telephone.

00:11:21.700 | The problem is if someone wrote me like that, I would be like, Oh, this is annoying.

00:11:24.980 | So, so I don't, but I'll tell you, I do want to before time is too short and I'm sure there's

00:11:30.860 | not much time left to do this.

00:11:32.420 | Just given his age, I really would like to meet John McPhee and I built the intro to

00:11:39.260 | the slow productivity around John McPhee.

00:11:43.260 | And I grew up near Princeton and I'm around there all the time.

00:11:47.220 | So I'm going to see, he's probably just goes, walks the campus, walks home.

00:11:52.500 | Yeah, he's older.

00:11:53.500 | And you know, I think he's in his upper eighties now, so I don't know exactly what the, what

00:11:56.580 | his situation is, but I would love to meet him once.

00:11:59.420 | Maybe that's one place I will do an Eddie Haskell flex like, ah, sir, I, uh, I write

00:12:06.060 | for your same esteemed publication and, uh, I would like to stop by and say hello.

00:12:10.980 | And uh, so I'll try that, but I think it would be cool for the opening of that book when

00:12:15.380 | I'm telling this story about his work habits and spending a whole year writing one article

00:12:20.020 | to be able to actually be there and see him would be cool.

00:12:25.100 | So, so I might try that.

00:12:26.620 | Well, as you said earlier, when you were talking about your plans for the deep life, you might

00:12:32.540 | be doing something related to David Gran, right?

00:12:36.660 | Yeah, maybe I could become a David Gran style writer.

00:12:39.860 | Yeah.

00:12:40.860 | Well, if you're going to do something deep life, I mean, that's kind of like going on

00:12:44.540 | a boat, trying to find a big squid.

00:12:46.100 | Yeah.

00:12:47.100 | But then he comes back, you know, and then you don't want to stay on the boat for your

00:12:49.980 | whole entire life.

00:12:50.980 | Oh yeah.

00:12:51.980 | Yeah.

00:12:52.980 | Yeah.

00:12:53.980 | But like how many squids you want to catch.

00:12:54.980 | Let's see, like in that case, that's more like he does adventures for his articles.

00:12:56.900 | Then goes back, goes back to his normal life where the deep life you got to, you want,

00:13:01.780 | I mean, that is a deep life.

00:13:02.780 | He's probably always working on something.

00:13:04.180 | So probably that's weird that he's going to do after that.

00:13:06.380 | Well, his book, he wrote a book, um, the something summer moon.

00:13:11.540 | It's something summer moon about this murder on an Indian reservation around trying to

00:13:15.860 | get oil rights or whatever.

00:13:17.100 | Anyway, Scorsese is making a movie out of it right now.

00:13:20.300 | So, you know, kudos to him.

00:13:22.340 | That's a really cool book.

00:13:23.340 | And I feel bad I'm getting the name.

00:13:25.740 | It's something, something, something moon.

00:13:33.180 | The problem is not that the not mix it up with, uh, well, no, but that might be the

00:13:39.260 | killers of the flower moon.

00:13:40.940 | Yeah.

00:13:41.940 | Yeah.

00:13:42.940 | See, the issue is there's the empire of the summer moon.

00:13:44.900 | That's the, the Gwyn book about the Comanches, right?

00:13:48.740 | Killers of the flower moon.

00:13:49.740 | Yeah.

00:13:50.740 | Killers of the flower moon.

00:13:51.740 | I have that.

00:13:52.740 | I should read that.

00:13:53.740 | But, but no, but David Graham lives a deep life.

00:13:55.540 | Not that the squid hunt is a deep life, but I probably a life where you do adventure journalism.

00:14:01.500 | Like that's interesting, right?

00:14:02.500 | Like it's a lot of these full-time writers, their lives are interesting.

00:14:06.100 | Like they're, they're unusual.

00:14:07.500 | They, in his case, like he travels and goes, he's adventures and comes back and writes

00:14:11.820 | on them and he kind of does it on his own terms.

00:14:13.860 | Like that's probably, that's pretty cool.

00:14:15.660 | Or you have like the Sebastian Youngers of the world where he goes to his, with his family

00:14:19.900 | to their little house in the pine scrub in Truro, Cape Cod.

00:14:23.460 | And he's sort of like chainsaws trees and writes, you know, it goes to a boxing gym

00:14:28.500 | too.

00:14:29.500 | Yeah.

00:14:30.500 | Yeah.

00:14:31.500 | Yeah.

00:14:32.500 | And then there's another guy who's older than us who, yeah, looks like he could beat me

00:14:36.380 | up.

00:14:36.600 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:14:39.960 | [Music]

The 5 Books I Read In May 2022 | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Chapters