All right, Jesse, like we always do early in each month, I report back on the books I read during the preceding month. So we are in early June while recording this. So we will report back on the books I read in May. My goal as longtime listeners know is to try to read five books every month.

If you want more details on how I do that, we actually have a video online at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia where I go through the different techniques I use to read five books a month and how other people can do it too. All right, five books I read in May 2022. Number one, I returned to Born Standing Up by Steve Martin.

That's Steve Martin's professional memoir. I have read this before. I read this way back in 2009, soon after it came out. I wrote about it way back then in the early days of my blog. It was actually in an interview that Steve Martin did with Charlie Rose about Born Standing Up that he used the phrase, "Be so good they can't ignore you," which I then used or adapted to be the title of my fourth book, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

So it was a very influential book in my life, but I have not been back to it since. It's been over a decade since I read it. So I went back and I read it and it was great. There was a lot I had forgotten and I was able to extract a lot more rich detail.

And again, what makes this a good book is that it is focused just on his professional career. Steve Martin's point with this book was he didn't think enough detail is often given in celebrity memoirs about how people actually build their careers. So this was just about the craft, how he built up his act, what went well, what didn't, his breaks, his steps back, how he moved forward again.

So I thought it was very interesting. The main takeaway that hit me on the second time through was the power of sticking with it. It took Martin years for his act to break with a lot of steps backwards. And he was incredibly focused during those periods on continuing to polish and develop his act.

And it was actually in the end, the confidence and expertise that was developed by that relentless focus and drive to improve that tipped him. His act was interesting, but once he became world-class at delivering it, that's what actually made it a world-class act because it was the confidence and precision that's necessary for his type of humor to work.

So I was really struck by his focus. All right. Next I read Blood and Treasure, a newish biography of Daniel Boone by Rod Drury. Where's it Bob Drury, no Rod Drury, someone Drury and Tom Clavin. And I read it in part. I don't know if you know this about me, Jesse, but I am descended from the Boones.

I did not know that. Maybe I give off that frontiersman style genre. I'm not descended from Daniel Boone. I'm descended from his brother, which we figured out at some point, his brother who shows up off and on in the book. So this was my, my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, let me see if I have this right.

I think her mom was a Boone. So we're, we're actually not too far off the actual Boone line, but not from Daniel himself. And I do remember that growing up, we went to a Daniel Boone historical site and there's a register to sign if you're a descendant and they said, you're a descendant of his dad and his brother, but not of him.

So we weren't, we weren't able to sign the book. Very well written. I actually really enjoyed blood and treasure. Must've been very difficult to research. I mean, the whole book is about the complicated shifting allegiances, alliances, and fail promises between all of the various different Indian tribes at this period of the colonial history.

Daniel Boone's life was completely intermixed with the, the fight for land between the American colonists, the British, and the various Indian tribes that were there, or this tribe would take over that tribe and this tribe would come in. So it was, it was really a book about 18th century Indian tribal politics.

So a complicated book to write, but very interesting. These were tougher people back then. These long hunters. They would just go, like, I'll be back in a year. Like I have a rifle and I'll be back in a year. I'm just going to hunt for a year. Like where are you going to go hunt?

Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to hike to the other side of the Appalachian mountains and then I'll hunt over there. And then I'll come back with, with all of, all of the skins. I mean, these were, that was a tougher, tougher period, but I am a Boone. So I get through proxy, a lot of credit.

Then I read why faith matters by rabbi David Volpe. I read this because I heard Lex Fridman interview him and I thought it was a, he was interesting. It was a really good interview. I thought it was really interesting. So I said, what's his most famous book was Volpe's most famous book.

I think it's why faith matters. And I read it pretty good. So this was a, it's a post nine 11 book. Volpe wrote why faith matters as a response to the post nine 11 new atheist. So you remember those two early two thousands, you had Sam Harris, you had Hitchens Dawkins, and I guess Daniel did it maybe had a book in there too, breaking the spell.

There was this sort of anti-religious new atheism that arose. And this was a response to that. It was a pretty interesting book from a roughly from a Jewish perspective, but, but relatively ecumenical, very accessible. I thought there was some interesting points in it. Then I went back and again, this is a reread, but a reread from my childhood.

So I don't think it counts lost moon by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. This book came out in the nineties when I was a kid. It is the book about Apollo 13 written by the Jim Lovell who Tom Hanks played in the movie and a professional science writer, Jeffrey Kluger.

So Apollo 13, the Ron Howard movie was based off of this book was the main source material. Another cool book. They wrote it, they wrote it, narrate cinematically. So it's like in the room, in the room, real time narrative. Like this person said this, this person grabbed this thing, which is probably the right way.

And it goes back and forth between mission control and the capsule. But it's written embedded in the action itself. So, you know, then Lovell hit the switch and this happened, not, there's not a, as not a third person narrator voice of like, then what was happening on the da da da da.

So it really moves. And it's a crazy story. I mean, what happened on the, on the command module and what they had to do to save it. And Kluger just went back through transcript and transcript and they really picked apart what happened and the tick tock of how it unfolded and who said what.

And so it's really an achievement as a book. I just, as a nonfiction writer, I can say this was, it's a fantastic story, obviously, I mean, stuck in space and you have to get saved. But to write this book is not an easy feat. I mean, it took a huge amount of research.

So it's a real achievement as a book and incredibly interesting to read. So forget the movie, you gotta, you gotta read the book Lost Moon. And then finally I read the Lost City of Z by David Gran. So David Gran is a New Yorker writer. He's sort of a, I don't know if he's a target of envy, but he's sort of what you, sometimes what you imagine when you imagined when you're at Columbia journalism school and you're thinking what you want to do as a writer, what you imagine often is David Gran.

So what he does for the New Yorker is he does these long form journalistic pieces where he usually goes on some sort of adventure with interesting people with interesting things happening. So there'll be some, you know, I think he did stuff with like white supremacist in jail at some point, there was like a murder in the, another book thing he did, another article, there was a murder among the Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts.

Like there's this whole world of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts that think that Sherlock Holmes was real. And there was this murder and David Gran is over there in England and gets in beds with these groups and it's really like the Baker street regulars. And anyways, Lost City of Z is a half of it is the story of Percy Fawcett, one of the last of the great British adventurers and explorers who disappeared trying to find this supposed giant city in the Amazon.

So it tells the story, but the interleaves with David Gran going to the Amazon and actually putting together a team and going in himself to try to find some evidence of what they found. And, and, you know, spoiler alert turns out there were really large civilizations in the, in the Amazon, but a lot of it was hard to find because it was built with wood and a lot of that had decayed.

But now with modern techniques, we can see there was all these sophisticated cities. So Percy Fawcett was right, but there's no way he was ever going to find it in, you know, the 1920s. Anyways, David Gran is great. He's the goat at these types of things. These things move, they're well researched.

He inserts himself into it, sort of classic adventure narrative, nonfiction, New Yorker type stuff. So that book was fun. I should be more David Gran like Jesse. I need to actually like go, you know, on the trail of a murderer. Oh, a famous David Gran piece was hunting the giant squid.

So he's out there on this boat with this guy, this eccentric guy, he's like convinced that they can catch a giant squid and he's out there in the storms and they're trying to find a squid. He loves that type of stuff. He puts himself, puts himself in the danger.

Do you know him? Never met him. How old is he? Older than us, but I don't know, probably not that much older. We should look it up. I wonder how old he is. I should flex that more. I feel shy and nervous about it. I feel like I, but I should maybe flex more of the potential ability to talk to other New Yorker writers and say, just, can I call you?

Can I call you? It feels a little bit, I don't know, Eddie Haskelly. Excuse me, Mr. Gran. I also do some writing for your esteemed publication there, sir. And uh, 55 years old. Okay. 55 years old. And uh, I would like to talk to you on the telephone. The problem is if someone wrote me like that, I would be like, Oh, this is annoying.

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 not much time left to do this. Just given his age, I really would like to meet John McPhee and I built the intro to the slow productivity around John McPhee.

And I grew up near Princeton and I'm around there all the time. So I'm going to see, he's probably just goes, walks the campus, walks home. Yeah, he's older. And you know, I think he's in his upper eighties now, so I don't know exactly what the, what his situation is, but I would love to meet him once.

Maybe that's one place I will do an Eddie Haskell flex like, ah, sir, I, uh, I write for your same esteemed publication and, uh, I would like to stop by and say hello. And uh, so I'll try that, but I think it would be cool for the opening of that book when I'm telling this story about his work habits and spending a whole year writing one article to be able to actually be there and see him would be cool.

So, so I might try that. Well, as you said earlier, when you were talking about your plans for the deep life, you might be doing something related to David Gran, right? Yeah, maybe I could become a David Gran style writer. Yeah. Well, if you're going to do something deep life, I mean, that's kind of like going on a boat, trying to find a big squid.

Yeah. But then he comes back, you know, and then you don't want to stay on the boat for your whole entire life. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like how many squids you want to catch. Let's see, like in that case, that's more like he does adventures for his articles.

Then goes back, goes back to his normal life where the deep life you got to, you want, I mean, that is a deep life. He's probably always working on something. So probably that's weird that he's going to do after that. Well, his book, he wrote a book, um, the something summer moon.

It's something summer moon about this murder on an Indian reservation around trying to get oil rights or whatever. Anyway, Scorsese is making a movie out of it right now. So, you know, kudos to him. That's a really cool book. And I feel bad I'm getting the name. It's something, something, something moon.

The problem is not that the not mix it up with, uh, well, no, but that might be the killers of the flower moon. Yeah. Yeah. See, the issue is there's the empire of the summer moon. That's the, the Gwyn book about the Comanches, right? Killers of the flower moon.

Yeah. Killers of the flower moon. I have that. I should read that. But, but no, but David Graham lives a deep life. Not that the squid hunt is a deep life, but I probably a life where you do adventure journalism. Like that's interesting, right? Like it's a lot of these full-time writers, their lives are interesting.

Like they're, they're unusual. They, in his case, like he travels and goes, he's adventures and comes back and writes on them and he kind of does it on his own terms. Like that's probably, that's pretty cool. Or you have like the Sebastian Youngers of the world where he goes to his, with his family to their little house in the pine scrub in Truro, Cape Cod.

And he's sort of like chainsaws trees and writes, you know, it goes to a boxing gym too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's another guy who's older than us who, yeah, looks like he could beat me up.