In 2019, Steve Richards published an enjoyable book about British Prime Ministers from Howard Wilson to Theresa May. It predictably focused on the qualities of leadership, the strengths and weaknesses of each Prime Minister, and the historical contexts of their terms. Perhaps surprisingly, this follow-up is far more interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it allows for deep engagement with heavyweights from British politics who never quite reached the top. This enables fascinating comparisons of direct contemporaries and competitors, like David and Ed Milliband, or Michael Heseltine, Michael Portillo and Ken Clarke.
The second reason this book is more interesting than the first is it paradoxically allows for more reflection about the characteristics required for a politician to become Prime Minister. Richards focuses heavily on the centrality of sheer ambition, which is of course important. It is clear throughout the book, however, that many of these politicians deeply craved power and still missed the ultimate prize. I suspect that, like in most of life, the pivotal difference was luck. Finally, the book allows reflection about how politics has changed in recent generations. In the 1960s an opposition leader could lose multiple elections and retain their job. More recent leaders, like Ed Milliband, get one shot as leader before they are pushed aside. The timing of an ascension is therefore far more important than it was in the past.
Annie Duke, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (Penguin, 2022).
I was introduced to this book by Annie Duke’s appearance on the EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts, which is also well worth a listen. Duke is a professional poker player, and her expertise in that field informs the central premise of the book. Most of us are raised to value tenacity, a central quality of the heroes in many of our formative stories. As Duke argues, however, most adults in professional fields have cultivated more than enough ‘grit’.
Their real mistake is sticking with a course of action for far too long. Instead, we should be more dispassionate, weighing up the benefits of continued perseverance against the opportunity costs: what we could be doing with that time and energy instead. The economically-inclined will recognise the same idea as the sunk-cost fallacy.
Duke is well-versed in the relevant psychological literature, but the book really shines when she brings memorable examples to the table. My favourite was about a mountaineering disaster depicted in the 2015 film Everest. True to Duke’s central claim, the film is about the tenacious mountaineers who lost life and limb reaching the summit. The story that is never told is of the three most experienced climbers on the mountain. Once they learned about the long queue of slow climbers ahead of them, they quickly calculated that summiting and descending before dark was impossible.
They had families and lives, and quitting now gave them the opportunity to try another day without jeopardising both. The fundamental point is that when we first commit to doing something it is often with minimal information. It is a very strange feature of our culture that we are encouraged to disregard additional evidence as it becomes available.
Ed Conway, Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future (Penguin, 2023).
A paradox of economic development is we assign less value to things as we get better at doing them. Commentators talk about living in a ‘post-industrial’ society because mining and manufacturing employ far fewer people than they did in the past. This leads to complacency about the centrality of material resources and manufacturing to our lives.
In reality, we each consume vastly more raw materials than people did in what we consider the heyday of manufacturing.
The sector has just become so productive that much of it happens out of sight and mind. Ed Conway gets into the weeds of how some of our critical resources are extracted and used. This involves fascinating first-hand accounts, and the book is a remarkably easy read given the subject. The key takeaway for me is that even if we achieve carbon-free energy production, we will still run into severe resource constraints if everybody on Earth is to achieve a reasonable living standard.