Donna Cournoyer

Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction

1776 by David McCullough

This book brings to life the pivotal year of the American Revolution with impressive detail and compelling storytelling.

Focusing primarily on George Washington and the Continental Army, McCullough captures the uncertainty, courage, and resilience that defined the struggle for independence.

McCullough chronicles not just Washington’s military campaigns, but the deep philosophical and practical divisions among colonists themselves – roughly one-third supported independence, one-third remained loyal to Britain, and one-third were undecided or indifferent.

Most importantly, 1776 shows how leadership during crisis requires both conviction and flexibility, as Washington repeatedly had to adapt his strategies while maintaining his core principles.

The book reminds us that the democratic ideals we take for granted were forged through messy compromise, painful setbacks, and the willingness of ordinary people to persist through uncertainty— serving as a reminder that deep divisions, however intense, are not unprecedented and offering hope that the divisions we experience today need not be permanent.

-Susan

Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction

The Power of Wonder by Monica C. Parker

Have you ever wondered where all your curiosity went? Do you see it sometimes in a small child and think, was I ever that in awe with wonder? It seems to me as we get older, life gets busy, complicated and sometimes challenging and wonder can fade. Where has our sense of wonder gone? How can we get it back?

Monica Parker helps to give us clarity on the importance of regaining that sense of wonder.

Parker reveals real paths to incorporate a sense of wonder in our lives. She goes deep into the connection with neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, literature and even business.

You will learn about elicitors of wonder like art and architecture, love and other elements of wonder. You will learn how they can transform our bodies and brains.

She has a “Wonder Wrap-Up” at the end of each chapter, focusing on how wonder is directly related to each chapter topic.

I especially like this excerpt from Part Three – Living in Wonder, Chapter 13 “Resilience”:

“More than just a simple ameliorator, every element of the wonder cycle, from openness to awe, supports a more resilient psyche in even some of the most extreme and terrible situations. This attribute of wonder means we can reap some benefits even in challenging times.”

I believe, in these challenging times we are facing, we could all benefit from learning how to weave some more real wonder into our lives.

-Donna

Summer Reading Series: Substack

Paul Krugman’s Substack

Note to readers: Substack is an online platform that enables creators, primarily authors and journalists, to publish newsletters and build subscription-based communities.

The signal to noise ratio on Substack is generally… unfavorable. However, there is in fact some gold in them hills.

Notably, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman provides a frequent, diligent, and sober voice of reason.

Following his departure from The New York Times in 2024 (Departing the New York Times) Krugman has demonstrated the utility of a less controlled media environment – which is encouraging, given my general negative perception of these platforms.

Although I’d heartily recommend reading most of what he’s written (regardless of alignment with his particular views), the following Krugman article is an easy read: Bad Times for College Graduates.

The labor market is in a bizarre place. Unemployment is at near-historic lows, and yet, college grads are experiencing levels of unemployment more reflective of post-shock economies, e.g. the years following the 2008 Crash.

Krugman rejects the thesis that this is driven by advances in AI, noting instead it reflects a broader economy-wide attempt to hedge against the uncertainty of The Trump Economy – no one is hiring, and no one is leaving.

DOGE layoffs coupled with funding cuts to research programs have resulted in an influx of mid-career professionals who may be edging out more recent college grads.

Data on that assertion has yet to be collected, but my proximity to recent college grads offers some anecdotal evidence in favor of that hypothesis.

Although I think Krugman’s rejection of the “AI is taking the jobs” narrative is correct (for now, anyway), he probably fails to consider this as a long(er) term side effect of the “slow crisis” of the post-COVID years. I mean this on both a macro and micro sense.

From a 30,000 foot view, cheap money and altered user behavior (I know I was watching a lot more Netflix and buying more video games circa spring 2020 than I am now, for one) created a massive run up of hiring particularly concentrated in the tech sector, which of course had knock-on effects to other industries.

This likely resulted in a capacity overextension, which has led to a bleed-off of newer hires – sometimes slow, sometimes more violent (see The Guardian article: Meta to Fire Thousands of Staff).

Effectively this really just augments the trend Krugman notes: workers stay put, those fired re-enter the labor force as better labor than college grads willing to take roughly the same salary.

The critical point here is that contra to Krugman’s implicit assertion, a “crisis did happen”, but the pain and initial shock has been displaced intertemporally.

-Alex

Summer Reading Series: Fiction

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

This modern classic of metafiction is not exactly beach reading (unless you’re renting a cottage in Innsmouth), but it does serve as good company during restless summer nights.

The labyrinthine structure of the book itself invites re-reads and new explorations to discover secret passageways through the book’s multi-layered plot. This is my third time through – and I am not particularly one to re-read books.

House of Leaves is largely centered around a family who discover one day that the inside of their house is somehow bigger than the outside. Soon after, a door to a non-Euclidian hallway appears, and things get stranger and stranger.

This core story is framed as a film, the contents of which are described to the reader through the medium of an academic analysis of this fictitious film, complete with footnotes to sources both real and fictitious.

The contents of this analysis are assembled (with ample commentary) by one Johnny Truant; and if you’re lost already with how many Matryoshka doll layers we’re in now, don’t worry, that’s kind of the idea.

In practice the text is much more readable than what I’m describing here, made more comprehensible through clear delineations of typography – helpful, especially as the narrative layers start to bleed into each other.

Anyone proximally interested in either horror or seeing how far a mainstream book can push experimental text formatting owes it to themselves to grab a copy.

Get the full color version (no, there are no pictures, and yes, it matters) – eBook readers take heed, the structure of the text invites frequent flipping around of either the book – or your head.

-Alex

Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Coming from a Gen Z’er, I can confidently say that the average young person’s thoughts about the future are bleak.

Climate change poses an existential threat to our planet and way of life as we know it, the prospect of owning a home – traditionally the foundation of building personal wealth – now seems like a far-fetched luxury, and the increasingly competitive job market paired with the rising cost of higher education make for a triple threat of uncertainty.

Throw on top of this our most formative years spent on Zoom and unprecedented political turmoil and divisiveness and no wonder you’ve got a discontented, unsettled, and frankly pessimistic generation.

However, all is not lost.

In fact, as Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson point out in Abundance, there is the world to be gained. We are currently at humanity’s zenith of technological innovation.

In the past 50 years green energy has reduced drastically in price, the internet and now artificial intelligence has transformed our access to information and each other, and advances in biotech have pushed some diseases into obsolescence.

Abundance makes it clear that the future we want is in our control.

The book points to the fact that well-intentioned regulations passed in the later-half of the 20^th century have actually hindered the government’s ability to implement radical projects.

The private sector’s ultimate goal is to make a profit. Klein and Thompson argue that the government, if wielded correctly, can account for externalities and can afford to pursue projects that don’t have an immediate profit incentive.

Abundance provides a refreshing new identity to political change that has, for me at least, sparked hope for the future.

-Greg

Sumer Reading Series: Fiction

Circe by Madeline Miller

This book is a reimagination of the life of a minor Greek goddess from Homer’s Odyssey.

The protagonist is portrayed as a complex, deeply human character who is exiled by the Titans to an island, where she hones her skills in witchcraft and encounters legendary figures like Odysseus, the Minotaur, and Medea.

Miller weaves together multiple Greek myths into one cohesive narrative while exploring timeless themes of family trauma, self-discovery, and what it means to choose mortality over immortality.

The most intriguing aspect may be how Circe grapples with her divine nature.

She’s portrayed not as an all-powerful deity, but as someone learning to navigate relationships, motherhood, and her own agency in a world dominated by capricious male gods, while she gradually transforms from a marginalized immortal into a powerful, self-aware woman.

-Susan

Pizza Day is recognized every year on May 22 to commemorate the first real-world transaction in which Bitcoin was used as a currency. This article highlights the most expensive pizza purchase of all time; discusses cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins; and highlight’s Zeke Faux’s book Number Go Up.

On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer from Florida, paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas, marking Bitcoin’s first commercial use.

The Bitcoin for Pizza transaction translated to $41 fifteen years ago. Today, with the price of one Bitcoin at about $111,000, the transaction would be worth about $1.1 billion. That’s some dough!

Cryptocurrency captured the popular imagination in 2021 and during much of 2022, as we were emerging from the pandemic and as Bitcoin prices were surging.

But the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in late 2022, and the unfolding of the misdeeds of the company’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, served as a reminder of the speculative nature of cryptocurrency.

Investigative reporter for Bloomberg News Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall takes a critical look at FTX and Bankman-Fried.

The FTX situation proved to be a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme, and having a refresher course on situations like this, from time to time, can keep investors grounded.

For those less interested in technicalities but curious about the personalities behind a new phenomenon, this story incorporates business, technology, and crypto counterculture narratives, along with themes of greed, hubris, and the impact of technology on finance.

While the crypto space may have fallen off the radar for many traditional investors, recent developments might be garnering some attention for the following reasons:

• The development and growth of Bitcoin ETFs
• Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high in May 2025
• Each house of Congress currently debating bills that aim to put guardrails around a branch of crypto called “stablecoins”, which may take these digital assets more into the mainstream
• The First Family’s active commercial interests in cryptocurrencies, including the stablecoin USD1

Stablecoins are digital assets designed to hold a steady value, in contrast to the price fluctuations seen in most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

Crypto enthusiasts currently use stablecoins to move US dollars into and out of the crypto ecosystem. The evolution of stablecoins holds the potential for vast sums of money to change hands without touching the formal banking system.

For those curious about following developments in the digital asset space, the House bill is The Genius Act of 2025, and the corresponding Senate bill is The STABLE Act of 2025.

In part, the new legislation, if enacted, would allow regulators to police issuers of stablecoins and apply rules to how stablecoin reserves are managed, similar to the rules that govern how banks manage their reserves.

Debate in the Senate on The STABLE Act has been contentious, because some lawmakers are questioning whether the bill goes far enough to combat the conflict of interest that USD1 might pose for the president.

Readers of Faux’s book will learn more about stablecoins and get a critical account of Tether, which is currently the world’s largest stablecoin.

-RK