Reading List 2019

2019 is a big year for me for reading (promise to self).
1) I want to keep my focus on long-form reading this year, to help counteract the social media smartphone fast form brain drain.
2) I’ve joined a new company, and am in a new space. I have tons to learn. Since I joined Indigo, I’ve been busy reading reading to understand the agricultural space (after spending 12+ years in music+tech).
Below is my reading list – I’d love more recommendations for once I get thru my current backlog.

Reading NOW

  • How to Think Like an Anthropologist by Matthew Engelke
    • Recommendation by the smart folks at B+A
  • Merchants of Grain: The power and profits of the five giant companies at the center of the world’s food supply, by Dan Morgan
    • Because I’m now working to facilitate the global trade of grain, and need to know some history.
  • Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, by Monica White
  • Think Again: How to Reason & Argue by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
    • Recommendation by the smart folks at B+A
On Pause
  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
    • Great read
  • The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior
    • Essays mostly touching politics, but important in this particular moment around empathy and macro economic understanding
READ
  • The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet by Kristin Ohlson
    • Great read considering what could be done with regenerative ag to address climate change and general environmental and human health
  • This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm by Ted Genoways
    • Great read generating tons of empathy for Growers – my current main customers – especially for someone who has a bit of direct exposure via my family, but not much recent or frequent exposure to their lives.
  • The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food by Ted Genoways
    • Amazing book about the animal (as opposed to crop) side of agriculture
  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
    • This so far is connecting lots of dots between the books I’ve read, and making it all personal.
  • Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
    by Alexandra Shackleton

    • helped me think about applications of leadership to past & future employment situations
NEXT
  • White Tears, by Hari Kunzru
    • I cannot wait to read this!
  • Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy by Viviana A. Zelizer
    • Something I anticipate being relevant to Spotify me and Indigo me
  • Who Gets What – and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth
    • Again – important to Spotify me and Indigo me in terms of understanding marketplace behavior
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