Five Good Books About Human Comparisons

Comparing East and West, American regions, men and women, bulls and bears, and the wizard and the prophet

This is the second post about books I enjoyed in 2024. The first was about automaticity.

I am fascinated by human comparisons at both an individual and group level. Why does one group of people change while another group stays the same? Why does one person go left while another goes right? Five books I enjoyed in 2024 were:

Albion’s Seed This is historian David Hackett Fisher’s take on the effects of migration from different parts of England on different parts of the US. He writes about how many aspects of American regional culture — words, food, religion, style, and more — were shaped by migration from different areas of England. Many Quakers moved from North Midlands to the area around Philadelphia and shaped my hometown in a very different way than the Scots-Irish and North British people shaped Appalachia.

Geography of Thought The ancient Greeks were largely focused on the individual as a form that could be understood and improved. The ancient Chinese were more focused on the system and the collective. That split continues to exist today, and author Richard Nisbett walks the reader through many psychological studies that highlight how Asians tend to look more at the big picture while Westerners tend to look more at the individual. That effects everything from how one sees a painting (Westerners generally focus on one or two items, Asians view things far more broadly) to decision making (Americans perceive their odds of success as higher if they are making a decision individually; Asians perceive their odds of success as higher if the decision is being made by a group). Nisbett is grounded in the data, while also positing a number of situations where each approach might be more effective.

The Wizard and the Prophet In the mid-twentieth century, the world’s population was increasing rapidly, and famine was a huge and common issue in many parts of the world. There were two approaches to dealing with that. William Vogt — “the prophet” — argued that overpopulation and heavy resource consumption would doom humanity; he was a leader with Planned Parenthood in large part because he wanted to discourage population growth. Norman Borlaug — “the wizard” — pioneered wheat varietals that were resistant to rust, introducing them in both Mexico and Pakistan. He has been widely credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives — and today famine is rare. Author Charles Mann contrasts these two approaches to dealing with humanity’s challenges, a clear and fascinating contrast.

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf This fascinating book by John Coates is about the relationship between financial trading (and risk-taking more generally) and the physical and neurological changes that occur within traders. I include it in this list because of the compelling contrasts between (1) successful traders, who have prepared themselves physically for a grueling job, and those who aren’t physically able to handle it¹, and (2) the level of testosterone (and inclination toward risk taking) present among traders in a bull market, which is notably different when stocks are down.

Career and Family Economist (and Nobel Prize winner) Claudia Goldin walks through the life experience for five generations of American women, explaining how each generation had a different set of professional and family opportunities and responsibilities. Over the course of the past 100+ years, women have gone from having to choose between profession and family, to being able to do them serially, to (today) being able to do both in parallel, albeit with constraints. She also posits that today, the income gap between men and women is almost entirely driven by things that happen and choices people make once they become parents. She presents a compelling comparison both between professional men and women today, and between professionally inclined women in different generations.

1. One interesting finding/argument: the best traders have an immediate strong stress reaction when major obstacles arise, but then quickly adjust. Those who are less effective have more trouble adjusting after that initial reaction.