The 16th book I’ve finished this year so far is The Rise of America by Marin Katusa. This one was a business book which is all about how America is actually rising in prominence and wealth rather than declining. There are a lot of naysayers about the US declining I must admit but I’m not sure they’re entirely wrong nor is Marin Katusa entirely right.
The book is a giant case for why America is rising with each chapter covering why it is. Then there are the appendices which offer more detail about some points covered briefly in the book. It’s funny how the majority of the book actually happens in the appendices.
As for my review of the book, I didn’t love it at first but I kept reading it because I thought there would be something good in it. There wasn’t a lot of useful information from the perspective of pretty much anything business that I could see. The author is very heavily focused on mining and physical wealth building such as gold, silver, uranium, etc. It also makes the case for investing directly into real gold (NOT paper gold).
Either way the book did have some interesting points but I can’t think of any circumstance or any situation where I’d recommend taking the time to read the book. It was interesting and not poorly written, it just didn’t have a strong enough purpose. Whether America is rising or falling is somewhat irrelevant.
There were also a few things that bothered me a bit. There’s one part about Steve Jobs coming on stage in 2007 to introduce the iPhone. The author states that before that event the smartphone didn’t exist. Actually it did exist for a long time before that moment. Steve Jobs merely improved upon it so much that it brought it into the mainstream and changed the direction of the smartphone forever. It may not matter either way but it’s still bothersome.
If you’re looking to understand the business world more or how to invest better or even how to execute on your business idea this book isn’t for you. It’s an entertainment business book that tries to make an argument of American greatness but in a convoluted way that doesn’t really work. America is great and all but it’s also pretty not great. In some things it’s great in others it’s not but that pretty much goes for everything.
It’s not a business book I’d recommend reading as a business book. For entertainment it works but for business it’s going to waste your time.
Up Next
I’ve picked a lot of great books to read so far. The majority of my picks have been excellent books even if they weren’t perfect. Lately I haven’t been doing so good, though. I started reading the sample of my new book and thought it was okay. It wasn’t excellent or great, or even good but it was just okay. There have been other samples like that which ended up being great books as soon as I got out of the sample.
So far the book I just picked up today and finished a whole day of reading (much of it outside the sample) hasn’t improved much. The book is Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg which is about a woman who is living life with her husband in a coma. The summary of the book says you can’t put it down but this is one book I actually can put down. Usually I read well past my hour goal every day but this book I didn’t.
I’m going to read it all the way through because it’s a short book and I do hope it gets better.