I've long been intimidated to start Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biographies. But I recently started the first one, and Caro essentially begins it by saying "In order to understand Lyndon Johnson, one must first understand the soil composition of west Texas..." and I locked in so hard.

I'm 11 months late, but I just posted a video ranking my 10 favorite books I read in 2023. I swear I'll get the jump on 2024...

Authors include:
Paul Hirsch
Peter Zeihan
Jung Chang
Robert Kurson
George Dawson & Richard Glaubman
Steven Levitsky & @dziblatt.bsky.social
Jared Diamond

The first book I've read post-election is Autocracy Inc. by @anneapplebaum.bsky.social.

My takeaways:

- Autocrats help each other not out of common principals, but common greed
- Constant lies assert power and spread apathy
- "All politicians are bad" just legitimizes the actual bad ones