Mark A. Maslin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Why is there never time to do everything I have to do? Why can I never get everything done at work? Why is everyone always demanding I do more and more? If you feel like this, you MUST read this book. 

Oliver puts it very bluntly – you only have four thousand weeks on Earth, then you die. This assumes an average life expectancy of 80 – workout what faction of that you have left and multiply by 4000, and that is how many weeks you have left – not many. 

This book helps you stop trying to do everything so that you can focus on what counts. I love this book as it is a wake-up call to all of us – do not waste the little time you have left alive – and instead live it.

Do you, like me, look around the world and ask the simple question – why is it so fucked up? 

If so, you will love Will Black’s book – because it explains psychopathy and why it was very useful as humans evolved but now has infected our culture and is causing major damage.

Psychopaths may appear charming, but this is superficial and used to manipulate – you know, people just like this. Many are in a position of great power and can shape society and, as Will suggests, create psychopathic cultures. Will gives examples of pathological cultures in families, small networks, larger institutions, global corporations, and governments.

Once a pathological culture has been established, it can expand and infect healthy cultures. We need to identify these cultural inflections and fight them with rationality and empathy.

The British Empire covered 20% of the World’s land – described as the Empire where the sun never set. But what do we really know about the British Empire and its legacy? British colonialism: its massacres, enslavement, and racism are not taught in schools.

For me, this book examines the British Empire and how we avoid dealing with its problematic and painful history. One of the best chapters is Chapter 11, “Selective Amnesia,” which discusses how many in the British establishment have great nostalgia for The Empire and use it to illustrate the greatness of the British. When polled, a third of the British wished we still had the Empire. 

As Sathnam points out, this skewed view of history is affecting how we deal with multiculturalism and interact with other countries, many of which we subjugated.

This book is a must-read to understand the British and the profound and sometimes toxic global legacy of the British Empire.