GAINcast Episode 259: Top books of 2022
Vern is a notorious reader on a wide range of topics. On this week’s GAIN cast he looks back at his top books of 2022, breaking down more than 20 titles for listeners.
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Notes and quotes

- 0:00 – Introduction.
- 2:00 – Reading and the reading process.
- 4:00 – The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life by Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci
- 4:30 – Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 by Carlos Eire
- 5:30 – The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit by Ron Shelton
- 6:15 – All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks
- 7:00 – The Tyranny of Talent: How it compels and limits athletic achievement… and why you should ignore it by Joe Baker
- 7:30 – Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell
- 8:30 – And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway Breaking the Secrets by Edwin Layton
- 9:45 – Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seal
- 10:15 – Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature by Richard Rhodes
- 11:00 – Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity by Charles Duhigg
- 11:30 – The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen
- 12:00 – Edge: Leadership Secrets from Football’s Top Thinkers by Ben Lyttleton
- 13:00 – Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
- 14:00 – The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
- 15:30 – Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum
- 16:15 – Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest by Fernando Cervantes
- 17:15 – The Eye Test: A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics by Chris Jones
- 17:30 – The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves by Annie Murphy Paul
- 18:30 – Racing the Clock: Running Across a Lifetime Bernd Heinrich
- 19:30 – Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen Guelzo
- 20:15 – The Generals Have No Clothes: The Untold Story of Our Endless Wars by William Arkin
- 20:45 – How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara Walter
- 21:15 – Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr
- 22:15 – Final thoughts.
To hear more about these topics you can listen to the full episode above. If you like what you hear on the GAINcast, don’t forget to give us a review and subscribe on iTunes.
Further reading
The following links were referenced in the podcast or provide some additional reading material on the topic:
- The GAINcast is sponsored by GAIN. GAIN 2023 will take place from June 13 to 17 and registration is open.
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- We recorded a similar episode last year on GAINcast 231 looking at Vern’s top books of 2021.
- Read more about Vern’s top 10 books from 2022 . You can also see Vern’s list from 2021, from 2020 and from 2019. Craig Pickering also writes about his favorite books each year. Take a look at his top books from 2022 and from 2021.