by Gary Alexander
December 24, 2024
I’ve been delivering these Top 10 book lists here each Christmas since 2018. These lists began as gift ideas for my college-age grandchildren in 2015 then I targeted the list toward investors in Growth Mail.
Even though these books were all published in 2024, I chose them with an eye toward how they can help investors understand the investing world better in 2025, by creating the perspective of where our nation is headed in a world of conflict, with an eye toward resource development (book #2), changing investment goals for youth (#4) at work (#7 and #1), at home (#3), with inflation (#5), or growth in 2025 (8-10), and a look at two Magnificent-7 companies (11-12), a tale of two types of monopolies. In publication order:
#1: Philip K. Howard’s “Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Economy” (published January 23, 2024, 128 pages) is a delightfully short book released at the start of a controversial election year, in which neither party fronted an attractive candidate with a clear vision of growth or a plan for overcoming our growing national division. In describing this dilemma, author Philip Howard says, “In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems, such as homelessness become, well, more endemic.” Americans have lost the freedom to be themselves, he said, keeping silent and avoiding social contact. His solution in “Everyday Freedom” is to use our skills, intuitions and values when confronting any daily challenges. I start with this book so you might also notice Howard’s first book, “The Death of Common Sense” (1995).
#2: Ernest Scheyder’s “The War Below: Lithium, Copper and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives” (January 30, 377 pages) is an important examination of the hidden costs – both monetary and environmental – of President Biden’s mandate to buy mostly electric vehicles and phase out fossil fuels. The costs and environmental dangers of mining copper, lithium and some key rare earth minerals are well known to miners and probably to environmental experts – who should know better than to ban all fossil fuels, which still power over 80% of our national energy needs. This book was wisely listed for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Financial Times’ and Schroder’s Business Book of the Year.
#3: Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” (March 26, 395 pages) is a very important book about the mental and psychological assault on an entire generation (Gen-Z, for the most part) with dismal, depressing messages on social media, mostly via their extremely dumb “smart phones,” which parents allow them to peruse, unsupervised, from a very young age. This mental poisoning began in earnest shortly after the debut of those ubiquitous hand-guides during the 2008 Great Recession. Haidt’s charts in the opening chapters demonstrate the cataclysmic decline in self-image, self-confidence, and hope for the future, along with a rise in suicide, drug addiction and other serious ills since then. Thankfully, this book gained immediate attention as an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal Top 10 pick. All parents should read this – and take action – by removing these mind-twisting devices until a responsible age.
#4: Scott Galloway’s “The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security” (April 23, 302 pages) is a great gift to children or grandchildren. If you talk to grandchildren (I have six), you know they don’t believe they can invest like we grandparents did – work, save and invest for retirement. They don’t think Social Security or other benefits will be around in 2060 or later. They are not even sure the planet will be around. Even in 2025, they can’t buy or rent homes. Do any of our old investment realities still resonate? On the plus side, younger workers have more mobility (fewer children, fewer marriages, more mobile devices), but also lots more challenges, so Scott Galloway says it’s time for a new playbook. Young folk need to seek greater peace, along with financial security, he says, so Galloway focuses on finding your marketable talent; invest wisely, diversify and embrace stoicism. His best advice is to partner wisely (business and personal): “The most important economic decision you’ll make in your life is not what you major in, where you work, what stock you buy, or where you live. It’s who you partner with.”
#5: Carola Binder’s “Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy” (May 22, 354 pages) traces inflation from Benjamin Franklin in the late 1720s to the colonial era, when General Washington said (of the cardboard Continental currency) “a wagon-load of currency won’t buy a wagonload of provisions,” while the British pound was sound, and most Americans preferred sterling over cardboard. The same sad story was repeated with Confederate dollars and Greenbacks. Then came the first peacetime inflationary surges in the 1970s and 2021-23. Binder examines political and monetary angles in tagging a variety of culprits, including today’s huge peacetime deficits impacting future inflation and interest rates.
#6: Jonathan Turley’s “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (June 18, 428 pages) undertakes a deep analysis of the First Amendment right to free speech, which has been severely attacked recently, under specious reasoning, especially over issues ranging from health information during Covid, crime statistics alleging police abuse, climate change views and economic data regarding race and gender equity, and more. Free speech has also been throttled by mob rule and rage erupting over some of these issues, amplified by flash mobs that pop up over the slightest provocation. Turley stresses that the First Amendment is not an archaic relic of powdered white males. It was written for times like these, IN a time like this. America was born in an age of rage and erupted in new rage soon after the Bill of Rights passed in 1791 – in the 1798 Sedition Laws, with President Adams jailing journalists who spoke out against him.
#7: Charlie Gasparino’s “Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America” (August 6, 288 pages) is a welcome antidote to the tedium of working for speech-police and their woke drills at major companies. I’ve always worked for conservative or libertarian entrepreneurs, but even those champions of free enterprise could not escape mandatory woke police. In the 1990s, we were required to sit through sensitivity training on race and gender bias and told to recycle our paper by color under penalty of law (prison and fine), so our concentration had to be derailed from thinking about corporate goals into thinking about paper colors. At any rate, that’s one reason why I started working remotely in 2002, not during Covid. Gasparino has captured the spirit of this nonsense, which the bulk of big corporations put their workers through – perhaps less so under Trump. Gasparino shares some examples here, including the checklist by advertisers about race, gender and sexuality in ads.
#8: Andrew Leigh’s “How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity” (September 3, 240 pages) is another “short history of the world” type of primer that is always welcome as a “starter kit” for those who ask, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Although listed at 240 pages, its notes run 50 pages, so the text is under 200 pages. It begins with Agriculture in Africa, runs through the printing press and plagues, into Adam Smith and the wealth of nations, moving quickly to the modern era. Since he starts in Africa, he asks interesting questions, like “Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around?” or: “Why did the Allies win World War II? This shows how the author desires to make economics fun and relevant. It is rightfully dubbed as one of The Economists’ “Best New Books About Finance.”
#9: Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Truths: The Future of America First” (September 24, 224 pages) is a follow-up to his 2021 book, “Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.” Charlie Gasparino’s book has covered that subject very well in this survey, but it bears mention here: Vivek’s “Woke” came out at the height of Biden’s early popularity and strength in passing his agenda, while “Truths” came out near the peak of Trump’s shocking political rebirth three years later. Vivek’s role, along with Elon Musk, is to cut government waste and fraud. In Truths he returns to foundational principles above politics, which he defines as merit over grievance, truth over lies and self-governance over surrendering rights to those who may seem to have our interest at heart but tend to overstep their boundaries once they gain power.
For Book #10 – It’s “Dealer’s Choice” (or All Three), Including Studies of Two Monopolies
#10: The 10th and final book is your choice. One title sounds political, although I selected it for its economic content, not for Trump’s controversial personality or politics. Art Laffer and Stephen Moore wrote “The Trump Economic Miracle and the Plan to Unleash Prosperity Again” September 24, 206 pages) to promote the now-President-elect, and they were there from the beginning, in 2015. I recall Steve Moore on my 2016 political panel at the New Orleans Investment Conference making some of these same points. Candidate Trump contacted Laffer and Moore in August 2023 to remind them of those “good old days” and asked them to write this tale of multiple “miracles,” including the rise of minority per capita wages with low inflation in 2019, and the little-noted rapid 2020 economic recovery from COVID.
10a: This late-year (#11) book option for Never-Trumpers out there, is more focused on investing: “The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang the Making of a Tech Giant” by Tae Kim (December 10, 272 pages) came out last week, so I am still reading the early chapters, profiling the three founders. I find this level of personal journalism very satisfying. It’s not just about the heavy lifting of chip design but the early work ethic and imagination of the founders, and what kept them alive through many near-death blunders. Nvidia is one of Louis Navellier’s favorite stocks – I own some, too – so anyone considering whether to invest in Nvidia or other AI stocks should give this a careful read, especially for the story of CEO Jensen Huang’s vision.
10b (#12): I hesitated to pick Dana Mattioli’s “The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power” (April 23, 390 pages) because I favor positive books over corporate exposes, and I didn’t want to seem to endorse Federal Trade Commission’s head Lina Khan and her seeming “Everything War” and Ruthless Quest against any and all Corporate Powers during the Biden era – she never seemed to see any redeeming virtues in a monopoly – but now that Khan and Biden are on the fast track out of town, I can admit that I don’t care for Amazon’s practices and its eroding customer service over the years, though their low prices are seductive. In this book, Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli does a superb job of expressing my frustrations with the firm, as well as the sad way they seem to treat their employees and contracted sales “partners.” I trust Amazon executives will read this book and reform, perhaps prodded by worker walkouts in their Prime Christmas delivery week.
This column is way too long to get into the vagaries of monopoly law, but I intend to write a column on the virtues of a benign monopoly in January. Nvidia and Amazon are monopolies. To me, Nvidia does it right, and Amazon falls short. One clue is how stakeholders fare – customers, partners and employees, among others. Shareholder returns are also part of the story, and both companies delivered stellar returns.
- Amazon launched May 15, 1997, at $0.56 adjusted for splits: $10,000 has grown 400-fold, to $4 million.
- Nvidia launched January 22, 1999: $10,000 invested on that day would now be worth over $30 million.
Navellier & Associates owns Nvidia Corp (NVDA), and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) in managed accounts Gary Alexander owns Nvidia Corp (NVDA), personally he does not own Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN).
All content above represents the opinion of Gary Alexander of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
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My Six Predictions for 2025 – Part 1 (of 2)
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The Fed’s Favorite Inflation Gauge Spiked the Market’s Punch Bowl
Growth Mail by Gary Alexander
My Top 10 (or 12) Books From 2024 – For Profiting from 2025
Global Mail by Ivan Martchev
Jerome Powell was a Party Pooper – Once Again
Sector Spotlight by Jason Bodner
When Good Stocks Tumble, Relax! They Will Rise Again
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About The Author
Gary Alexander
SENIOR EDITOR
Gary Alexander has been Senior Writer at Navellier since 2009. He edits Navellier’s weekly Marketmail and writes a weekly Growth Mail column, in which he uses market history to support the case for growth stocks. For the previous 20 years before joining Navellier, he was Senior Executive Editor at InvestorPlace Media (formerly Phillips Publishing), where he worked with several leading investment analysts, including Louis Navellier (since 1997), helping launch Louis Navellier’s Blue Chip Growth and Global Growth newsletters.
Prior to that, Gary edited Wealth Magazine and Gold Newsletter and wrote various investment research reports for Jefferson Financial in New Orleans in the 1980s. He began his financial newsletter career with KCI Communications in 1980, where he served as consulting editor for Personal Finance newsletter while serving as general manager of KCI’s Alexandria House book division. Before that, he covered the economics beat for news magazines. All content of “Growth Mail” represents the opinion of Gary Alexander
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