7/2/2020 Recommended Issues: statues, reading, and sugary breakfast cereals

Issues Worth Reading

Here is this week’s Worth Reading-- a set of interesting newsletter issues that may have flown under your radar:

• Make Statues Virtuous Again (In Age of Invention, by Anton Howes, on June 24, 2020). This is an interesting piece because, unlike most of the writing around statues right now, Anton isn’t assessing whether they should be taken down or what to do with them after they’re down. Instead, he explores why statues went up in the first place, what the actual point is of public art, and how that has changed over the years. He argues that in the 18th and 19th centuries public art was about virtue, was explicitly moralizing, and was meant to inspire-- and then makes a wildly intriguing comparison to our current day superhero movies. It’s worth reading for some eye-opening thoughts on public art and our own references for morality. (650 words; 2.5 minutes)

• Surgical Reading: How to Read 12 Books at Once (in Superorganizers, by Dan Shipper on June 23). If you’re a nonfiction reader, this issue offers fascinating insights about a very unique way to read and learn from nonfiction books. Most people just simply read (or slog through) a book from cover to cover, but Bryan Tobal (who wrote this piece in Dan’s newsletter), has an incredibly well-honed process he uses (called surgical reading) to find and remove the most valuable pieces. Step by step, he takes you through an example and at the end you feel like you really could give it a try yourself. This is absolutely worth reading if you’re open minded about your relationship with nonfiction books... and are curious about how to become more efficient in extracting value from them, want a faster, easier way to figure out if a book is NOT worth your time to read, and desire to actually enjoy your chosen reading more. (3654 words; ~13 minutes)

• Breakfast: a legacy of cereal…and sin? (In Peter Attia’s Newsletter on June 28, 2020). If you’ve ever wondered how or why sugary cereals came into existence, this is a fun read that delves into that history. You’ll come out knowing more about the man behind the brand Kellog’s (one John Harvey Kellog who was a doctor, nutritionist, and Seventh-day Adventist), his feud with his sugar-supporting brother, and their relationship with the man who started a different cereal company which “educated” the world about how important breakfast is. It’s worth the read to learn the history of a meal we eat every day-- and it’ll add to your cocktail hour random-topic repertoire.  (657 words; 2.5 minutes)

We hope you enjoy the reads-- and if there are any specific categories of newsletters you’d like to hear about, feel free to reply and let us know. We’d love to hear from you: newsletters@narrowscale.com

As always, if you’re interested in receiving more from any of the newsletters above, you’re always welcome to subscribe to Age of Invention, Superorganizers, or Peter Attia’s Newsletter.