h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is there any mathematical model relating the rate of book-reading to acquisition of wealth? (please let me know what it is). I suppose the actual content of the books might be a significant factor as well. (do audiobooks count?)

Since I have never been on TwitterX, it is hard to compare it to other platforms, but I agree that keeping things positive all around would do the world a lot of good (compared to chasing the negative approach).

Part of the problem with thinking these days, if you can call it that, is that people can't extrapolate from the past because they either aren't interested in what happened before they were born, or they're too busy lying to themselves about it to learn from it.

By the way, this is equally true for people across the ideological spectrum. Just because they have nice opinions doesn't mean they're thinking. It just means they have nicer friends.

The idea that 'reading a lot of books' may lead to success goes back to the 18th-19th centuries, when literacy was less common and access to information wasn't universal. At least, this is true in the US, which spent a great deal of that time as a semi-wilderness with a really spotty school supply.

That's why Andrew Carnegie, the rich man with a conscience, built libraries. He was well aware that the generosity of one man in Pittsburgh had allowed him to be better-read than average when he was growing up - and he knew what role that had played in his personal success.

It's also why a young David Crockett, professional hunter, struck a deal with a schoolteacher to provide him with meat (probably bear) in return for a couple of months of instruction. Being literate allowed him to become a congressman. There are many stories about Abraham Lincoln's reading - which books he borrowed, from whom, and how valuable they were to him. He was certainly, as an expert on the text of the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare, the equal of any university scholar today.

I suspect, if any billionaires are reading books today, their favourite titles have phrases in them like 'Lessons in Leadership from X', '7 Habits of Successful/Rich/Fabulously Enviable People,' plus Sun Tzu, etc.

Recent research found that the students had trouble doing math, not because of the numbers, but because they didn't understand the text needed to derive the question. That's bad.

One popular book for billionaires would be 'Tax evasion 101', but I guess they might be at least a co-author themselves (having reached billionarity already)

Word problems=two skills.

And yes, tax evasion. Though the other titles aren't made-up, and they do read them.

About 30 years ago, I used to write copy for a publication called Radio and Television Interview Report. I had to come up with 180- or 350-word adverts for books to entice radio and tv hosts to invite the authors for an interview.

One book I was sure would sell was a book on applying the 'leadership lessons' of Eisenhower (as commander of the Allied forces in WW2) to business success. I wrote the advert without being ironic. Unfortunately, they didn't pay me extra for resisting temptation...

Ooohhh, I have an idea about the temptations you had to resist.

Something like:

'Crush your opponents with an army of tanks, occupy their assets and start your very own monopoly! You'll be President next.'

I wonder if your President-elect read that book and came to those same conclusions.

Oops, I said '30', I meant '20 years ago.' But yeah, he might have, if I thought he'd ever actually read a book. They made a lot out of DJT's having a copy of 'Mein Kampf' by his bedside table. I'll bet somebody gave it to him, and he thought it looked cool as an accessory.

Eisenhower himself wasn't much of a reader, in spite of his intellectual pretensions. He got most of his information "through the 'briefing process'," according to William Bradford Huie, the journalist who wrote about the execution of Eddie Slovik. (Which I wrote about at A88031063.) Huie was mad at him.

But you're right. I remember that one because I thought the book was silly, like all of that motivational-speaker drivel. The one I really liked was written by a medium who 'channeled' Jerry Garcia. I think I came up with a tagline about 'talking to the lady who talked to the dead - the Grateful Dead!' or some such.