My Books of 2020 — Tosin Adeoti. A detailed overview of the 44 books I…
By: 'Tosin Adeoti
Tags: Top Books Of 2020, Tosin Adeoti, Books Recommendation, Book Recommendations, Best Books Of 2020

I read the most about Mafias this year. Three solid books. While Pino Arlacchi’s Men of Dishonor is based on the interview between the author and Antonino Calderone, boss of Italy’s Catania family — one of the most influential of the Sicilian Mafia, Alexander Hortis’ The Mob and the City is devoted to the history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s. An eye-opening piece of literature. My pick of the three has to be Federico Varese’s Mafia Life though. Touching key mafia groups originating in Russia, Italy, Hong Kong and Japan the reader gets insights into the ordinary life with its complex challenges faced by these criminals as they run their organizations. It’s an intriguing evolve of unexpected truth.

Al Capone, who became the leader of organised crime in Chicago after Torrio’s death, had the habit of testing his own men’s priorities. From time to time he would expose them to willing beautiful women. If they failed to show interest, he would grow suspicious, and assign them less responsibility. ‘When a guy don’t fall for a broad, he’s through’, his biographer reported him saying. A gangster who is so attached to his own wife would refuse to betray her; and he is by implication weak and so easily blackmailed or manipulated.

In another year, The Laundrymen by Jeffrey Robinson would be my book of the year. An extraordinary well-researched book on the topic of money laundry. It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of money laundering in our world today until you take time to think about this stat: More money is spent worldwide on illicit drugs than on food. And all those funds need to be laundered! Great book. The Attention Merchants is a history of how advertisers have tried to get inside our heads for the last 100 years. It is a book of the media. The Away Game by Sebastian Abbot is a gripping deeply-moving narration of the joys and pains of football-talented African boys in the world of wealthy Arab sheikhs, greedy agents and naive parents/guardians.

Peter Hook, the Legendary musician and cofounder of Joy Division and New Order tells a highly readable story of Manchester’s most iconic nightclub in The Haçienda, which traded from 1982 to 1997, reinventing UK club culture in the process. Hal Higdon’s The Business Healers is about a controversial industry — the management consulting industry. I left the book perplexed at the ingenuity of men in pursuit of opportunities.

No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos is the thrilling story of how the Harry, a little-known person uncovered Bernie Madoff’s scam years before it made headlines, and how they desperately tried to warn the government, the industry, and the financial press. The government failed the people in the case of Madoff. He had tipped the authorities off more than ten years before Madoff unraveled. In The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, he postulates that we are fast approaching a time when humankind will meld with technology to produce mind boggling advances in intelligence. He says that by the year 2040 there will be little left of our biological intelligence. I feel he is too optimistic and treats speculation as facts. Let me warn you, it’s not an easy book to read. Definitely a book by a nerd to nerds. And of course I had to reread Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. It was one of my three best books of 2019. It changed my life. Like Bill Gates, after reading the book I decided to not play with sleeping well again. I will always recommend this book.

Economics