Wisereads Vol. 151 — Pax by Tom Holland, the quiet economics of overlooked industries, and more
Last week, we shared a preview of Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel's book, Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life. This week, we're sharing a preview of Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Gold Age by Tom Holland.
Keep reading to add to your Reader account below 👇
Most highlighted Articles of the week
Why I Stopped Arguing With People
Software engineer and entrepreneur Cong Wang unpacks why logic so rarely wins an argument. “We like to believe humans are rational animals who occasionally feel emotions. It's the reverse. We are emotional animals who occasionally think. Most people don't reason their way to conclusions and then feel accordingly. They feel first, then reason backward to justify the feeling.”
Invisible Companies
Business strategy scholars Jay Barney and Haiyang Zhang outline why overlooked, low-status niches can produce durable profits and offer practical cues for spotting these “invisible” opportunities. “Barriers to entry and resource-based advantage are well known. Invisibility points to a different source of protection. Competition is not only limited by what rivals cannot do or cannot copy; it is also limited by what they fail to notice or turn their nose up at.”
The Age of Reading Is Over
Atlantic staff writer Rose Horowitch argues that America’s shift from books to bites is eroding deep literacy, with implications for thinking, education, and culture. “Text is thriving among a dwindling proportion of the population. Just 20 percent of adults accounted for more than 80 percent of all books read last year. It's becoming a kind of niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids.”
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
The Best Car I've Ever Driven: McLaren W1
Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee gets an early road-and-track drive of McLaren’s 1,200-hp W1 to see if it lives up to the legend. “From the powertrain to the aerodynamics to the track performance, it is closer than ever to a literal Formula 1 car with a license plate on it.”
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
Career advice in the age of AI
Startup founder Phil Chen, a veteran of Scale AI and OpenAI, lays out practical priorities for ambitious early-career builders in an agent-native era. “AI models get better at anything you can write a loss function for, and school is mostly loss functions: well-defined problems graded against known answers. Therefore, the valuable work of the next decade is everything that can't be graded within the span of model training.”
Most highlighted PDF of the week
Fundsmith Equity Fund Semi-Annual Letter To Shareholders 2026
Veteran fund manager Terry Smith of Fundsmith warns that passive investing has warped markets into pure momentum. “What we are surely seeing is that index funds, like other financial innovations, start with a good rationale but inevitably end up being taken to extremes, ultimately with dire consequences.”
Hand-picked book of the week
Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age
Acclaimed historian Tom Holland, co-host of The Rest Is History, traces Rome’s tumultuous first and second centuries to show how conquest and statecraft forged an era of relative calm. Rich with vivid portraits of emperors, rebels, and everyday provincials, this sweeping narrative helps readers grasp what the famed Roman peace meant on the ground and examines why Rome's golden age still captivates us.
“The same Roman Empire that built a wall across its most barbarous frontier, and ruled perhaps 30 percent of the world's population, remains today what it has been since the late eighteenth century: a mirror in which we feel flattered to catch our own reflection.”
If you enjoy the preview, you can grab the full ebook for $1.99 until the end of July wherever ebooks are sold in the US and Canada.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Small Potatoes
Psychologist Paul Bloom writes Small Potatoes, a witty feed on psychology, philosophy, and the good life. From Immortality Sounds Pretty Good, Actually: “My life had a beginning, of course, and it contains many extended experiences that I do think have a story-like structure. ... But there’s no overall narrative arc—it’s just been one thing after another. And I’d be perfectly content with a life that was: Beginning, middle, more middle, even more middle, with no end in sight.”