The Curious Engineer

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Frederik G.

frederikjournals.com

Diary of a wandering soul. 🌀. Click to read "Frederik G.", by Frederik Gieschen, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Essays / personalTravelSociety / politics / economy

’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
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411 from 22 Jul 2020 to 11 Oct 2026
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monthly (11 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 9

  1. Traveler.
  2. Abschied.
  3. “Exercise is optional, movement is essential.”
  4. Restless.
  5. Heimkehr.
  6. Shame on me.
  7. Inner Light.
  8. Who has time to make a bison hide?
  9. Will nobody save the world?

2025 46

  1. Feeling the weight of the world.
  2. Why I don't ask ChatGPT about my dreams.
  3. Starseed's prayer.
  4. Blessed are they who walk in the light.
  5. Your voice is magic.
  6. The path of truth.
  7. Money is freedom. (Or is it?)
  8. Permission to burn.
  9. New name, musings, and my favorite recent reads.
  10. Writing from the heart.
  11. The joy of open spaces (Road note 3: Wyoming)
  12. Sacred rocks and parking lots.
  13. The gifts of presence. (Road Notes #1: Colorado)
  14. Walk like a man, stand like a tree.
  15. Befriending the soul.
  16. Moving beyond words.
  17. 📚 Final chance to pick up free books (mostly finance, NYC only)
  18. Dancing with gravity.
  19. Liminal space and owning your dreams.
  20. Witnessing the unspeakable you.
  21. Next Mindbody Writing Wave + Five Journaling Prompts
  22. Have you written about that?
  23. Labyrinth: join me to write & connect (an experimental event)
  24. 📚FREE BOOKS in NYC! (Stop by & pick them up)
  25. Do not get side-tracked
  26. The weight and the mask.
  27. Think Deeply, Write Clearly: Language, Laughter, and Sensemaking with Brian Morgan.
  28. Mindbody Writing: What I learned breaking pens and tearing pages.
  29. Spiritual awakening to a video game soundtrack?
  30. Catching lightning.
  31. Updates: Price change, Experiments, Let's chat, Some reading
  32. Inner Dialogue Journaling.
  33. The momentum of mission.
  34. Surrendering to experiments
  35. Buffett & Munger Unscripted with Alex Morris of TSOH Investment Research
  36. The age of pen and paper
  37. Essays on writing, life, and my journey.
  38. There are no problems.
  39. Writing is transformation.
  40. Buffett's Blueprint
  41. The Tao of money.
  42. Don't be the Bryan Johnson of money.
  43. In spite of time.
  44. The Struggle for Home
  45. The energy of legacy. (Taylor Sheridan's lightbulb moment)
  46. Everything is a Room

2024 62

  1. Revisiting 2024: Favorite Posts and Quotes
  2. Ben Graham's Duplex
  3. My Greatest Fear (Wrestling with Faith and Fate)
  4. Until the Heart Catches
  5. Money is a Test (What Money Means)
  6. Why I Write (An Invitation)
  7. Writing Stories Close to Life: Jared Dillian's Night Moves
  8. The Price of Passion (Life is like a jar of marbles)
  9. The Moment that Made Louis C.K.'s Career
  10. Al Pacino and the Weight of Wealth
  11. René Girard and the Port Strike Revelation
  12. ☕📱Let's Chat on Zoom; Talent vs. Endurance: Haruki Murakami and Leonard Cohen
  13. Setbacks are Inevitable, Defeat is Optional: The Strength of Leonard Cohen
  14. What Money Asks Of Us (The Three Money Realities)
  15. The Prophecy of Rust Cohle
  16. Dying Without Regrets (How to See Yourself Like a Writer)
  17. The Truth Sifters
  18. We're Not Mozart and Mentorship is Important
  19. The Lesson of Obsession: Robert Caro and Mr. Beast
  20. Why Fortunes Are Lost (Why Money Work is Inner Work)
  21. How Eighty-One Dollars Made Lyndon Johnson
  22. Investors Are Like Mountaineers
  23. 🚶‍♂️‍➡️Silent Pilgrim (Allgäu-Zillertal)
  24. Telling Air from Glass
  25. Kreuzberg, New York, and the Momentum of Energy
  26. America's Richest Printer
  27. 🚶Berlin & ✍️David Milch’s Favorite Writing Exercise
  28. Chief Survival Officers
  29. David Milch and the Alchemy of Writing
  30. Green-Wood Cemetery, Opa, the Writer's Oddness, “Leave Malaya”
  31. Jerry Seinfeld, Watchmaker
  32. The Way South
  33. The Banker and the Fisherman
  34. Travel and the Anxiety of What Remains Unread
  35. Confident Communicators: What Roaring Kitty and Warren Buffett can teach us about the games we play
  36. The Games We Play
  37. How Losses Made Legends
  38. Trading Places Was Real!
  39. The Meme Every Investor Needs to Grasp
  40. Reflections on Writing, Grinding, and Money
  41. The Algorithm Behind Jim Simons's Success
  42. 🚶‍♂️Writing Walks and the Awe of Spring
  43. Maslow's Lighthouse: Strive for Mastery, Not Money (the money will follow)
  44. How to Find a Partner like Charlie Munger
  45. How the Search for Secular Cathedrals Is Emptying Our Wallets Without Filling Our Hearts
  46. Lessons from the Ultra-Wealthy
  47. ☕ The Gift of Listening: Meet for Coffee, Egg Tarts, or Zoom
  48. The Skillfulness of Stillness
  49. 🎙Audio: Searching for True Words
  50. Searching for True Words
  51. The River and the Silence
  52. 🎙The Birds and the Wasteland (Audio)
  53. The Birds and the Wasteland
  54. How to Find Your Voice
  55. Night Season
  56. 📚Salon: Reading for Pleasure and Going Beyond Words: Events, Practices
  57. Escaping The Midwit Trap
  58. In Search of Ozymandias
  59. ☕ Let's Get Coffee 🗽
  60. Reflections: The Lessons of 2023
  61. Revisiting 2023: Books and Podcasts
  62. The Path of Fear (plus my favorite year-end exercise)

2023 92

  1. 🎙Lyn Alden: Studying the Financial System
  2. Lyn Alden: Studying the Financial System
  3. In the Land of Triggers (Merry Christmas🌟)
  4. The Writing Mission (is to be curious), a New Covenant, and Twelve Questions
  5. The Infinite Ladder
  6. 📚 The Tragedy of Good Ideas Taken Too Far
  7. Farewell to Charlie Munger
  8. Marshmallow Mind
  9. Gratitude, Admiration, and Your Life in 10,000 Days🦃
  10. ✍Journal. Relationships, Teachers, 'Sacred' Spaces, and Learning from Chris Davis, Reece Duca, Scott Bessent, Aswath Damodaran, and Morgan Housel
  11. Ed Thorp: Survival of the Fittest Mind
  12. The Paradox of Happiness
  13. Wisdom to start your week: Stanley Druckenmiller and Charlie Munger
  14. 11 Things I Learned About Investing
  15. The Roman Empire Fallacy
  16. Weekend Journal: Smoking for the Mind, Gratitude, Todd Combs, Buffett in a Nutshell, 👉NYC Sound Meditation
  17. 📚 Broken Money: Lyn Alden's Financial Inevitabilities
  18. ✍Journal: Reflections on Patience, Perspective, and Meaning
  19. 📚 Family of Value: The Davis Dynasty
  20. Five lessons from Peter Brown, CEO of Renaissance Technologies
  21. Three Years Of Writing Online
  22. Focus: The Last Superpower?
  23. Journal: Beal, Infinite Loops, and Asymmetry in Work and Life
  24. High Roller: Lessons from America's Richest Banker
  25. 🎙Podcast: Nervous System Mastery with Jonny Miller
  26. Nervous System Mastery with Jonny Miller
  27. Behind The Curtains of Buffett's Life with Alice Schroeder
  28. The Maze
  29. The Pritzkers: Buffett's Blueprint
  30. Working Without Working: The Creative Night Shift
  31. Filtering The Idea Funnel
  32. The Courage to Stand Out: Sam Zell's Contrarianism
  33. 🎙Cultivating the Creative Seventh Sense with William Duggan
  34. Cultivating the Creative Seventh Sense with William Duggan
  35. Surviving Markets: Why Great Investors Are Rare
  36. 📚How Fortunes Are Made: Revisiting From Predators to Icons
  37. 📚 Wrestling With Intuition (Can You Cultivate Flashes of Insight?)
  38. Meditations: Three Mantras I Like
  39. Escaping the Caterpillar Pillar with Jared Dillian
  40. Escaping the Caterpillar Pillar with Jared Dillian
  41. A Simple Framework for Wealth
  42. 🎙️Community Conversation with Alix Pasquet III: How To Be a Great Analyst
  43. Great Investors See Things Differently (Are Mental Models Actually Pointless?)
  44. Bahamas, Bank Runs, Buffett vs. Druckenmiller
  45. Stanley Druckenmiller is not a happy camper (speeches at Sohn & USC Marshall)
  46. ☕ Community: Travel Meetups (Nassau, Berlin) & WhatsApp
  47. The Virtues of Great Investors: Mark Sellers and Jason Zweig (How is Your Writing?)
  48. Dark Buffett, Buying Banks, Jewish Treasury Bills, and Amex's Float: More Alternate History
  49. Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Best Of
  50. Pain As A Teacher
  51. 👉 Registration: Private Discussion and Q&A with Alix Pasquet III on May 2nd
  52. Are You Building Your Reservoir?
  53. 🌄 Community events update
  54. What if? Warren E. Buffett, An Alternate History
  55. 📚 Can't Escape the Capital Cycle
  56. RSVP Poll
  57. We Carry Our Own Cage (Hangout RSVP and The Painted Bird)
  58. 👏 Hanging Out and/or Live Q&A
  59. The Price of Being a Professional (Succession, Steven Pressfield, and, of course, Buffett)
  60. 📚 Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words
  61. Beware the Mask You Wear
  62. The Derivative Thinker (Robert Wilson, Part II)
  63. Falling Out Of Life
  64. Highlights from Charlie Munger's Conversation with Todd Combs (2022 Singleton Prize for CEO Excellence)
  65. Real Growth is Scary as Hell
  66. Buffett's Lectures at the University of Notre Dame (1991)
  67. Robert Wilson and The Danger of Hubris
  68. Statistically Speaking, You Are The Patsy
  69. Cranking The Learning Machine Up To 11
  70. 📚 Could You Bear Being the Sidekick?
  71. Enough: The Forgotten Lesson of Ben Graham's Life
  72. The Lonely Search for Purpose
  73. 📰 Peter Lynch: Confessions of an Investaholic (1990)
  74. 📚 So Far, So Good: Roy Neuberger's Long Walk Down Wall Street
  75. So Far, So Good: Roy Neuberger's Long Walk Down Wall Street
  76. The 'Berkshire System': Life Advice From a Shareholder Letter
  77. 🎙Drew Cohen of Speedwell Research: Deep Research and Business Counterfactuals
  78. Drew Cohen of Speedwell Research: Deep Research and Business Counterfactuals
  79. 📰Henry Singleton in 1978: “The Sphinx Speaks”
  80. Was Tepper Wrong? Liquidity, Timing, and the Keynesian Beauty Contest
  81. Michael Platt Addendum: Inside the Trader's Mind
  82. 📰 Bill Ackman's First Profile (1993)
  83. Hedge Fund Investing is Hard & Michael Platt's Obsession with Risk
  84. 🎙Podcast: Paul Podolsky and The Paradox of Financial Fiction
  85. Paul Podolsky and The Paradox of Financial Fiction
  86. David Einhorn: The Pequod Returns Home
  87. Thinking About the Tail End and the Long-Term. With Mark Leonard, Nick Sleep, Druckenmiller, Buffett and Reinsurance, Paul Tudor Jones, Alix Pasquet
  88. Buffett Profile from 1979: "The investor's investor"
  89. 📚 How To Invest by David Rubenstein.
  90. 🎙Audio Repost: Watching Game Tapes of History’s Best Entrepreneurs with David Senra
  91. Watching Game Tapes of History’s Best Entrepreneurs with David Senra of Founders Podcast
  92. 2022 Recap: A Foggy Road Is Still A Road

2022 108

  1. Sitting With Uncomfortable Questions: A Different Kind of Year-End Review
  2. Phil Stutz's Tools for Life
  3. 🎙Audio Repost: Josh Wolfe. Using Doubt as Fuel and Bootstrapping an Enduring Partnership
  4. Josh Wolfe, Lux Capital: Macro, Mentors, Motivation
  5. Back in Germany
  6. 🎙 Audio Repost: Patrick O'Shaughnessy. World Building with the Most Interesting People
  7. World Building with the Most Interesting People with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
  8. Between Rest and Overdrive: Are Great Investors Lazy?
  9. Great Investors Build Networks and Never Stop Learning with Alix Pasquet III
  10. Great Investors Build Networks and Never Stop Learning with Alix Pasquet III
  11. Herald of the Change
  12. Magic Words in the World of Magic Money
  13. 📚Investment Library: The Money Game
  14. The Hustler: Lessons from a Young Warren Buffett
  15. On The Other Side of Bubble Mountain
  16. Getting out of Your Own Way
  17. What Creates Opportunity?
  18. 🎙Adam Mead, Author of The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway
  19. Adam Mead, Author of The Complete Financial History Berkshire Hathaway
  20. 📚No Grand Strategy: The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway
  21. 📰Inside the Mind of Young Seth Klarman (1991 Interview)
  22. The Evolution of Endowment Investing
  23. Thinking About the Next Warren Buffett
  24. Stanley Druckenmiller at CNBC Delivering Alpha
  25. Julian Robertson: The Tiger Who Was a Wolf
  26. 🎙Audio: Charlie Bluhdorn: The Conglomerate Boom's Tragic Hero
  27. Charlie Bluhdorn: The Conglomerate Boom's Tragic Hero
  28. Stanley Druckenmiller with David Novak
  29. Follow-Up: Alix Pasquet and the Learning Mindset (Presentation, Transcript, Q&A)
  30. Stanley Druckenmiller and Alex Karp of Palantir
  31. 🎙Audio Repost: Reflections on the Investing Process with Michael Mauboussin
  32. Reflections on the Investing Process with Michael Mauboussin
  33. 🎙Audio: Focus and Finding Your Favorite Problems
  34. Focus and Finding Your Favorite Problems
  35. Alix Pasquet: Learning for Analysts and Future Portfolio Managers
  36. 🎙 The Learning Mindset for Investors with Alix Pasquet
  37. 🎙Audio: The Tiger That Was a Wolf: Lessons From Julian Robertson
  38. Julian Robertson: Lessons From the Tiger Who Was a Wolf
  39. 🎙Audio: Picking Stocks Like Warren Buffett
  40. Picking Stocks Like Warren Buffett
  41. Organizing your mental kitchen for information FOMO (Building A Second Brain)
  42. Family Business
  43. Travel Note: View from the Peak
  44. "A path opens to those who are honest."
  45. Time for a walk (taking a summer break)
  46. Commodities Corporation: Traders, Innovators, and Making a Virtue out of Necessity
  47. Money: One Hell of a Drug. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  48. Workshop Note: Collecting Art, The Family Office Seeding KKR, Jim Simon's 5 Principles, Buffett's Energy Bets
  49. Minds of the Market
  50. 🎙Marc Rubinstein of Net Interest: Fascinating Financials
  51. Marc Rubinstein of Net Interest: Fascinating Financials
  52. Q&A with Nelson Wu of Open Square: Energy and Uncomfortable Dinner Conversations
  53. Stanley Druckenmiller is Taking a Break (Maybe You Should, Too?)
  54. Josh Wolfe, Venture Capital's Passionate Skeptic
  55. Q&A with Scott Reardon: Great Investor Track Records
  56. The Market Has No Memory. Should We?
  57. George Soros: A Life In Full
  58. Workshop Note: Bear Market Traps🐻
  59. 🎙Nick Maggiulli: Just Keep Buying
  60. Nick Maggiulli: Just Keep Buying
  61. One Year In: Man Against Market
  62. Liquidity, Market Signals, and Capital Cycles: Druckenmiller's Interviews of 1988 and 2018
  63. 🎙Sebastian Mallaby and the Machine for Manufacturing Courage
  64. Sebastian Mallaby and the Machine for Manufacturing Courage
  65. Buffett's first major TV interview and 5,106 pages of wisdom
  66. When to listen to markets? Druckenmiller, Diversity, and the Debate over 1987
  67. 🎙Mary Childs and her book The Bond King
  68. Mary Childs and her book The Bond King
  69. Does Wall Street Need New Storytelling?
  70. 🎙Max Frumes: The Caesar's Palace Coup and Distressed Investing
  71. Max Frumes: The Caesar's Palace Coup and Distressed Investing
  72. Stanley Druckenmiller, Part 3: The Crash of 1987
  73. 🎙Investors of Fintwit: Evan Tindell of Bireme Capital
  74. Evan Tindell of Bireme Capital
  75. Fintwit's Tipping Point?
  76. What I Learned From Studying Michael Price
  77. Subscriber Poll: Sebastian Mallaby, Ask Me Anything, Content & Frequency, Audio
  78. Stanley Druckenmiller, Part 2: It's Good To Be Interesting
  79. 🎙Conversation with Jimmy Soni about his book The Founders and the story of Paypal
  80. Jimmy Soni, his book The Founders, and the many lessons of Paypal
  81. Weekly Workshop: Insomnia, ValueHive Podcast, Michael Price, Michael Mauboussin, Pierre Andurand
  82. Stanley Druckenmiller, Part 1: The Young Gun Finds His Game
  83. Will Thomson of Massif Capital: A Reshuffling in Real Assets
  84. Q&A with Massif Capital: A Reshuffling in Real Assets
  85. Weekly Workshop: Longevity and the Search for Equilibrium
  86. 🎙TRANSCRIPT: Dan McMurtrie: Resilience, Recovery, and Longevity in Investing
  87. Dan McMurtrie on Resilience, Recovery, and Longevity in Investing (Re-upload at higher volume)
  88. 🎙Dan McMurtrie: Resilience, Recovery, and Longevity in Investing
  89. Dan McMurtrie on Resilience, Recovery, and Longevity in Investing
  90. Weekly Workshop: Dave Nadig on Russian Stocks, Regime Change, War Trades, Mandelblatt, Pricing Power, Industrials, Twitter Snacks
  91. Weekly Workshop: Ukraine, Icahn, Warren and Charlie, Caesar’s Palace, Lion Tracker, Twitter Snacks
  92. Thinking About Endgames
  93. David Tepper: The King of Bouncing Back
  94. 📚: The Power Law: A History of Systematic Serendipity and Grand Slams
  95. Kai Wu of Sparkline Capital: Tackling Difficult Questions With Unstructured Data
  96. 🎙Tom Morgan: The Voice Telling You It's Time To Move
  97. Tom Morgan: The Voice Telling You It's Time To Move
  98. What I Learned From David Tepper
  99. David Tepper: The King of Bouncing Back
  100. Workshop Note: Reality Tunnels
  101. Conversation with Rob Wertheimer: Studying Great Industrials & Searching for Compounders
  102. Conversation with Rob Wertheimer: Studying Great Industrials & Searching for Compounders
  103. 📚 Lessons from the Titans: Studying Great Industrial Companies
  104. JAB and the Family Office Conundrum
  105. Workshop Note: Culture & Conditions
  106. Michael Bloomberg: Fintech’s People Person
  107. Workshop Note: Learning (And Failing?) in Public with Jim O'Shaughnessy
  108. The New Year’s Conundrum

2021 82

  1. Going Pro: A Recap of 2021.
  2. Henry Ellenbogen’s Playbook for Durable Growth
  3. The No-Nonsense DAO Q&A with Kash Dhanda
  4. Workshop Note: On Ambition
  5. Transcript: Conversation with William Green: Mastering Your Mind
  6. Conversation with William Green: Mastering Your Mind, Resilience, and Great Investors as Practical Philosophers
  7. William Green: Mastering Your Mind, Resilience, and Great Investors as Practical Philosophers
  8. Sumner Redstone: Winning Above All Else.
  9. Kirk Kerkorian and the Lessons of Leverage
  10. Workshop Note: Lehrgeld
  11. Bill Miller’s Journey (Part II): Lessons of Triumph and Tragedy.
  12. Gratitude, Desire, and a Money Paradox
  13. Gratitude, Desire, and a Money Paradox
  14. Kirk Kerkorian: The Lessons of Leverage (Part II)
  15. Author Sebastian Mallaby on Understanding Legendary Investors
  16. Sebastian Mallaby: Understanding Legendary Hedge Fund Investors
  17. Workshop Note: Wen Rich, Ser?
  18. Clutter and the Clean Slate.
  19. The Rise of Media-First Investors
  20. The Nomad Partnership Letters (Nick Sleep, Zak Zakaria)
  21. Workshop Note: A Weird Initiation
  22. Conversation with Dominique Mielle, Author of Damsel in Distressed
  23. Author Dominique Mielle: Damsel in Distressed
  24. Bill Miller: An Investor's Evolution (Part I)
  25. The Reading Obsession
  26. Workshop Note: Squid Game
  27. Kirk Kerkorian: The Lessons of Leverage
  28. Workshop Note: Inventing Yourself
  29. David Geffen: Capitalizing on Talent
  30. Table of Contents
  31. Workshop: Taking Stock
  32. Interview with David Clarke, author of the unpublished Floyd Odlum biography
  33. Q&A with Author Luke Burgis
  34. Workshop Note
  35. The Complex Case of Floyd Odlum
  36. The Milken Way
  37. Mistakes were made (I did a dumb thing)
  38. Zooming in on history
  39. Have I Got Your Attention Now?
  40. Marc Rich, Part II: Profits over Politics
  41. Marc Rich, Part I: Riches in Regime Change
  42. Betting on change
  43. The Crash of 1987: Julian Robertson’s Test of Conviction
  44. The Most Important Insight(s)
  45. Bernard Arnault: Empire Builder
  46. Business History with Gary Hoover
  47. 📚 Studying Predators
  48. The Rise of Bernard Arnault
  49. Workshop Note and Thinking about Desires
  50. A Legacy Transformed: John Elkann’s Journey
  51. Workshop note
  52. The Chobani Story
  53. Dealing With Mistakes
  54. How to move on (but faster)
  55. George Soros's Layers of Conviction
  56. Accepting Rejection
  57. How Craig McCaw Pioneered the Wireless Age
  58. The Beauty of Vulnerability
  59. Ready to go
  60. Barry Diller’s System of Discovery, Debate, and Development. Part II.
  61. Barry Diller’s System, Part I: Diller’s Roots.
  62. A Big Announcement: Going Pro.
  63. The Scarcity Struggle
  64. Divorce, Denial, Dissonance Reduction
  65. Where did the time go?
  66. Weekly Note: Personal News, Reading, Podcasts, Some Sleuthing
  67. The College Friends Who Bet Their Way to Billions
  68. Emerging Manager Addendum & Stuff I Loved
  69. Attempting the Impossible
  70. Personal Note and Poll (+Weekly Learning)
  71. A Call to Adventure (#23)
  72. Stalking Bubbles: Paul Tudor Jones, 1987-1990
  73. New Paths (#21)
  74. Barry Diller's Beginner's Mind
  75. Dangerous Distractions (Notes #19)
  76. Thinking Big: Lawrence Stroll's Race to the Top
  77. WSB & GameStop: The Market's 'OK Boomer' Moment (#17)
  78. La Casa Del SPAC (#16)
  79. People & Ideas (#15)
  80. Boone Pickens: High Stakes Games in a Tough Industry (Part I)
  81. People & Ideas (#13)
  82. Alexander Tamas: the VC you've never heard of

2020 12

  1. Weekly Wrap (#11)
  2. Weekly Wrap (#10)
  3. Birds of a Feather (Dyal, Owl Rock, and a SPAC?)
  4. How do you like the View?
  5. Risk Taker: Irwin Simon's Recipe for Deals
  6. Bai: The Power of "Pure" Passion
  7. Reginald Lewis: Bootstrapping Buyouts
  8. What George Soros and Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About EV Stocks
  9. S-1's, Predicting the Future, Tabletop Gaming Meets AI, Learning with Eddie Lampert
  10. A Big Mac Fortune: How Den Fujita Brought Global Brands to Japan
  11. Yes Before No: How Dan Gilbert Conquered Mortgage Lending (#1)
  12. Neckar's Substack