The weekend is a great time to catch up on some of the reading you skipped during the week. We hope you enjoy this set of long-form links.
Business
“Our mental confusion between frequency of winners and size of winners makes the world of difference to investment returns. ” (The Psy-Fi Blog)
How a financial professional lost his house. (NYTimes)
Five books to help you gain “risk literacy.” (The Browser)
On the long term decline in Sony ($SNE). (SplatF)
Finance
Can highly interconnected investment banks ever be made fail safe? (The Epicurean Dealmaker, ibid)
Is Lazard ($LAZ) the future of investment banking? (Institutional Investor)
Paul Volcker on the unfinished financial reform agenda. (NYBooks)
Robert Shiller with five books on inequality and its role in the financial crisis. (The Browser)
Agriculture
On the high costs to get into the farm business. (Planet Money)
A theory of the period reappearance of the McRib. (The Awl)
Economy
Steve Case and the rise of the “sharing economy.” (The Atlantic)
Why manufacturing is special. (voxEU)
The rise of the female entrepreneur. (New Geography)
Why Americans won’t do dirty jobs. (Businesweek)
Society
Why are our universities failing? (NYBooks)
Cyberschools are here but the results are mixed. (WSJ)
The study in longevity shifts to a group of Jewish centenarians. (NY Magazine)
The REALLY hard part about landing a plan safely without landing gear. (Freakonomics)
Is there a mysterious fifth force affecting our universe? (Discover Magazine)
The dinosaurs were not the only game in town. (Economist)
Profiles
Michael Lewis on Daniel Kahneman. (Vanity Fair)
Malcolm Gladwell on Steve Jobs. (New Yorker)
What Steve Jobs did differently in the “third act” of his career. (Eric Jackson)
Eddie Murphy speaks. (Rolling Stone)
Mixed media
How Businessweek was saved. (AdWeek)
The most enduring books, shows, movies and ideas since 2000. (Slate)
Excerpts from Mark Ribowsky’s new book Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports
. (Bloomberg, part 2, part 3)
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