The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
This book is closer in length to an eighteenth-century pamphlet than a typical twenty-first-century book and it would also fit in a large-ish jacket pocket. In The Greatest Sentence, Walter Isaacson examines the most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Isaacson offers a very brief overview of the context for the document being written and some of the context for the words, taking us back to Locke and the usual crew and urging us to work toward the common good like Benjamin Franklin. The Greatest Sentence is celebratory without being jingoistic. It is a nice accompaniment to the season of semiquincentennial celebration.
When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Gradyon Carter (Penguin, 2025)
It’s just as you’ve heard, absolutely bewildering for people in the writing or publishing world today. There were expensed breakfasts and interest-free home loans at some of these magazines. All the editors at Vanity Fair had cars and drivers. Carter narrates his rise in the world of magazines chiefly with humility and wonder. He recognizes that it was an opulent, magical world. That humility and wonder is balanced against some passages that seem completely insincere. He claims all his work at Spy was good-hearted fun, counter to evidence. Then he was suggests that on arrival at Vanity Fair he encountered a “poisonous and subversive attitude.” I thought he liked subversive! He is very generous to many people, but can also be harsh on others he claims to appreciate. Can Anna Wintour feel deeply respected when described as someone who “can be a warm and loyal friend” but “can also be a cold and loyal friend?” How can he be dining at home most nights and also have regular tables at so many restaurants? According to the text, Carter was also somehow right about everyone long before the rest of us: Trump, Weinstein, and Epstein. (But Roman Polansky deserves to be left alone.)
In the end, the inconsistencies don’t matter that much. They can even be amusing. Carter is describing a world that no longer exists and we are reading for a glimpse of that world. He has great stories. His writing style and his philosophy of life is entertaining, even for those of us who will never own custom-made suits or want to sneak out of the Met Gala early. Those working in print right now may not want to know about the contents of this book. If you think it will depress you to much to read it, you may be correct. But you should know that Carter is appreciative of it all and recognizes his good fortune.
Untamed Unicorns: Why Startup Finance is Broken and How to Fix It by Renée M. Jones (Harvard, 2026)
Everyone wants to invest in the hot new thing, but almost everyone is also a bit uneasy about the growing gap between valuation and reality. Ted Gioia writes frequently about the extremely high valuations of AI companies, which contrast so starkly with their inability to come close to profitability. Even worse, many of the most AI-heavy tech companies seem to be propping each other up. This fall, Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything (2026) about Elizabeth Holmes is one of the most-anticipated documentaries in years. Holmes got Theranos up to a valuation of $9 billion, even though it was never remotely capable of delivering any of its promised products. We have more “unicorns”—startups valued at $1 billion or more—than ever, but many of them turn out to be mythical indeed.
In Untamed Unicorns, Renée Jones argues that startup finance is broken. Jones identifies several issues, including a longer time between founding and IPO, which allows companies to grow very large before facing mandatory disclosures; SEC changes; and the growing number of startups which enter the market “through mergers with Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs).” SPACs are not subject to anything close to the regulatory scrutiny or even investor and VC oversight of traditional IPOs. VCs used to keep most startups and founders under some kind of control, but they struggle to do that now (see Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, 2022). Untamed Unicorns offers a detailed diagnosis of the condition of startup finance, reflecting Jones’s expertise as a professor of law and former director of the Division of Corporate Finance at the SEC. But the book goes beyond outlining the regulatory angle, to examine how startup financing affects investors, employees, and consumers in society at large. The final chapter offers a roadmap for reform. But rich in evidence and eminently readable, Untamed Unicorns is a compelling and timely read.
