My Summer Reading Picks: Wealth, Art, and Fiction

I’m halfway through NYU Marketing Professor Scott Galloway’s new book, The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security, and I’m finding it overflowing with very practical advice — and evidence — on how to build wealth through life. Recent graduates are an obvious audience. One of Galloway’s keys: Choose a field that has an employment rate above 90%. Another: Pick the right partner and invest in your relationship. He writes: “One of the worst economic actions you can take is to get divorced. On average, a divorce in America reduces your wealth by about three-quarters — for men and women.” A third key: Invest in real estate. As Galloway puts it, “There are few assets that you can finance 80% of and write off the interest on that leverage/debt.”

Then there are those keys that don’t seem to be about money, per se, but add up to building wealth long-term: Get plenty of exercise for peak performance; become a good communicator. Galloway, raised by a single mother, learned some lessons the hard way, and opens up to readers about the struggles of getting divorced at 33 years old, losing money in entrepreneurial ventures, and not quitting soon enough. His authenticity shines.

I cheered when he cut down the prevailing advice to new graduates: Follow your passion. “If someone tells you to follow your passion, it means they’re already rich,” he writes. Passion will follow, Galloway says, when you’ve mastered your talent. Yes! But my favorite key might be this: “Greatness is in the agency of others.” Translation: Develop your character to build and protect your wealth.

My other nonfiction pick is Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker. Bosker’s latest takes readers inside the exclusive, secretive New York art world and offers her observations of beauty in the wider world. On her wild ride, she serves as an artist’s assistant, lets an artist sit on her face, works for an art gallery where she sells a few pieces, and takes a job as a security guard at the Guggenheim. Her stories are captivating and her approach immersive.

I put some of Bosker’s tips into practice while visiting my colleagues at Michigan State University last month. On a visit to the MSU Broad Art Museum, I didn’t immediately look at the text next to the piece as I usually do. Instead, I followed Bosker’s instruction: Notice five things about the piece; stay in the work. “If you get stuck, move. Get closer, walk backward, or go around it,” she writes. I was glad the museum was nearly empty that afternoon while I studied and moved around the museum’s signature doomscrolling exhibit, a weaving artist’s sharp take on cultural quirks in our always-on, digital age. Bosker’s book strikes me as an ideal summer read, a work to absorb and apply when things slow down.

On the fiction side, I’ve just started Mary Kay Andrews’ new beach read, Summers at the Saint. I am a newcomer to Andrews’ work, having come to it through Friends & Fiction, the community she cohosts. So far, I’m intrigued by the way she weaves in today’s real-life challenges of finding summer help in a coastal town where the cost of living is out of reach for many would-be hires. The owner of the posh hotel comes up with an inspired solution for her employees.

I’m looking forward to fellow Friends & Fiction cohost Kristy Woodson Harvey’s A Happier Life, out June 25. It’s about a young woman who discovers the family she’s always longed for when she spends a summer in North Carolina. Family, friendship, and love buttress this novel, which Harvey has called her favorite yet.