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[Note: this review was written for an advance copy, so there may be minor differences between references made here and in the first edition.]

Contrary to my own expectation, I quite enjoyed Peter Thiel's newest book. Though put off by some of Thiel's contrarian (and in some cases, delusionally bullish) opinions, after reading , I was pretty excited for their latest collaboration. While the latter half of the book is chock full of startup advice, the first half reads more closely as an explanation of macroeconomic trends Thiel's noticed over years in the trenches.

Some assorted thoughts:

(1) In the very beginning of the book, Thiel shares his answer to the central question: "What important truth do few people agree with you on?" (and the corollary: What valuable company is no one building?). He takes a very binary approach to the question, siding on the side of technology in the "globalization v. technology" debate. This was one instance that recurred a few times throughout of Thiel seemingly viewing the world as more binary than it is, ignoring questions like "Could increased globalization lead to technical advancement?".

(2) Thiel frequently references the characteristics of "great companies" and the importance of resilience and creating value in a crowded world (and more importantly, capturing that value). In this way, he sounds like Charlie Munger, who talks about the importance of capturing value in his . Great stuff.

(3) There are more than a couple of strawman arguments Thiel makes (and recognizes, I'm sure, as a trained lawyer), including a particularly impassioned ramming of the lean movement, without recognizing the possible justifications for it (instead bucketing it into some dogmatic way of thinking Thiel has no time to address) -- while I stomached it, it still annoyed me a bit while I was working through the book.

(4) Likely my favorite bit of the book was Thiel's bit on our indefinitely optimistic vision of the future, where he said: "... in an indefinite world, people actually prefer unlimited optionality; money is more valuable than anything you could possibly do with it. Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself."

While there's plenty that bugged me about this book, I'm still really glad I read it. Throughout my reading, Thiel's contrarian-as-hell opinions gave me a fantastic mental sparring session. Which, I'm sure was one of his intentions (maybe even more so than being right).