During the shutdown, I had extra time to read.

Here are five books that I highly recommend.

The Choice by Dr. Edith Eger.

It's a hell of a story.

The woman was a 16-year-old girl in Auschwitz.

She eventually does survive and gets out and moves to Texas and becomes this inspirational therapist.

And half the book is her story, half of it's how she helps other people.

When somebody traumatizes you, the way you think about yourself, and your happiness, and how you relate to the world...

You can't control being a victim, but you can control your victimhood.

It's kind of a hopeful story but it's a very tough story.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

It's such an unusual book, and it's clever.

You go through six different epochs in history where you have people making moral choices, where you see how self-centered and bad people can be and how supportive and good people can be.

You really do feel he captures these different worlds.

It's a grand story about human nature, enduring human values.

The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger.

It's hard to overstate how demoralized and messed up Disney was.

Things weren't in great shape when they got rid of Eisner.

I do consider it brilliant of Iger, that in an age where networks are not important and you're going to have to go direct to consumer that you've got to have a critical mass of the greatest content.

He did a really good job of explaining what the job of the CEO is.

The Great Influenza by John Barry.

He explains how infections work and how the immune system works.

The 1918 Spanish Flu is the first world epidemic where it basically hits the entire world at the same time.

The world was faced with this challenge.

They tried to come up with drugs or therapeutics.

None of those efforts were successful.

Distancing and masks and seeing who's coughing, that was all they had.

If you read this, you will understand a lot.

Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.

This is the most important book of the group because it really is about what do we know in the field of economics that can take the current divisions and try and do better.

It's global but it's mostly about the U.S.

But it's addressing the big issues of the day about people in depressed areas.

How can we be so rich and so many people feel a lack of purpose?

Why aren't we better with economic knowledge of creating more opportunities?

If you want to solve these problems, there's a lot still to learn.

I found all these books really interesting, and I hope you do also.