Marc Andreessen posted on X last year: “There is so much alpha in books from 1870 to 1930, it’s unreal.” If you operate in the world of venture capital or finance, you know that the word “alpha” refers to outsized returns. Figuratively, it also means possessing rare knowledge or insight, you know, something that helps you see farther than the rest.
There is so much alpha in books from 1870 to 1930, it's unreal.
— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) August 24, 2024
A few days ago, I chanced upon Andreessen’s post again and this time it nudged me to dig a little deeper into the story behind it. I realized he was, yes, nodding to history but at the same time, he was pointing toward a repertoire of wisdom, much of which is forgotten in an era drunk on the present.
So the span from 1870 to 1930 was one of unrivaled intellectual output. It was a time when writers, both in fiction and non-fiction, produced some of the most groundbreaking work the world has seen.
To understand why Andreessen would single out this period, you need to look at the backdrop of those years. The Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914) had begun and was reshaping cities and nations.
Railroads were binding countries together. Electricity was lighting up the nights. While the world world brimmed with possibility, the simmering existential fears of wars and revolutions threatened to derail the human progress.
In the midst of this upheaval, a wave of writers, thinkers and storytellers went into a full-throttle mode to offer learners of the day and generations to come something worthy of reverence.
The Fictional Visionaries
Those six decades Andreessen pointed to gave rise to novels that still spark the imagination. It’s as if the writers from that era operated on a different frequency altogether. Let me walk you through a few of these visionary minds…
Joseph Conrad – the famous Polish-British writer published Heart of Darkness in 1899. It’s an unflinching look at the brutal underside of colonialism interwoven with one man’s descent into madness in the African jungle. It is also a parable for any age that mistakes progress for moral license. In another classic Lord Jim (1900), Conrad explores honor, cowardice and redemption.
Another literary titan born in this era was H.G. Wells. Famous for foreseeing many of the 20th century’s technological and social upheavals, Wells wrote The War of the Worlds (1898) in which he imagined a violent alien invasion tearing to shreds humanity in a shrinking world.
The Time Machine (1895) proved to be a landmark work of science fiction, inspiring countless derivative stories in both film and literature. At its heart, it was a commentary on class division, a warning that technology’s advances often come at the expense of equality.
In Russia, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels were drilling deep into the human soul. The Brothers Karamazov (1880) grappled with questions of faith, freedom and morality. If you observe closely, these are issues still haunting our secular age.
Crime and Punishment (1866), though slightly earlier, casts a long shadow over this era. Its protagonist, Raskolnikov, embodies the clash between rational ambition and ethical restraint – it’s a conflict many entrepreneurs know all too well.
In America, Mark Twain gave us The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a story that peeled back the layers of race and morality in a young and troubled nation. Huck’s journey down the Mississippi became both an inspiring tale and a mirror held up to a country reckoning with its identity.
The Non-Fiction Titans
If fiction revealed what might be or what already was, non-fiction from this era provided the tools to make sense of it all.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1891) shook the foundations of Western morality. With declarations like “God is dead,” Nietzsche challenged his readers to question long-held assumptions.
His concept of the Übermensch – a superior being who defines his/her own values kind of resonates in today’s entrepreneurial landscape, too. All the major league disruptors, including Andreessen himself, discarded convention to pursue ideas others considered too radical or impossible.
A few years later came Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). This book unveiled the subconscious and forever changed our understanding of human behavior. His insights extended far beyond psychology – touching literature, advertising and even corporate strategy. Understanding desire became crucial to understanding action.
Across the Atlantic, Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams (1918) offered a unique blend of autobiography and cultural critique. Adams stood at a crossroads between pre-industrial America and the electrified world unfolding around him. His work explored the dissonance between what one is taught and what one lives through. For the curious, this is alpha-grade insight into dealing with fast-changing times.
Then came Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which coined the term “conspicuous consumption.” He explained how people buy to signal status. As a shining dynamic of the influencer economy, status-signaling today has exploded. In a world driven by appearances, Veblen’s observations remain uncomfortably accurate.
A Closing Thought
Andreessen’s point was clear: the past holds real, applicable wisdom for the present. The period from 1870 to 1930 was a crucible where industrialization, technology and the human condition collided to produce works of timeless value. These authors, across genres, wrestled with the same questions that haunt us today:
- What does it mean to be human in an age of machines?
- How do we hold on to morality when the world beneath us keeps shifting?
- And how do we carve our own path in a world that constantly tries to shape us?
Mining this era for its alpha means recognizing that the best insights often emerge from times of chaos. If these writers could see the future so clearly, it’s because they were forged in hard times and didn’t flinch from what they saw. Their works remind us that clarity often arrives dressed as disillusionment.
©BookJelly. All rights reserved