I may have basically skipped a week on this... felt off routine, but I did write a unique review on Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game (#1540851) so whatevs. #1533284

The listing on old BOOK on BOOKs reviews shall resume!

Here's one I was reminded of yesterday, George Mekhail's Bitcoin parenting book, I Am Not Your Bruh: 21 Keys to Sound Parenting from back in 2024, published in the Mining Issue of Bitcoin Magazine Print, released Q1, 2025. (Mention and direct links are a condition of my permission to republish the content online). Also extracts from the book here, here and here.)

"Nothing has made me want to become a parent more than reading George Mekhail’s new book. It’s truly inspiring to think about parenting with a plan and an intention, with guides and tips to help you along the way."

...speaking of how to make grand openings, how's that! #1547911...

I Am Not Your Bruh is jampacked with colorful anecdotes and thoughtful advice. While there’s very little Bitcoin sprinkled across the 200-odd easily digested pages, Mekhail’s conversational writing and humorous twists make the book hard to put down. I read the first third in a single setting on the porch on a cool summer’s eve, sporadically gazing into the distance and imagining what it would be like to put his advice into practice.

I will return to the book again and again.

Right off the bat (neatly expressed in the book’s strange title), Mekhail launches the first volley at modern (fiat?) parenting: “Parents who prioritize being overly chummy with their kids have a fundamental misunderstanding of the critical and irreplaceable role they play in the lives of their offspring” (page 3). The point comes across more fully in the chapters about obedience and rules. The family is not a democracy: “Mom and Dad are the final decision-makers in any healthy home” (page 139).
Mekhail’s 21 chapters form a solid rebuke to the soft, permissive parenting styles you might find on legacy media talk shows or lining the aisles in your local bookstore. He’s not advocating for some draconian regime, but he’s certainly pushing back against the idea that your kid is your buddy: You’re supposed to be their guide, their mentor — not their “bruh.” You are responsible for them, not the other way around. You’re here to show them how to be in the world, meaning you must live all your rules doubly so.

Kids are perceptive and have a well-developed sense for inequity: If you complain about your kids complaining, they’ll take note and realize that your words don’t mean very much. At one point, Mekhail recounts telling his son to clean his teenage room only to moments later bring out the vacuum cleaner to deal with the mess in his own office. At least he has integrity, speck in your neighbor’s eye etc. “Ensuring my office is clean is no revolutionary act, but in doing so, my authority to give this instruction to my child becomes exponentially more effective” (page 174). 

I appreciate the seriousness and the open dialogue the Mekhail family has. Do you understand why x happened? Do you have any questions about why we did y just now? The “ask questions later” part of the obedience rules “has produced some of the healthiest conversations of their upbringing” (page 143): 

“It is in these mundane follow-up conversations where taking the extra step as a parent demonstrates to your child that you are not just winging it or throwing around your authority without reason” (page 138).

Some of what Mekhail recommends may seem harsh but “the intention is to plant seeds that foster greater self-reliance, critical thinking, and ultimately problem solving” (page 149). The long-term, antifragile view, so thoroughly adopted among Bitcoiners, is on full display here. 
The aspects that most speak to me in I Am Not Your Bruh is precisely that personal responsibility journey: “93% of Sound Parenting is working on yourself and becoming a better human” (page 52) — the rest, Bitcoin (duh).

All of the things a Sound Parent wants to convey to their kids start by showing it, by living it, by acting out the very ideas that you’re also trying to inculcate in your kids. That’s why I Am Not Your Bruh is so approachable even for readers without kids. We can all get better at being human, an obvious benefit in raising another human.

Mekhail spends much effort on language. Enforcing a household rule for not using words we can’t define is great, with a wonderful “sats jar” (instead of a “swear jar”) for trespassers. It’s not that some words are universally bad and therefore shouldn’t be used, but that we invoke them inappropriately when we don’t know precisely what they mean and what effect they cause in others. For kids and much as for adults.

...thus in the Book-ish household, you may curse as much as you want (sartorial and linguistic irreverence... #1540851, #1533284); you just have to understand -- and pay the price for -- the impact those words have, be tactful about how they land with others...

Some of the other language emphasis I’m less sold on. Is there a meaningful difference between saying, in the context of just having done something stupid, “I am so stupid” and “That was a stupid thing I just did” (Chapter 5)? We are what we do; a stupid person is someone who repeatedly does stupid things. The microscopic distinction carved out in “If someone is BEING a jerk, it is okay to tactfully let them know they are BEING a jerk without calling them a jerk” (page 49) is undermined by the cumbersome and roundabout speaking that Mekhail, in the very next segment, is happy to attack as sensitivity culture: “In our modern world, we are increasingly pressured into walking on eggshells to avoid offending people for whatever issue they have developed a sensitivity to in any given context” (page 50). Uh-huh. What happened to “Don’t listen to the insecurities of others who need you to shrink down so they can feel better about themselves” (page 37)?

Besides, none of it fits with the rest of the book’s emphasis on resilience and lamenting that society has become soft on, say, authority or responsibility. 

But the biggest criticism of I Am Not Your Bruh might be the romanticism it conveys. Sure, Mekhail promises over and over again that it won’t be as easy as it seems, that every piece of advice he and his wife have painfully put into practice took plenty of hard work and much failure. Still, the memorable bits of the book are the success stories, not the many failures getting there.

Mekhail is the VP of Operations at Bitcoin Magazine and thus to some extent my boss. Perhaps you think that colors my impression. Perhaps you think that makes me biased and a sycophant (yes, I know what that word means). 

If so, you should just read the book and tell us where we went wrong.

QUOTES: 

• “[Parenthood] starts with the simple acknowledgment that everything in your world is now different. There was life before kids, and now there is life after kids” (page 9)
• “I have a loose personal policy that basically makes me immune to being offended. The policy is: don’t get offended” (page 50). 
• “The more I have learned about Bitcoin, the more I’ve learned about human nature, economics, health, spirituality, sustainable communities, work and yes, family. All of these aspects of life impact the way I parent, and the further down the rabbit hole I travel, the more I’ve developed ways to bring my family along on this transformative journey” (page 101)
• “if an audible gasp and quick intervention follows every minor cry for help or every small expression of pain, kids can drift into an early onset understanding of the surface-level incentives to adopting a victimhood mentality” (page 147).

BOOK on BOOKS review archive:

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (#1540851)

Gradually, Then Suddenly: A Framework for Understanding Bitcoin as Money, by Parker Lewis (#1536970)

Fiat Ruins Everything: How Our Financial System is Rigged and How Bitcoin Fixes it, by Jimmy Song (#1530254)

Bitcoin One Million, The Final Chapter of Fiat, by Fred Krueger & Ben Sigman (#1521960)

Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC, by Roger Ver (#1525907)

The Philosophy of Bitcoin, by Álvaro D. María (#1517354)