[Khornet]

Instead of us ticking each other off, I just thought of something.

No, I don't mean "insert predictable Khornet/Malone/Agricola response here"

Choose a book I should read, and I'll choose one for you. I don't mean I should choose, e.g., Ann Coulter's 'Treason' (which I haven't read) or that you should choose the equivalent. I mean an interesting, calm,reasoned book which shaped your thinking, or explains your weltanschauung.

Anyone else welcome to play.

Takers? I'll be back in the AM.

[agricola]

khornet,

by all means - but recently debates have sunk to the level of factual error and not esoterics, so aside from people reading before the debate one isnt sure what one would gain from another slanging-match.

by the above i do not mean you or most of the people here - the guilty will recognize themselves.

[MicroBalrog]

You'd all be laughing, but my current polical stance was shaped by a great website and reinforced by an admittedly bad book. Anybody care to guess which ones?:evil:

[2dogs]

For agricola, if you've never read it:


http://www.rkba.org/comment/cowards.html

:)

[MeekandMild]

All, I'd recommend "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Got nothing to do with contemporary politics but there is a pretty good exposition of an hypothetical future government's desire to eliminate its minority group because they are inconvenient and well armed.

[Iain]

Anyone who thinks that I am a bleeding heart should read

Jonathon Glover Humanity - A moral history of the twentieth century

[Oracle]

MeekandMild,

That is the exact book that I was going to recommend. That book, more than anything else, has shaped my political philosophy. I highly recommend it to any and everyone.

[jimpeel]

The political philosophy engendered in "Starship Troopers" make it a good read.

[MicroBalrog]

If nobody said it before, Unintended Consequences.:evil:

[twoblink]

Agricola,

What 2dogs said to read is great.

http://albert.achtung.com/rkba/audio/index.html

I have it recorded (me reading, with misspeaks and a Californian accent) if you are too lazy to read, and want to download the audio version. :D

[Khornet]

Noted.

A couple that come to mind for me:

Reagan: In His Own Hand a compilation of his writings, mainly his radio addresses when he was Gov. of Cali. They are wonderfully lucid, simple and direct, and for me they illustrate the great gulf between plain sense and the waffling 'nuance' of the leftist intellectual.

Witness by Whittaker Chambers still relevant

Darkness At Noon Arthur Koestler

American Caesar William Manchester

Goodbye Darkness William Manchester

And for a nonpolitical book, but one of the sweetest I've ever read,
A Soldier of the Great War Mark Helprin

Will look for Mr. Glover's book

[Monte Harrison]

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand. Not for gun issues, but the human condition in general.

[Art Eatman]

I don't know that I ever got some sort of epiphany from ideas in any particular book, as to political views. Many books I've run across articulated ideas which for me had previously only been feelings about how things should be.

In my teens and early twenties, I lived in or travelled fairly extensively in many foreign countries. Twenty or so. I've travelled out of the country, since then, and have been all over the U.S.--at least 40 of the states. I think that a lot of my political views come from observing the way other systems work--or don't work--and thinking, "I don't like that way of doing things."

I'm not quite an Elmer Keith, to claim "Hell, I was there!", but I'm working on it. :) From my observation of life in this country, looking back through some 45 years' worth of my adult years, the degree of satisfaction on the part of the overall populace has decreased as governmental powers have increased. Material well-being has improved, but personal contentment is in steady decline.

This degradation of contentment is, IMO, a direct result of the leftward drift in this country. IMO, you cannot increase governmental controls over the daily lives of people and simultaneously make them happier.

Art

[Iain]

I've never received an epiphany either. The book I suggested is a wonderful synthesis of philosophical ideas on morals and twentieth century history. The best bit about it is that it is so easy to read, Glover does not approach writing the way Kant did - which is nice.

It would be very difficult to call it a commie book either - he goes into the Gulag's as much as he goes into the Holocaust. It covers, in addition to these, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and My Lai.

He talks about the way the past lives in the present:

Sir Arthur Harris used the First World War blockade as a precedent for his bombing policy in the Second World War. He also took the slaughter in the trenches as a precedent to avoid. Harris's policy made easier the fire bombing of Japan, which itself paved the way to the use of the atomic bomb. The First World War was alive at Hiroshima.

As a history student this is new stuff in one sense, we routinely become uninvolved in what we study and the past as we remember it, Glover reminds us in a new way of the horrors of last century. We shouldn't forget as Glover goes on to say

In a speech to the SS men going in to Poland, Hitler told them to kill men, women and children without pity. He suggested their acts would be forgotten: ''Who remembers now the massacre of the Armenians?'' There is a chilling similarity between this and Stalin's comment while signing death warrants: ''Who is going to remember the riff-raff in ten or twenty yeats time? No one. Who remembers the names of the Boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one.''

[grampster]

What Art says. Although I have roamed about a bit I never have traveled to the the extent that Art has. I did have a father who died in 1999 at the age of 92 when I was 56. Therefore I had a living book of history at my beck and call my entire life. He never finished the 10th grade. My dad was a fanatical observer and reader of anything and everything and had the blessing of being able to retain and recall most of what he read and observed and experienced. He was a postal employee who worked nights till 1AM and spent the rest of the night reading. He taught himself quantum physics, for example, by reading everything he could on the subject. That was after he taught himseslf algebra and geometry and basic physics sitting up late at night. He was also a naturalist who camped and hunted and fished the wilderness that America still was when he was a youth. He never married till he was 35 and also a decorated combat veteran of WWII. He was also an artist and a musician.

He was an unschooled factory rat renaissance man. I managed to absorb a lot of what he told and taught me. I think he and the habits in inculcated in me caused me to be the observer of the human condition in a wide sense and have the philosophical leanings that I do. I also tend to look at what folks DO rather than what they SAY with respect to whether what they say has any value or meaning.

grampster

[Snake Eyes]

Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, Hunter S Thompson

There's Nothing In The Middle Of The Road But Yellow Stripes And Dead Armadillos, Jim Hightower

Boy Genius, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, Carl M. Cannon (about Karl Rove)

Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, Molly Ivans, Lou Dubose

The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner (This book is critical to understanding why gun control will come to pass)

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson

Think you've BTDT? Try this one:

No Mercy--A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo, Redmond O'Hanlon

[agricola]

The Conquest of Mexico : Hugh Thomas

Himmler : Peter Padfield

any of Lynn McDonald's books dealing with the Great War.

[ACP230]

Principles of Personal Defense by Jeff Cooper.

A small book with an important message.

[Malone LaVeigh]

In the Absence of the Sacred - The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations By Jerry Mander Sierra Club Books, 1991

There are several reviews online if you do a Google search.

I also would recommend anything except Hayduke Lives by Edward Abbey. That one was written not long before his death and is not in the same league as the rest. In general, his fiction is a bit dated, but the political, social, and philosophical polemics in his collected essays are still excellent and true.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Assembling California by John McPhee

.
.
.

Thanks for the invite. I'd love to play, and I'll makje a list, but I don't think I'll have time to read a book any time soon. Maybe things will slow down in the winter.

[Khornet]

I've read Assembling Calif.....and just about everthing from McPhee. He's one of my favorites.

[DaveB]

McPhee, Abbey, O'Hanlon, Zinn, Thompson, Hightower... Wow. Perhaps THR is not so reactionary after all.

'Desert Solitaire' - Abbey - The most important book I've ever read.

'The Curve of Binding Energy' - McPhee - Hard to pick one of his, but this one's wonderful. Try 'The Survival of the Birch Bark Canoe' and 'The Starship and the Canoe'.

Also, 'The Killer Angels' - Shaara

db

[atek3]

economics for real people by Gene Callahan (very funny book, you'll probably forget you're learning something about economics)

101 Things to do until the revolution claire wolfe

Don't Shoot the bastards yet claire wolfe

Ballad of Carl Drega Vin suprynowicz

Lever Action L. Neil Smith


5 fantastic books, that give you a basic idea where 'free market/ free mind' libertarians are coming from.

atek3