WHAT TO READ
TTPers are readers and thinkers. A number of you have asked what I’ve been reading lately. I thought that now would be a good time, as we start a new year, to answer. It’s also a chance to take a break from the general insanity of current events.
What follows is not advice for you. Your interests are specifically yours, and none of these books may ring your bell. But they all rang mine to various degrees. There are too many to provide reviews. The link for each is to the listing on Amazon containing a multitude of comments and quotes.
The list here is the books I read in 2012. Most of them, I bought the Kindle version and read them on my iPad. I really recommend this.
Yet I also re-read favorites ensconced in my library – such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (the link is to the Kindle edition, at $4.27). Also on Kindle now is Ludwig von Mises’ compact classic, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. This should be required reading for every conservative.
About once a decade I complete Will Durant’s entire The Story of Civilization. This takes some time, as it’s eleven volumes, 10,000 pages, and four million words. I’ve had the set in my library for 40 years, and last year I finished it once again. Amazon has The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set) in hardcover for $439 – but the Kindle edition is only $12.74 per volume.
OK, so here we go – one year’s reading. I think you’ll find at least some things here that will intrigue you. And now, please tell us what your favorite books are on the Forum!
The Jade Steps.
The one book on this list I most encourage you to read – and buy a copy of for every friend you have in the world! And feel completely free to add your Customer Review!
The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope
John Allison. I cannot recommend this more highly. The best, clearest, and most comprehensive explanation of how government policies are the source of our economy’s problems by a guy who was in the trenches and saw it happen.
A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic
Nicholas Eberstadt. A concise account of what has created the Obamanation.
No Apology: The Case for American Greatness
Mitt Romney. And now we all have to suffer from the incomprehensible stupidity of voters not electing him.
Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington
Rick Perry.
The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America
Sen. Tom Coburn
The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas
Jonah Goldberg
America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats)
David Gelernter
The American Phoenix: And why China and Europe will struggle after the coming slump
Charles Dumas & Diana Choyleva
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
Rodney Stark
Civilization: The West and the Rest
Niall Ferguson
How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)
David Goldman
Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins
Robert Spencer
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
Masha Gessen
The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future
Victor Cha
The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
Martin Meredith
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker
The Artful Universe
John Barrow
Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
Thor Hanson
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Richard Wrangham
Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
Ian Tattersall
Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans
Brian Fagan
Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind
Mark Pagel
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
Brian Sykes
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
David Anthony
Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City
Gwendolyn Leick
The Silk Road:A New History
Valerie Hansen
Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
Sebastian Seung
The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body
Frances Ashcroft
Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
George Church & Ed Regis
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
John Ratey
Back to Blood: A Novel
Tom Wolfe. I’m not into fiction, as you can see, but I can’t resist Tom Wolfe.
There’s one last book – last because I just got and started it. It’s Can Big Government Be Rolled Back? by Michael Barone.
Barone is one of the absolute most astute observers of American politics, and as gobsmacked as I was that Zero was able to cheat massively enough to defeat Romney.
This is his recipe for how we might just possibly be able to reduce Leviathan to size. Let’s call it my first book of 2013. There will be many more – and I hope there will be many more for you.