Welcome to my reading list. Below are listed some books that gave me something to think about, were informative, or just plain really entertaining. A search for answers in this crazy world. The titles are links to Amazon.com websites. Reviews are posted there, to give you ideas of what each book is about.
History, Economics, Sociology, Worldly Stuff
- The Great American Deception by Ravi Batra. Beyond the cult of Academia. Don't let the sensationalist title fool you. Batra was to economics what Martin Luther was to Catholicism.
- Fatal Harvest edited by Andrew Kimbrell. This is about where food comes from.
- Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler. traces the history of the influence of the automobile.
- Dot Con: The Greatest Story Ever Soldby John Cassidy. Sure. We all wish we had gotten in and out in time. Somehow it instills more pride than pulling the lever of a slot machine.
- The Pentagon Wars. This is about military contracting.
- How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman. This is pretty good.
- Coming of Age by Studs Terkel Pay attention to the old medical doctor fed up with hyper-specialization of medicine, the carpenter, the judge who circumvented a selfishly ambitious prosecuting attorney, the black police officer, and many of the others.
- World On Fireby Amy Chua. Does something to defeat the continual self-reassurance of mindless dogma
- Coming Home To Eatby Gary Nabhan. Most of the money you spend on food goes to Advertisers, Middlemen, and Poison companies, and their lobbyists. For an inferior product.
- Liar's Pokerby Michael Lewis. The market isn't rational.
- Moneyballby Michael Lewis. If you can't out Yankee the Yankees, you're going to have to try another way of building and managing your team.
- Pacific Riftby Michael Lewis. Our understanding of free market principles is much different than what the Japanese practice, but not much different from what the Japanese want us to practice.
- High Tech Hereticby Clifford Stoll. Clifford Stoll questions the busy mindlessness component of ambition.
- Chuck Amuckby Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones is a good story teller. California seems interesting before the 1950s. An interesting snapshot of a time and place.
- An Incomplete Education by William Wilson and Judy Jones. I like the coverage of foreign policy and history of different countries
Neat fiction and stuff
- Tales of a fourth Grade nothingby Judy Blume. Fudge went on to play the Incredible Hulk opposite Eric Banna.
- The Mouse and The Motorcycleby Beverly Cleary
- Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny
- After the Blueby Russel Like. A satire of how we are enculturated.
- Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. He presents an interesting take on the biology of evolution and what population stressors are for humans and how they may be adapted to.
- The Gilded Ageby Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. Great contemporary fiction from 1873 to shake off the noise of revisionist economists and professional public opinion shapers.
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Sure most of her followers are nuts, but the theme of superior minds just ditching out strikes a chord. Ayn Rand uses a remarkable ignorance or misconstruing of American history, railroads, metallurgy, and electricity to build a premise for her beliefs. She was wrong about soy beans too. We also happen to now have massive trade deficits with countries much more socialistic and/or authoritarian than we are. In conclusion, every premise set in this book is massively false.
- Island by Aldous Huxley--a long Socratic dialogue weaving through a narrative. The Serpent in this particular paradise is the Sears Roebuck Catalog.
- Ragtimeby E.L.Doctorow
List maintained by Ryan Costa. Last updated 2004
