Favorite Books

in my humble opinion…

Favorite books:

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas: an outstanding overview of the roots of Western civilization, from the ancient Greek and Romans through modern times. Fascinating read, especially about the rise of Christianity from an obscure offshoot of Judaism to a major world religion.

The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again by Caleb Carr: the author, a contributing editor of MHQ, the Quarterly Journal of Military History, makes a compelling case that the historical track record of campaigns directed against civilians have almost invariably backfired.

Galileo's daughter by Dava Sobel: extraordinary overview of the man who invented the scientific method and whose struggle to raise empiricism above the concrete interpretation of sacred texts is one we continue to fight today.

The Accidental Theorist by Paul Krugman: if you slept through econ, pick up this book. He skewers both the left and right (his chapters supporting globalization and the spread of free markets and condemning the French as a people who just don't get it are classic).

Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith: if you've only read excerpts, get your hands on the original and read it cover-to-cover. It is astonishing how timely his tirades against tariffs, government manipulation of markets, fixed price and wage schemes, etc. are. This Scot practically invented what we now know as economics and it all came from this book.

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester: a fascinating read about the battle between a totalitarian church and a deeply superstitious, Dark Ages bound Europe. He makes papal politics and theological arguments read like a novel.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay: this 1841 classic was a favorite of Bernard Baruch, who managed to side-step the 1929 crash because of its pearls. I read the book in the late '90's and saw so many parallels with the go-go .com bubble it scared me. If you want historical proof that "when everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is doing much thinking", this is it.

The Good Life: America and Its Discontents by Robert J. Samuelson: a classic point-by-point refutation of the oft-advanced but difficult-to-support argument that we are worse off than our parents or grandparents. He shows that by every measure from life expectancy to per capita income to home ownership to hours worked to real (inflation-adjusted) wages to access to health care and technology we are incomparably better off than our predecessors. He advances several theories as to why public perception is so at odds with objective reality. (POTUS actually claimed this was one of his favorite books while on the campaign trail in election 2000.)

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King: an excellent defense of non-violent civil disobedience and why it paradoxically reflects much more strength than resorting to violence.

I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World by James Melvin Washington (Editor): the title says it all. We all heard snippets of his speech on the Mall at West Point; read it in its entirety as well as his carefully-thought-out positions against racism, violence, and the urge for quick, violent fixes to deeply entrenched societal injustices.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela: a moving account of his struggle against apartheid and why he chose forgiveness over retribution following his release from decades of captivity (from 1962 until 1990).

An Army at Dawn: The war in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson: an excellent account of the bumbling initial Allied response to the German juggernaut. The North African campaign is much less known to most Americans than the epic battles at Normandy and Iwo Jima but the tactics learned here led to the outcomes on other fields, as Atkinson so ably points out. Atkinson manages to cover this period with poetic imagery as well as brutal facts about American missteps and horrific losses. The American-British rivalry, downplayed in the effort to create a united front, is covered in detail. It is interesting when one reads this book to realize that Atkinson found out by satellite phone in the middle of a dessert that he won a Pulitzer Prize in history for it while covering a real war half a century later which he was covering in Iraq.

The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the fight has even begun.

- Erwin Rommel

January, 2006 Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas: Books by Elaine Pagels. A very interesting read about the authorship (and censorship) that went into the creation of the collection of works that Christians now refer to as the New Testament. The Gospel of Thomas was the other side of an argument that was silenced by early church authorities. (The Gospel of John was the other side of that argument; it is from John that most Sunday school children are taught that Thomas was "doubting".) According to Pagels, the author of Thomas was arguing that salvation could come internally, by tapping into the spirit of God within each of us, and that Jesus had taking Thomas aside and secretly given him insights that he did not share with his other disciples. John took the other side of the argument, advocating that salvation could only come through one very rigidly defined formula, and that ideas such as this undermined the authority of the church. A fascinating look at the bitter partisan bickering that went on before certain texts such as Thomas' were excluded from the official canon.

Underworld by Don DeLillo. I was halfway through this mammoth tome in Switzerland in 2001. I returned after 9-11 and picked up the book where I left off - check out the creepy cover (an actual shot of the Twin Towers from Trinity Church where Alexander Hamilton was born):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684848155/104-1222420-7874354?v=glance&n=283155

I wanted to look up words. I wanted to look up velletty and quotidian and memorize the f...kers for all time, spell them, learn them, pronounce them syllable by syllable - vocalize, phonize, utter the sounds, say the words for all they're worth. This is the only way in the world you can escape the things that made you." [543]

"You have a history," she said. "that you're responsible to... You're answerable. you're required to try to make sense of it. You owe it your complete attention." [512]

Atonement by Ian McEwan was also interesting, rather well-written: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,555614,00.html.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, although older, is perhaps one of the best books I ever read.

The Constant Gardener by LeCarre recently.

Mansfield Park by Austin was aso good but long. If you read Reading Lolita in Tehran (nonfiction), the author shows how this book is actually quite contemporary.

11/6/05 God's Politics, by Jim Wallis, 2005

11/05 Mansfield Park, Jane Austin

10/05 The Prize

10/05 the Price Of Loyalty, Paul O'neill

10/05 Amsterdam, Ian

9/05 Krakatoa

5/05 a Brief History Of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

4/05 Don't Think Of An Elephant

4/05 The Battle For God, Karen Armstrong

11/27/04 Cuentos en Español (Short Stories in Spanish) edited by John R. King (Penguin, 1999) including stories by Javier Marías, María dos Prazeres by Gabriel García Márquez, The Possessed by Antonio Muñoz Molina

11/20/04 Misbehavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot (Basic Books, 2004)

10/04 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

9/04 Evolution : The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory

9/04 War Talk by Arundhati Roy

8/04 Against All Enemies by Richard S. Clarke

7/04 The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

7/04 Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken

6/04 Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

12/03 Walden by Henry David Thoreau

8/02 Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis

8/02 Passion of the Western Mind by RICHARD TARNAS

1/02 Galileo's Daughter

1/00 Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and Confusión de Confusiones by Charles Mackay, edited by Martin Fridson

12/99 The Good Life and Its Discontents : The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement by ROBERT J. SAMUELSON

1998 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

1995 Stocks for the Long Run Bernie Siegal

1995 The Shipping News Annie Proulx