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Ugh. If Only Meyer Had Ever Read…
A great many men have been dubbed, “The Last Man to Know Everything.” Indeed, the epithet is apparently a mildly popular sub-genre of biography. Well, I don’t know everything or anything close to it. Never will, either, which — depending on the mood — is either depressing or exciting. Regardless, I have personal and professional reasons to want to learn more stuff about things, particularly on subjects for which I’m either ignorant or poorly informed.
So, Ricochet, here’s your chance to influence this pundit’s thinking and/or make me a better human being: my next book will be chosen by you, based on whichever suggestion receives the most likes in this thread, and I will write at least one post on the subject. The winning selection must be new to me, in English, be under 400 pages, and be available for less than $25 through Amazon or iBook. Fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, history, science, biography, religion … I’m yours to influence.
For background, I was a History and English double major at a school with a reasonably traditional curriculum in those departments and my interests since have tended towards science and economics. For pleasure, I tend to read historical and science fiction, and I’m a late convert to comic books/graphic novels. For more detailed reference, my Goodreads account is a reasonably accurate account of my reading since I created it in 2009 (there are earlier entries, but they were added after the fact, usually to round-out series).
So, Ricochet, have it at. Set me straight. Educate me.
Published in Literature
The Go Ren No Sho (The Book of Five Rings) by Musashi.
Short, english translation available, under $25 and can lead to lots of discussion.
On religion and current events (because he speaks to the times in a way I found astonishingly relevant, given he’s an early 20th century author): Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.
On the roots of Islamism: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, by Robert Coram. Available on Amazon for $13.69. Here’s the link.
John Boyd was an Air Force fighter pilot who was the must influential person you’ve never heard of. He codified the art of dogfighting, (EM Theory) then applied that same thinking to aircraft design (F-15, F-16, A-10), then took that thinking to the ground game (maneuver warfare) and completely changed Marine Corps doctrine and had significant impact on the Army. He also challenged the ways in which weapons are procured, and tested. His behind the scenes actions of the initially rigged testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle became the movie “The Pentagon Wars” and led to life saving changes.
The conclusions of the book took me completely took me by surprise. I had my understanding of military, defense, procurement and testing matters COMPLETELY rewired.
This is a must read for anyone with an interest in the future of our country. If after you read it you don’t agree that it contains extraordinary lessons, I’ll buy the book back. And I’ll make a donation to your favorite charity.
I rather enjoyed The Just City by Jo Walton. Using SciFi/Fantasy as the format, she digs into the heart of that great Utopian project which has been at the heart of so much suffering in Western civilization – past, present, and undoubtedly future.
My very erudite son highly recommends The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman.
The Knife Man just popped up on BookBub as being on sale for $1.99 today. This is a biography of John Hunter, a late 1700’s surgeon who started believing that the scientific method should be applied to surgery, and that doctors should have instruction in anatomy. (The world would still have to wait a few more decades for germ theory, unfortunately.) He spent years of his life exploring the human body and employed grave robbers to acquire what he needed. If you are up for some gory details on the start of helpful practices in medicine and some sad, dark, fascinating exploration of history, this book is for you. Many parts of it feel surreal–it’s incredible how different the world was and how differently people thought. For example [warning, disturbing content next paragraph],
the book describes tussles over the bodies after public hangings. The families wanted to bury their loved ones whole in view of a future bodily resurrection; Hunter’s reps wanted the bodies for dissection.
Hunter had a vast collection of preserved human parts in his home. He was obsessed with anatomy. It used to be that you were probably better off not enlisting a doctor’s aid if you were ill. Treatments were silly and barbaric. Without Hunter’s obsession, it may have taken us longer to get where we are today.
On a less important note, I prefer much prefer the alternate cover to the one featured for the Kindle sale.
The World of Yesterday, by Stephan Zweig.
Zweig, the son of a wealthy Jewish industrialist in Vienna, was one of Europe’s most famous writers in the years just before World War I and in the decades that followed. He wrote short stories, plays, essays, even opera librettos.
He was aghast at how his beloved, high-culture Austria could descend into the madness of World War I, along with Europe’s other powers. And he watched it happen again in the late 1930s. He devoted his life to the issue of “culture” and avoiding political insanity.
He was forced out of his home in Salzburg by the Nazis, lived in London for a while, then finally settled with his wife in Brazil to wait out the catastrophe of World War II.
The World of Yesterday is partly autobiography, but mostly it’s a brilliant account of Europe descending into chaos. It paints a remarkable picture of how this happened, and what the effect of political madness is on ordinary people. It’s just brilliant.
Zweig finished writing The World of Yesterday in 1942. He took his manuscript to the local post office, sent it off to his publisher in New York — then went home, where he and his wife committed suicide.
It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I learned more about European history reading it than I’d imagined.
Could this be the beginning of a Ricochet book club?? What an enthralling challenge!
I am impressed by your reading list (and the fact we have read so many of the same books has nothing to do with it).
However, notably absent are some of biggest titles of all time. You mention religious books, but I do not see Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (never out of print, translated into over 200 languages, considered one of the most significant books of English religious literature). I will not mention the all-time best seller, but at least read the Gospel of John!
Have read the Aubrey-Maturin books several times, totally excellent! A distant second (IMHO) in the genre is the Hornblower series.
I grew up on science fiction, you need to read more Bradbury.
For biographies, unless I missed it in your list, try McCullough’s John Adams. While I’m thinking of David McCullough, his “Path Between The Seas” – about the Panama Canal – was both a good read and enlightening).
Years ago I read a biography of Tesla by Margaret Cheney It was also a good read, enlightening and thought provoking. If you have any interest in the history of science, you might enjoy this one.
Most of my reading has been a bit off the beaten path, so I’ll stop now.
Off hand, I’d say just about anything by Robert J. Sawyer. He writes science fiction novels and in every one of his books that I can think of, he will teach you something about real-life science, whether it be biology, genetics, physics, psychology, whatever. And while there have been SF authors who do go into the science, some of them don’t have compelling characters. Sawyer does the hard science and the characters well. Triggers is one of his more recent novels and it’s a heck of a ride.
Heinlein, Starship Troopers.
Really. Forget the movie. The book has a deeply conservative vision of society.
I’m hearing the “Grand Budapest Hotel” soundtrack in my head at this moment.
Suggestion: “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” by Daniel Okrent. One of those great sprawling histories that shows you how things you never thought were related were cut from the same bolt of cloth.
None of these are fiction, but:
Try Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai. It’s her story about the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s time.
Paul Revere’s Ride or Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer are both well done histories in which narrative is not lost.
The City of Man by Pierre Manent.
Indispensable guide to the self-understanding of modern man.
Two books that gave me a radically-different, non-Western way of looking at things were Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, and The Book, by Alan Watts.
(Trying to remember books that were important to me from long ago was a fun and worthwhile exercise, BTW.)
There are no books by Thomas Sowell in your reading list; probably an oversight. However, if you actually haven’t read any of his stuff, you’re in for a mental feast. Sowell has a genius for making complex subjects crystal clear. Even his deepest book, Knowledge and Decisions, can be understood by mere mortals.
I suggest starting with his latest work: Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective. In fewer than 250 pages, Sowell provides a sweeping overview of the impact that geography (location, terrain, climate, soil fertility, flora and fauna, access to navigable waterways, elevation), culture (including attitudes toward work, education, and change), social factors (demographics, geographic and social mobility, education, innate intelligence), and politics have had on wealth and poverty throughout the world.
The book is a distillation of a number of his earlier works, including the brilliant “culture trilogy” (Race and Culture, Migrations and Culture, and Conquests and Culture) that anticipated Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, and did it better.
The Book of Mormon
It’s fairly short and gives some fascinating insight into the religious history of two ancient groups in Mesoamerica. There are even political parallels to our current situation:
And it came to pass that in this same year, behold, Nephi delivered up the judgment-seat to a man whose name was Cezoram.
For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted.
Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction. Helaman 5:1-3
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears. Historical fiction. Great writing and history. Very thought provoking about civilization v barbarism, the intended consequences of actions and the unintended consequences and how difficult it is to tell the difference. Best of all, the author doesn’t tell you what you should conclude. This’ll tell you a little more about it.
396 pages; $12.99 Kindle, 11.46 paperback
Burning the Days, by James Salter. (Amazon pb, $12.37; 387 pp). The memoirs of a great novelist, screenwriter and fighter pilot. Salter left the Air Force to join the NY intelligentsia, a decision he sometimes regretted. The Apollo astronauts were his flying peers, and his description of watching the moon landing with his Italian mistress is exquisite: “I have never forgotten that night or its anguish. Pleasure and inconsequence on one hand, immeasurable deeds on the other. I lay awake for a long time thinking of what I had become.”
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford. A wild mix of fiction and fact. Set in the Soviet Union in the 50s and 60s after the fall of Stalin, it is the best, and certainly the most entertaining, exposition of why central planning failed. Best summed up by review in The Sunday Times (UK):
365 pages + many pages of the best footnotes you’ll ever read.
$9.99 Kindle; $12.22 paperback
And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II by Jacques Lusseyran
“Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us…I could light myself…that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting… God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive.”
He wrote another book “The Pollution of the I” which receives a whopping 4.40 on Goodreads, but alas, it is above your stated price limit.
I’m going to suggest three – and I think you can scarf up all three used, off Amazon for under $25 total – including shipping!
A Lion In In The Streets by Adria Locke Langley – 1945 – loosely based on Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana – not politically correct – politics, romance, murder, corruption – amazingly rich language of the Old South, a wild, wild ride – especially in an election year! They made a movie out of it (which I have not seen with James Cagney) – I am half-way through and it is crazy!
Faith Can Master Fear by G. Ernest Thomas – 1950 – a little unassuming book that addresses every kind of fear you can imagine – even if you have no fear, this book is so well written and full of wisdom it is worth its weight in gold. Read it and pass it on to others.
Light From Many Lamps Lilian Eichler Watson – 1951 – I just found this at a library book sale on Saturday. A compilation of great quotes, thoughts etc. from Francis Bacon, Cicero, Lord Byron, Proverbs, Talmud, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Moore, Mary Pickford, Franklin Roosevelt to name a few.
With such an interesting year ahead, all three are food for thought!
Any of the seventy or so books written by Bishop Fulton J Sheen. You don’t have to be Catholic to love this guy. Many of his quotes are available on the Internet,such as, “Hearing the confessions of nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn.” He was the face of the Church in America in the fifties. He had his own prime time TV show. Could you imagine that now.
Here are a few suggestions for books that I think would be outside your normal literary orbit, Tom:
For something closer to your regular interests, I’d suggest more Neal Stephenson.
Afternoon Tom,
Under the topic, what is the source of human behavior: “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt, “Not by Genes Alone” by Richerson and Boyd, “Tales of Ex-apes” by Jonathan Marks.
One book I recommend to all conservatives who oppose the radical environmentalist agenda, but don’t really know why is:
In a Dark Wood by Alston Chase
or his first
Playing God in Yellowstone
neither book is a screed against the motivations of the environmental movement, but they both show how misguided environmental science leads to bad outcomes.
He also has two books about the Unabomber that are very interesting.
Micheal Crichton credited Alston Chase for his change of thought on environmentalism while researching his anti-AGW book: State of Fear.
I looked at your reading list, and you have a few Derbyshire books there but not Prime Obsession. I really recommend it for anybody that has any interest in mathematics.
“New to me” meaning you’ve never heard of it before? Or just haven’t read it?
Several collections of essays on science (and, I believe, one on science and art) by Jacob Bronowski greatly improved my understanding of science.