Books

Todd’s book list (ongoing)

Too few adults read on a regular basis, which is an individual and societal tragedy – the consequence of which may be under-developed minds, unaccustomed to entertaining and processing new thoughts. Additionally, a poor grasp of historical events deprives us of the opportunity to choose different paths from our forebears that could steer us away from mistakes, pain, conflict, war and even genocides of the past. Societally and culturally, it seems that we tend to insert emotion, reactivity and bluster into the domains which should be managed by reason, discussion and thoughtful consideration. Can we make progress as individuals and peoples without reading broadly,… without entertaining the information, arguments, imagination and lines of thought that might not otherwise require the exercise of our minds? Without some understanding of the lives, ideas, plights and victories of others? What might happen in our minds if we spent more time with books than we spend being influenced by news media, social media, political circus and mass-produced popular culture?

The books I select tend to be related to liberty-minded themes, revisionist history, foreign policy, economics, and quality fiction. I keep at least one book going at a time, although it will take me a few weeks to get through most of them. Slow reader, maybe,… and an easy sleeper. Sometimes they spend an inordinate amount of time on my nightstand as I slowly digest a few pages at a time before drifting off. I also enjoy a number of podcasts (like Tom Woods, Tim Pool, Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Russell Brand, Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity,,…), online courses (like offerings from the Great Courses), and Audible audiobooks for my daily commute. Feed the brain, expand the mind.

Everything I list here has taught me something valuable, helped develop my world view, and challenged my biases and ignorance. Just because it’s on my list doesn’t mean I endorse it fully, or perhaps much at all. (“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – attributed to Aristotle, but if he didn’t say it, I will.)

My goal is to read from a good book every day. Then, no matter how bad the day may have been, I accomplished something worthwhile. Generally, in order from most recent, backwards to about 2007, I’ve kept a running list of good books I’ve read (or audio-booked) and can recommend. Some, I’ve returned to from years past:

• Mao: The Unknown Story – Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
• America’s Cultural Revolution – Christopher F. Rufo
• The Collapse of Complex Societies – Joseph A. Tainter
• The Great Awakening – Alex Jones
• The White Pill – Michael Malice
• The Marxification of Education – James Lindsay
• The Samurai’s Garden – Gail Tsukiyama
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It – Chris Voss
• These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs, and Wrecks, America – Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
• Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties – Tom O’Neill
• The Terror of Existence – Theodore Dalrymple
• Life at the Bottom – Theodore Dalrymple
• The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam – Barbara W. Tuchman
• The Zimmermann Telegram – Barbara W. Tuchman
• The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex – John Leake and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
• Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane – Justin Hart
• Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams – Steven J. Milloy
• The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve – G. Edward Griffin
• It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
• A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Centurey: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life – Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein
• Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
• Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam – Vivek Ramaswamy
• The Real Anthony Fauci: Bille Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
• Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
• Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism – Sharyl Attkisson
• Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds – Michael Knowles
• The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
• A Plague Upon Our House – Scott W. Atlas, MD
• Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy – Andy Ngo
• Anton Chekhov: The Complete Short Novels – published by Everyman’s Library
• Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief – Jordan B. Peterson
• A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles
• The Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene
• The Flashman Papers – George MacDonald Fraser
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding
• Scoop – Evelyn Waugh
• The Devil She Drew – Nate Ferreira
• Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and its Postmodern Parentage – Michael Rectenwald
• The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense – Gad Saad
• The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity – Douglas Murray
• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life – Jordan B. Peterson
• The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People who Treat You Like Dirt – Robert I. Sutton
• The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 – Dorian Lynskey
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty – Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler
• How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed – Slavenka Drakulic
• Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions – Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
• The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
• Gridless – Eric Whetstone
• Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman
• Japan’s Infamous Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan’s Wartime Human Experimentation Program – Hal Gold
• White Man’s Problems – Kevin Morris
• Greenlights – Matthew McConaughey
• The Anatomy of Peace – The Arbinger Institute
• The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
• Welcome to the Monkey House – Kurt Vonnegut
• Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
• Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster – Svetlana Alexievich
• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – Michael Lewis
• The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass
• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
• A Separate Peace – John Knowles
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
• Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1979: The Story of the Captivity and Life of a Texan Among the Indians – Herman Lehmann
• The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 – John Toland
• A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
• The Lone Gladio – Sibel Edmonds
• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World – Peter Frankopan
• The Foundations of Morality – Henry Hazlitt
• Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators – Ronan Farrow
• Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
• Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos – Jordan B. Peterson
• The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II – Iris Chang
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – Susan Cain
• Thunderstruck – Erik Larson
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford
• Permanent Record – Edward Snowden
• Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA – Tim Weiner
• Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France – Evelyne Lever
• House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power – James Carroll
• The Portable Hannah Arendt – Peter Baehr (with a focus on Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism)
• The Most Dangerous Superstition – Larken Rose
• Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala – Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer
• The House of Government – Yuri Slezkine
• Anna Karenina – Tolstoy
• The Rise and Fall of Society – Frank Chodorov
• Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion – Sam Harris
• The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong – Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull
• Sophie’s Choice – William Styron
• The Confessions of Nat Turner – William Styron
• Burr – Gore Vidal
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson
• The Good Soldier Svejk – Jaroslav Hasek
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• The Old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens
• Pay Any Price: Greed Power, and Endless War – James Risen
• The Untold History of the United States – Oliver Stone
• The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government – David Talbot
• How Will You Measure Your Life? – Clayton Christensen
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) – Clayton Christensen
• Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years – David Talbot
• The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington’s Perilous War for Hegemony – Paul Craig Roberts
• Lost in Translation: Vietnam: A Combat Advisor’s Story – Martin Dockery
• Classified Woman-The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir – Sibel Edmonds
• Traitor: The Whistleblower and the “American Taliban” – Jesselyn Radack
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State – Glenn Greenwald
• Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World – Patrick J. Buchanan
• The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America – David Stockman
• A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East – from the Cold War to the War on Terror – Patrick Tyler
• Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert Heinlein
• The Idiot – Dostoyevsky
• The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town – John Grisham
• 1876 – Gore Vidal
• Martin Eden – Jack London
• The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Remarque
• Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
• Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto – Lew Rockwell, Jr
• FDR Goes to War – Burton Folsom, Jr
• Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America – Russ Baker
• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
• Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West – Blaine Harden
• The Lost History of 1914 – Jack Beatty
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
• Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case – James DiEugenio
• War is a Racket – General Smedley Butler
• The Days of the French Revolution – Christopher Hibbert
• Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
• Walden – Henry David Thoreau
• War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
• The Market for Liberty – Linda and Morris Tannehill
• The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine
• No Treason – Lysander Spooner
• Socialism – Ludwig von Mises
• America’s Great Depression – Murray Rothbard
• Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
• Roots – Alex Haley
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
• Candide – Voltaire
• The Failure of the New Economics: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies – Henry Hazlitt
• The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good – William Easterly
• End the Fed – Ron Paul
• Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope – Chalmers Johnson
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – Edward Gibbon
• Man, Economy and State – Murray Rothbard
• Economic Thought Before Adam Smith – Murray Rothbard
• Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
• Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty – Ivan Eland
• Common Sense – Thomas Paine
• Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse – Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• The Innocents Abroad – Mark Twain
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal – Ayn Rand
• Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
• Libertarianism: A Primer – David Boaz (ed.)
• Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution – Michael Tanner
• Infidel: My Life – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – John Perkins
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire – Chalmers Johnson
• Empire – Gore Vidal
• Inside the Company: CIA Diary – Philip Agee
• Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression – Mary J Ruwart
• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• 1984 – George Orwell
• Animal Farm – George Orwell
• The Road to Serfdom – F. A. Hayek
• Two Days That Ruined Health Care (And How You Can Provide the Cure) – Wm C. Waters, III, MD
• Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy – Percy Greaves, Jr.
• Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion – Walter Nugent
• Gulag Archipelago – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
• A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
• A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
• The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces – Radley Balko
• Lies My Teacher Told Me – James W. Loewen
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2011 – Steve Coll
• We the Living – Ayn Rand
• Philosophy: Who Needs It? – Ayn Rand
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
• Bleak House – Charles Dickens
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse – Peter Schiff
• New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America – Burton Folsom, Jr
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History – Thomas E. Woods
• A Foreign Policy of Freedom – Congressman Ron Paul
• Lies the Government Told You – Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
• The Revolution: A Manifesto – Ron Paul
• The Road – Cormac McCarthy
• The Law – Fredric Bastiat
• The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
• Human Action – Ludwig von Mises
• Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Simplest Way to Understand Basic Economics – Henry Hazlitt
• Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century – Thomas E Woods, Jr
• The Virtue of Selfishness – Ayn Rand
• Democracy in America – Alexis de Toqueville
• Liberty Defined – Ron Paul
• The Real Crash – Peter Schiff
• Anarchy, State and Utopia – Robert Nozick
• The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War – Thomas DiLorenzo
• Anthem – Ayn Rand
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes – Peter Schiff