Posted on 12/20/2005 11:08:46 PM PST by Darkwolf377
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman.
Peace Kills (America's fun new Imperialism) by P.J. O'Rourke. Heck for that matteranything by P. J. O'Rourke you can't go wrong with
Second that nomination.
There has been a wave of new books about the Founders in recent years, of which Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers and McCullough's John Adams are standouts. Isaacson's bio of Benjamin Franklin is a good read, but not quite in the same league with those other three. I haven't read the recent Washington bio (I forget the author) or the Doris Kearns Goodwin bio of Lincoln yet.
I almost read the whole book in the store--great stuff. Odd, isn't it, how Katie Couric and her lib pals haven't featured it on their shows....yeah, sure.
I just finished the Anti-Chomsky reader and Our Culture, or What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple. Both are recommended, but the latter moreso (better writing, better anecdotes).
These are the books I'm reading off and on and hope to finish before 2006:
Cube and the Cathedral (about Europe's antagonism towards Christianity)
Fighter Boys (Battle of Britain)
Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the 7th to 12th Century
The Well Educated Mind (summary of the classics of world literature)
Cowboy Capitalism (U.S. vs. E.U. economics)
The World is Flat (Important book about globalism many conservatives will overlook because its written by Friedman, but his political positions are genuinely unpredictable--takes some shots at Bush, but they're rather lame and miniscule compared to the summary of the Brave New World that we are not only entering, but have already entered)
Into Abba's Arms by Sandra Wilson
Darkness at Noon (I've never read it!)
Cabinet of Curiosities (Preston and Child, writers of Relic)
Rough Guide to Rock! 100 Essential CDs
And if you're into comic books, Essential Avengers Volume 3 and Showcase Presents Jonah Hex
Next on the chopping block once some of those above are complete:
Burden of Bad Ideas by Heather MacDonald
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
Life at the Botton: Worldview that Makes the Underclass (by the aforementioned Dalrymple)
and Smoke and Mirrors, the short fiction of Neil Gaiman
There, aren't you glad you asked? I have no life.
-Paul Hollander (Ed.)
Running with Scissors
-Augusten Burroughs
Eats Shoots & Leaves
-Lynn Truss
I've been on a Jack Du Brul kick lately and have read several of his novels. They're entertaining with far-fetched plots and good cast of characters. I've enjoyed them all except his first novel("Vulcan's Forge") which crossed over from far-fetched into idiotic territory.
Our Culture, or What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple is a FANTASTIC book--I've been babbling about this to all my friends. I urge any FReeper to check this out. I have no real idea about Dalrymple's political leanings, but he is an intellectual who speaks plain truths. I'm so glad you mentioned this, and I hope FReepers reading this thread will check that out. Dalrymple's a doctor living in London, I think, and has an original perspective--he worked with the poor, and doesn't come off as some liberal socialist robot as one might expect. Very enjoyable, but I hated having that cover looking at me for a couple weeks....
Darkness At Noon is a great book, btw, but you've heard that already, I'll bet.
For fun:
"The 100 Best Films To Rent You've Never Heard Of": By David N. Meyers.
A superb slim selection of little known films from every genre to rent or buy
"The Complete Far Side": By Gary Larson
My sides still hurt!
"The Fools In Town Are On Our Side": By Ross Thomas
Three complete stories focusing around a sacked US secret agent hired by a genius and his assistants, a hooker and a retired cop to make an already sleazily corrupt southern town even more corrupt.... Thomas at his sharpest, wittiest best!
Jack.
I think there's a blurb on the book jacket comparing him to Orwell, which might be a bit of an embellishment, but it still doesn't take away from his incisive analysis of the many cultural maladies blighting Western society.
England and Europe, but also the United States to a certain extent.
If you want to check out his writings you should try the website for City Journal, a quarterly from the Manhattan Institute.
He's a regular contributor.
The Thomas sounds good. I can't stand these cookie cutter crime and endless serial killer novels. I'll take a Donald Westlake book over any of 'em.
Just finished "Washington's Crossing" by David Hackett Fisher.
Currently reading "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge and "Engines of Creation" by Eric Drexler.
Recently bought and read:
Michelle Malkin--Unhinged
Recently got as Christmas gift (and am reading):
Eugene Bergmann--Excelsior! You Fathead! (about
Jean "A Christmas Story" Shepherd)
It's sad to think that with Bob Grant leaving the scene most of the talk radio pioneers will have disappeared from the landscape.
Barry Farber still has his show, right?
I almost bought the Malkin, but it was criminal to charge that amount for such a thin book.
ping
Malcolm Johnson, On The Waterfront: Published over the summer, this is a collection of the author's 26 original "Crime on the Waterfront" series of newspaper articles (for the original New York Sun) of the late 1940s that exposed the depth of organised crime's corruption of the New York ports---and won Johnson a Pulitzer Prize. The book includes subsequent magazine writing on the same subject by Budd Schulberg, all of which led to the writing and making of the film of the same title.
Steven Goldman, Forging Genius: The Making of Casey Stengel: In which the Baseball Prospectus contributor debunks forever the myth that anybody could have managed and won all those championships with the 1949-53 Yankees.
Ken Wells, editor, Floating Off the Page: The Best Stories From The Wall Street Journal's "Middle Column": Just what the title suggests---an anthology of amusing, engaging, enlightening, and pleasingly silly stories.
Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me: Found it in a secondhand book store, it's the second of the legendary radio comedian's two memoirs . . . this one (published after his death in 1956) covering his childhood and his vaudeville years with something between poignance, pungence, and puckishness. The man really could write.
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