What Book most influenced your political beliefs?

http://boston.com | 3/12/02 | me

[FreeInWV]

Shotgun News!

[Burkeman1]

Hmmmm- I tried to read "Atlas Shrugged" about a year ago on recommandation from a friend. I found it highly stylistic and polemic. What made me not like it was that she has the same style of leftist preachy writers. It is unbelievable. Her heros are always cookie cutter and the situations are always so staged.

I guess I never got her because I read her when I was already an avowed anti ideologue and a conservative and not a "libertarian". But regardless of that- one has to plow through her books like one does an L. Ron. Hubbard novel. She is an atrocious writer in the 1930's Stalinist mode- but what she has to say has more truth than most.

[lara]

I don't think I realized it at the time, my senior year in HS, but I would have to say, Ayn Rand's Fountain Head.

[seowulf]

I'm reading "1984" now. First re-read in 20 years. "Brave New World" is another. Anything by Bastiat, including "The Law" and "That which is seen and that which is not seen".

[LarryLied]

Tom Swift books.

[oc-flyfish]

1. The Bible

2. Both Rush Limbaugh books

3. David Horowitz - The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits

[Burkeman1]

good call

[jimfree]

The Greening of America by Charles Reich - It was a wonderful exposure to leftist thought. Reich tossed many softballs that were easy to slam out of the park.

[lara]

Sorry. I meant, The Fountainhead.

[Frohickey]

Green Eggs and (Green) Ham ;)

[doug from upland]

Easy. I read it in 1964 when I was 16. Barry Goldwater -- WHY NOT VICTORY?

[Free the USA]

Atlas Shrugged

[habs4ever]

Witness, by W. Chambers.Then Kirk's Conservative Mind.Also a nod to Muggeridge's Chronicles of Wasted Time.All excellent and deserving of being in the canon of budding right wingers everywhere:-)

[dagny taggert]

Excellent answer, and one I wouldn't have thought of. You're right, Lord of the Flies had a huge impact on me. Up until then I thought that people were born innocent and good, and were corrupted as they grow up. I now believe it is the other way around, that babies (while they may be "innocent") have no concept of good, and must be taught to think of others.

[tortoise]

Hmmmm- I tried to read "Atlas Shrugged" about a year ago on recommandation from a friend. I found it highly stylistic and polemic. What made me not like it was that she has the same style of leftist preachy writers. It is unbelievable. Her heros are always cookie cutter and the situations are always so staged.

Yeah, I read it about six months ago for the first time and I thought it was mediocre as a novel, though I suppose it could be viewed as a reasonably decent treatise. The style and construction is kind of shoddy as a work of fiction.

[TAP ONLINE]

ROAD TO SERFDOM, HUMAN ACTION , VON MISES & VON HAYEK, CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY

[opinionator]

Green Eggs and Ham