Free Republic

Freepers Everywhere! Will you be at CPAC? If so, I hope to meet you! Look for Pamela Geller table and Marinka Peschmann's table in the Exhibit Hall space on the lower level of the Marriott. I will be there and hope to meet you! Pamela Geller's MUST READ book, "Stop The Islamization Of America will be available. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/atlas-articles/ Marinks Peschmann's MUST READ book, "The Whistleblower" (How the Clinton White HouseStayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House and on the World Stage) will be available too! http://www.marinkapeschmann.com/2012/02/08/in-the-dc-area-come-to-my-book-signing-at-cpac/ Also look for the events on Friday that you won't want...

Pollster and political analyst Scott Rasmussen says the U.S. is in the middle of a worsening fiscal crisis and the federal office charged with estimating the country's debt has missed the mark by trillions. Rasmussen, of Rasmussen Reports, released this statement today following yesterday's Congressional Budget Office report on the nation's debt: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday reported that the federal budget deficit is projected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2012. That number is troubling enough but the reality is much worse. The United States will actually go about $4 trillion further in debt during the year. The difference...

"Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work," Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers' success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity's greatest British and American writers—including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates—"to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time- novels, story collections, plays, or poems." Of the...

What books are people currently reading? Any particular fiction or non-fiction of note? Any recommendations from some recent reads? I just downloaded the novel Hunter by Robert James Bidinotto for my kindle. It's an indie novel and has received good reviews on Amazon. Will report back once I finish up.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A class reading assignment infuriates the parents of a 14-year-old Valley Traditional High School student. They said their daughter's questions about the book left them speechless. The book is called "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." "She was masturbating and (describing) how to masturbate and how she did it and also giving a boy a (expletive) and going into great detail of how to perform it," said Vincent. Vincent took the book to her daughter's step-father, who became speechless. "Her being the age that she's in right now, you just freeze up. You don't know...

The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all. The Online Books Page was founded, and is edited, by John Mark Ockerbloom, He is a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He is solely responsible for the content of the site. The site is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, who provide the server, disk space, and network bandwidth for the site. They also employ the editor,...

This list is my opinion of the best nonfiction books on the subject of economics, policy or law that came out in the year 2011 (with one exception). Though it is probably too late to pick these books up in time for Christmas, readers are encouraged to look into the after-holiday sales and check out some of the best work from the past year. “Keeping the Republic: Saving America by Trusting Americans” – Gov. Mitch Daniels Daniels is the current governor of Indiana. He was also the speaker at a recent Mackinac Center event, where he gave a taste of...

Bob Dickerman of the Staunton, Virginia News Leader writes: It’s reassuring, I think, that so many homes in our area have more guns than books. As the NRA keeps reminding us: the more guns our citizens have, and the easier they are to get, the safer we all are, and the better society we have. Right? Seriously? More guns than books? My wife and I have over 1,500 books just in our bedroom. We’re over 5,000 books total (she keeps track of them using an online library app) and that’s just the paper ones. I have at least 200 more...

LAST year, Christmas was the biggest single day for e-book sales by HarperCollins. And indications are that this year’s Christmas Day total will be even higher, given the extremely strong sales of e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. Amazon announced on Dec. 15 that it had sold one million of its Kindles in each of the three previous weeks. But we can also guess that the number of visitors to the e-book sections of public libraries’ Web sites is about to set a record, too. And that is a source of great worry for publishers. In their eyes, borrowing...

The great novelist John Updike once said he’d gotten to know so many writers over his years in the literary world that it limited the books he agreed to review. He didn’t feel comfortable criticizing the books of friends or acquaintances.  Updike said this, by the way, in a conversation with Nieman fellows at Harvard in 1978.One can understand his reluctance. Even mild criticism might provide the wrath of the author and end a friendship. Praise for the book of a friend might be written off as intellectually dishonest.However, I’m not going to let friendships stop me. Five of my...

One popular comedian argues that it must be dreadful to spend eternity in heaven. No matter how wonderful it might be at first, eventually you're bound to get used to it and end up bored to death. By the same reasoning, one would shrug off the torments of hell over time, and the experience would be the same as heaven. Truth told, Dante's account of the saints contemplating the Godhead in the "Paradiso" section of Dante's Divine Comedy always bored me, without having to wait for too much of eternity to tick by.

A Reddit.com user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?�Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Where possible, we have included links to free versions of the books, all taken from our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks collections. Or you can always download a professionally-narrated book for free from Audible.com. Details here. If you’re looking for a more extensive list of essential works, don’t miss The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series...

The joys of Christmas do not include coping with crowds at shopping malls or wracking your brains trying to figure out what to get as a gift for someone who already seems to have everything. Books are a way out of both situations. You don't even have to go to a bookstore, with books so readily available on-line. As for the person who seems to have everything, newly published books are among the things they probably don't always have. One of the most enjoyable new books I read this year was a biography titled "Stan Musial: An American Life"...

Obama might as well start his daughters early on their hatred of America. While taking his daughters out to a bookstore for a photo-shoot/book purchase stunt, Obama bought three books according to The Blaze: “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” ”Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever“ and ”Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.” Diary of a Wimpy Kid could be Obama’s childhood story for all I know, but Descent into Chaos is another one of those America and Dubya Bush bashing books on middle east policy. The book is written by someone...

excerpts from the interview with Bradbury.... [Q]: What forms of censorship do your regard as the most dangerous today? Bradbury: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other...The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush. [Q]: There seems to have been a decline in standards of journalistic objectivity, to put it mildly. Bradbury: It's...

excerpts from the interview with Bradbury.... [Q]: What forms of censorship do your regard as the most dangerous today? Bradbury: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other...The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush. [Q]: There seems to have been a decline in standards of journalistic objectivity, to put it mildly. Bradbury: It's...

Too often, conservatives and Christians win the political fight but lose the culture. It doesn't matter how many elections we win if the Left rots the culture right around us. Conservatives need to be writing books, movies, and music. So this is my foray into the culture war. I'm looking for reviewers for my new science fiction book, Knox's Irregulars. It's a fast-paced action novel written from a traditionalist, conservative perspective. If anyone is interested, I'm happy to send them a free copy in Kindle, Epub or PDF format. Drop me an email at jwesleybush@gmail.com. The paperback version will be...

As many Americans no longer believe in American exceptionalism and others believe America's greatness is guaranteed to extend perpetually, we could all benefit by reviewing the history of the British Empire, the realm from which we sprung and acquired so much. By the time most baby boomers were born, the British Empire had declined. The Nazis and Japanese had been defeated in World War II, and two major military powers -- the United States and the Soviet Union -- were faced off at the beginning of a nearly half-century-long struggle we call the Cold War. The great British Empire, which...

Pat Buchanan's new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025 is the bluntest and most cogent statement of the truth about the present course of Western civilization that has been seen in American bookstores in many years. In this book, Pat takes the gloves off and hits the American Left with the Hard Right. He knocks the liberal establishment out of the ring. Everything that real conservatives have privately known to be true for generations is finally aired in this brave and long overdue new book. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization. As people of European...

The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams from My Father” more than a decade after its release.

The State Department has spent $70,000 in taxpayer money to buy copies of Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. One embassy in Indonesia spent more than $3,800 buying copies of Obama’s other book The Audacity of Hope. Again, all with taxpayer money — all while Obama profits from the purchases. But hey, it most be common place to buy books written by presidents to hand out as gifts and put in libraries, right? Nope. A search by the Washington Times of the federal database found no examples of the State Department purchasing books by President Clinton or President Bush....

Herman Cain's case against pundits who claim he's running a book tour rather than a presidential campaign just got a bit more complicated. Federal Election Commission records show that the former Godfather's Pizza executive paid more than $64,000 of his presidential campaign funds to his motivational speaking company, T.H.E. New Voice Inc., for copies of his own books, and for lodging, airfare, and resources, Bloomberg News reports. Previous rulings by the FEC have allowed candidates to use their campaign funds to buy their own books, as long as the purchase is at market value and the money goes to charity...

Hi everyone! It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" survey. As you know, I consider Freepers to be among the most well-read of those of us on the 'Net. I like to get a feel as to what everyone is reading right now. It can be anything - a technical journal, a NY Times best seller, a class work of fiction, a trashy pulp novel. In short, it can be anything. Please do not respond to this thread by posting "I'm reading this thread" - or any variation thereof. It became really unfunny a long time...

I"m begging the indulgence of my fellow freepers since I've been here a long time and this will be the first vanity I've ever posted. My beautiful wife Amy is a writer and she has a new young adult novel coming out on Tuesday. The title is Cold Kiss and it's a hard cover issue from Harper Teen, Harper Collins young adult imprint. Far be it from me to indulge in hyperbole, but this is the greatest novel ever written in human history. My wife has published a number of books before, but not in the young adult genre which...

...celebrity blogger Perez Hilton begins his book with “He was born that way —the Boy with Pink Hair.” Parents who aren’t fans of the controversial, sometimes pink-haired Hilton don’t have much reason to get riled up about his new children’s book. It tells the simple story of a boy with bright, “cotton-candy” hair who gets bullied, makes a friend, and discovers a true passion. No, the “Boy with Pink Hair” isn’t a euphemism for “Boy with Homosexual Tendencies,” as some may fear; the book will appeal to creative kids who may have been picked on for their offbeat interests.

THERE are books of which it is impossible to make an epitome, and which therefore it is impossible to review save in the way of calling attention to their excellence. Bryce's "American Commonwealth," Lowell's " Study of Representative Government in Europe," Thayer's "Study of Cavour," illustrate what is meant by this statement. Two new volumes, "Progressive Democracy," by Herbert Croly, and •' Drift and Mastery," by Walter Lippmann, come in this category. No man who wishes seriously to study our present social, industrial, and political life with the view of guiding his thought and action so as to work for...

I read a few months on FR ago about some good and complete reference/how to books on basics. SHTF thread. Anyway had some reserved in my cart at amazon but accidently deleted them. Searched threads for hours and didn't find what I was looking for. I'm asking for some recommendations on some how to books. Everything from farming, soap, basic chemicals. . . Thanks

David Bowie's "Space Oddity": The Children's Book [PDF]

severed from tradition and reali life, literature as it is taught in universities is strictly an intramural game.

This explains a lot. Yes, it is a real book. Yes, it on Amazon.

Rep. Michele Bachman officially threw her hat into the presidential ring on June 27. Since then, the Minnesota congresswoman has emerged as a Republican front-runner, riding on a wave of Tea Party support and national media appearances. New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza spent four days with Bachmann and her staff aboard their campaign jet in mid-June. On Tuesday's Fresh Air, he talks about his unprecedented access to the congresswoman, whom he profiles in the Aug. 15, 2011, edition of The New Yorker. The piece looks at the writers, beliefs and books that Bachmann has specifically mentioned as major influences...

More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles. A quick word about what's here, and what's not: Our panel of experts reviewed hundreds of the most popular nominations and tossed out those that didn't fit the survey's criteria (after — we assure you — much passionate, thoughtful, gleefully nerdy discussion). You'll notice there are no young adult or horror books on this list, but sit tight, dear reader, we're saving those...

Yet another pundit takes to the airwaves to plug their book. This time, it’s one by Mark Stein: After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. He plugged it on Ed Driscoll’s site, and it was subsequently picked up by other conservative news and commentary outlets like HotAir.com. It brings to mind an interesting question: Why do political books sell so well? What is it about them that makes so many people want to buy them?

I finally completed a project that has been on my bucket list for years. I am celebrating completing my first novel. I'm now an author!!!!

Dan Simmons’s “Flashback” is an abundantly entertaining, often outrageous right-wing fantasy about a weak, broken United States 20-odd years from now. The country is ruled over by the Japanese, lives in fear of the Islamic Global Caliphate, and its citizens mostly spend their time stoned on a drug called flashback that lets them escape to a better past. Some of the events that have occurred between now and the early 2030s can be summed up thusly: U.S. Goes Bankrupt Israel Destroyed by Nuclear Attack Mexican Army Invades California Sharia Law Rules Europe, Canada Giant Mosque Built at Ground Zero U.S....

It’s summer time, which (hopefully) means vacations and lazy days at the beach or in the hammock. Here’s DogWatch’s list of some dog-related summer reading to help you pass the time!

"Though it Be Not Written Down, Yet Forget Not That I Am An Ass." Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing. Having providentially stumbled across Evan Sayet's Heritage Foundation Lecture, "How Modern Liberals Think," I realized something I should have understood years ago. I don't know anything. Screenwriter Evan Sayet, once a true New York Liberal, heard his Leftist friends rejoice that America had, on 9-11, finally gotten her "comeuppance." Horrified, he realized that his liberal friends really do "hate America" like they had claimed for years. He set off in pursuit of true knowledge and understanding about America and why the...

It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes from Mises Media on Vimeo. We are surrounded by miracles created in the private sector, particularly in the digital universe, and yet we don't appreciate them enough. Meanwhile, the public sector is systematically wrecking the physical world in sneaky and petty ways that really do matter. Jeffrey Tucker, in this follow-up to his Bourbon for Breakfast, draws detailed attention to both. He points out that the products of digital capitalism are amazing, astounding, beyond belief—more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons could even imagine. With this tiny box...

Hi everyone! I hope your 4th of July was a good one. it's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. As you know, I consider Freepers to be among the most well-read of those of us on the Internet and I like to see what other Freepers are reading these days. It can be anything - a classic novel, a trashy pulp romance, a technical journal, etc. Please do not deile this thread by posting "I'm reading this thread". it became very unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm just finishing "Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls...

30. Gustave Flaubert on George Sand “A great cow full of ink.” 29. Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman “…like a large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.” 28. Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri “A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.” 27. Harold Bloom on J.K. Rowling (2000) “How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.” 26. Vladimir Nabokov...

Michael Moore: missing from bookstores… compared to a couple of years ago.1. Bestsellers by the repulsive Michael Moore (sporting his “smart casual� look in the photo above).2. An endless selection of Don’t-You-Hate-Dubya books.3. Brown-nosing biographies of Barack Obama. Even the book-buyers of the West Village, Santa Monica and Madison, Wisconsin, have worked out that he’s *not a very good president*.

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan - The weight of about 350,000 books a Canadian Prairies couple wanted to save from burning is damaging a second house they bought to shelter them, officials say. Shaunna Raycraft and her husband live in the remote town of Pike Lake, Saskatchewan, southwest of Saskatoon. Months ago, a neighbor who collected books died and the man's widow said she wasn't interested in the uncatalogued collection and was going to burn it. The Raycrafts, both book lovers, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. they would take the collection and had a small house towed to their property to store the...

DEMONIC: THE LIBERAL MOB ENDANGERING AMERICA CHAPTER 10 (excerpt) CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE MOB: GEORGE WALLACE, BULL CONNOR, ORVAL FAUBUS AND OTHER DEMOCRATS By Ann Coulter It was the Democratic Party that ginned up the racist mob against blacks and it is the Democratic Party ginning every new mob today— ironically, all portraying themselves as the equivalent of the Freedom Riders. With real civil rights secure—try to find a restaurant that won’t serve a black person—modern civil rights laws benefit only the mob, not the victims of the mob, as American blacks had been. Just as fire seeks oxygen,...

Tim Tebow Book “Through My Eyes� Shares Family’s Pro-Life Story by Steven Ertelt | LifeNews.com | 6/6/11 11:47 AMTim Tebow has become a star within pro-life circles — and for good reason. The popular Denver Broncos quarterback and former college football superstar and his family have become leading pro-life spokespeople thanks to their story.By now, most people are familiar with Tebow — who made his Christian faith the basis for his football success and who has inspired a generation of young people with his morals and values. Those values came in part because of the story Americans know almost...

Hello fellow FReepers. I hope everyone is having a great Sunday. I am writing today because I would like your advice. I finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged earlier in the week and will finish George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four today but I don't know what book to read next. Any suggestions?

WASHINGTON -- As of today all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press. The mission of the National Academies Press (NAP) -- publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council -- is to disseminate the institutions' content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability. To that end, NAP began offering free content online in 1994. Before today’s announcement, all PDFs were...

Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult section of her local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and disheartened. She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed. How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when...

Brendan Toller’s documentary I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store (2010) brings a good deal of personality and attitude (in the best sense) to the story of the demise of the independent record store, though it might just as well tell the story of the demise of the independent video or book store, all of which are victims of the same forces: box store encroachment followed by on-line revolution, all feeding the bottom lines of large corporations that don’t particularly give a damn about records, or movies, or books. The restaurant business has...

Reading List For List Complete List Complete List By Subject Introduction Arranged by Recommender's Name To contribute to this list, or add to your own list below, plese use the Reading List for Life suggestion form. Professor Richard Abels, History Department: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. (PS 3558 .E476 C3 1961) Regeneration by Pat Barker. (PR 6052 .A6488 R4 1961) Waiting for the Barbarians by Joseph Coetzee. (PR 9369.3 .C58 W3 1982) The Making of the Middle Ages by Richard Southern. (CB 351 .S6 1953a) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (Book: PG 3326 .B7 G32, Audiotape: PG 3326 .B7...

SNP (Scottish National Party)-led West Dunbartonshire Council has ordered that its libraries ban any new volumes by Israeli authors, printed or published in the Jewish state. It follows an earlier decision by the local authority to boycott Israeli goods and produce as part of a pro-Palestinian display. Now, it has emerged the areas’ libraries have been told not to stock any new books from Israel. But a similar boycott move by Dundee City Council has had to be abandoned because legal experts advised such a move is illegal under EU law.