Fiction
Mason and Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
A psychedelic journey through the landscape of late 18th century, using the language and spellings of the period, as taken by a fictionalized Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Stephenson has been called “the hacker Hemmingway,” and I think that is apt. Cryptonomicon is the first in his Baroque Cycle. Aside from being an engaging, exciting novel, it is also an excellent primer on the ideas and basic mechanics of cryptography. It helps explain it in context, which, in turn can help the average person understand what is at stake in the discussions of privacy vs. security.
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Fundamentals
Elements, Euclid
One of history’s most important books. Working through the Elements with a compass is a joy, a privilege, and an excellent education in logic and practical geometry.1
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Trivium, The, Sr. M. Joseph & M. McGlinn
This is an elementary school textbook that any and every English-speaker would benefit from, at any age. Covering the classical arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric in a concise and understandable way, this is a masterpiece of educational curriculum.
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Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, The, Robert K. Barnhart
A decent, encyclopedic view of the English language — the history and precise meaning of words. Consider the given definition of authority, which we learn properly means “learned borrowings from latin” or “book or quotation that settles a question”:
Before 1535, alteration by influence of Middle French authorité of Middle English autorite, auctorite book or quotation that settles a question (probably before 1200); borrowed through Anglo-French auctorité, autorité, from Old French auctorité, autorité, learned borrowings from Latin auctõritãtem (nominative auctõritãs), from auctor AUTHOR; [ … ]
Critical Path, R. Buckminster Fuller
This is perhaps the best balance of comprehensive and accessible that R. Buckminster Fuller offers. Written and compiled towards the end of his life, it is a great overview of his work, his message, many of his solutions and his life. It remains current as many of the problems of his lifetime remain presently unsolved and evermore urgent.
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Wooden Books series
These are high-production-value, black and white texts. They are not all equally valuable as books, but I will recommend some as great references and starting points. I often keep a copy of Useful Mathematical and Physical Formulæ in my bag.
For the most part, their “bind ups” are great. They’re typically a collection of other Wooden Books titles bound as a larger, topical volume. Sciencia and Quadrivium are both absolutely excellent. By individual titles, these are my recommendations:
- The Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System
- The Compact Cosmos
- The Elements of Music
- Perspective and other Optical Illusions
- Ruler & Compass
- Symmetry
- Useful Mathematical and Physical Formulæ.
History & Social Concerns
Imperium, Ryszard Kapuscinski
This is a travel journal in three parts – a reporter’s trips around the Soviet Union and former Soviet Union between 1939 and 1993. It is very difficult to appreciate this book without having read it — it’s lyrical, insightful, and speaks generally about the human condition through the specific experiences of the Soviet Union and early post-Soviet era.
Other Peoples’ Money and How the Bankers Use It, Louis Brandeis
An informed perspective on the banking and corporate cartels written in 1913 and 1914. It is still highly relevant, and the names within it are… highly recognizable and still current.
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Underground History of American Education, The, John Taylor Gatto
Gatto’s searing jeremiad and analysis is a must-read for any student or former student of public schools. His thesis is that school …
- presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from testing, the programming is, like television, broken down into arbitrary time slots, and highly dissociative. (A detailed treatment of this can be found in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.)
- teaches children to accept their class affiliation
- teaches children indifference
- creates emotional dependency
- creates intellectual dependency, punishes creative, spontaneity and original and critical thinking.
- creates provisional self-esteem, leaving the child dependent of the approval of authorities.
- creates a panopticon mentality of omniscient supervision: they cannot hide, they do not have privacy, every aspect of their day, their behavior and their activities are either sanctioned (or not) by authorities.
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Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, The, Jean Baudrillard
No compact description of Baudrillard or any of his works will do them justice. This book is a short introduction to Baudrillard’s later ideas.
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Voice Crying in the Wilderness, A, Edward Abbey
This is simply Edward Abbey’s favorite Edward Abbey bits, a kind of book of proverbs for those concerned with freedom and wilderness. Everyone concerned with the freedom of themselves, others and the land itself should have a copy.
Coming to our Senses, Morris Berman
(description cribbed from Goodreads) The focus of this particular volume is the relationship between culture and the human body, and the somatic basis of Western religious experience. Whereas the first volume in the series is largely historical, and the third largely anthropological, “Coming to Our Senses” focuses on human psychology, especially the earliest years of life, and how this has historically influenced the nature of adult life and institutions in the West.
TechGnosis, Erik Davis
A wild ride through the history of the magic that we see realized today both as technology, social architecture and intellectual furniture. It almost belongs as a companion to Coming to Our Senses, illuminating how our technologies (and the beliefs and ideas that underlined them) came to be. On top of being well written and informative, it’s extremely entertaining. A joy to read!
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Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman
An extremely important critique of media, especially television media. While a bit dated, its critique is still entirely relevant, and underlines the problems with a mediated culture’s effects on political and public discourse that have only become more pressing since this text was published in 1985. This is a you-should-have-read-it-already classic.
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Language Older than Words, A, by Derrick Jensen
This is a profoundly moving text, that makes challenging observations and assertions about the world. The basic thesis is view of the destruction of the natural world (and humanity along with it) through the lens of the cultural of violence. It draws profound connections between abuse within families and societies to the abuse of the natural world.
Jews of Warsaw: 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, The, by Yisrael Gutman
Introducing this book and its relevance is difficult without context. So, This excerpt from an interview with Derrick Jensen sums up the argument to put it on the reading list:
One of the smartest things the Nazis did was to co-opt rationality and to co-opt hope. The way they did that was by making it so that at every step of the way it was in the Jews’ rational, best interest not to resist.
Would you rather get an ID card or would you rather resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to go to a ghetto or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to get on a cattle car or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to take a shower or do you want to resist and possibly get killed?
Every step of the way, it was in their rational best interest to not resist. But I’ll tell you something really interesting: The Jews who participated in the Warsaw ghetto uprising had a much higher rate of survival than those who went along. We need to keep that in mind over the next ten years.
The Amazon blurb: “It took the Nazis longer to quell the Warsaw ghetto uprising than it had taken them to defeat entire countries. How could the Jews of Warsaw―starved and persecuted, their numbers decimated by mass deportations to concentration camps, with few weapons and no aid from outside the ghetto walls―stand up to the might of the Third Reich? To address this question, the author of The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943 looks beyond the ghetto uprising itself to consider the broader character of Jewish public life as it took shape during the occupation and ghettoization of what had been Europe’s greatest Jewish urban center. The book describes the growth and development of the resistance movement and armed struggle against the wider historical background and the development of clandestine communal activities in the ghetto. It makes use of extensive primary and secondary materials from Jewish, German, and Polish sources to throw light on critical events. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943 is a massive scholarly undertaking, at once authentic, scrupulously objective, and deeply moving.”