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ralkana for the icon! And to others who sent me others...
My ten most important books... Gakked fromoyceter - not favorite, but important.
Unlike most of the list's I've seen here, very few on my list are fiction. But that shouldn't entirely surprise. I don't write a lot of fiction (though the GAO may well dispute that) and excepting FanFic, over the past three or far years, I've read far more non-fiction. And I'm not even counting the course books that shaped me, which I've forgotten the title of. I would list Theodore Lowi's The End of Liberalism, but that book is so damn unreadable that I'll never touch it again, no matter how important or significant the ideas contained within really are.
Organized in no order whatsover:
The New Rhetoric - CH Perelman
This was one of the Texts for my Pre-Law Junior English Course, and it's proven simply invaluable to me in writing and speaking. I love good argumentation, and nothing I'd read before had ever given me the sort of organizing tools to communicate points in an effective way before. Though critical thinking and argumentation come natural to me, nothing I've read has been half as useful in refining my techniques. A relatively easy read, for people who think of language and useage in functional rather than artistic terms.
The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
This is the book that got me to choose Government over History, that has me working on the Hill, in the Navy Yard, and on K Street, instead of chilling out at a University or Teaching HS History. The construction of the US Constitution is rather brilliant from my perspective. And as a fan of history, systems building, analysis and rhetoric, I love the Papers as a document. It's a fairly clear breakdown of the purposes of a government, and how this particular governing structure was constructed to meet those objectives. Starting from the general commentaries of #10 to more specific and arcane. This is the Talmud of Government.
The Tolkien Reader - JRR Tolkien
Many will talk about the Hobbit, LoTR, or even the Siulmarillion. For me, it's really the collected works, and this anthology in particular. Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories" is the defense of fantasy writings for adults on a grand scale - defense against academics who saw it as silly, and religious conservatives who considered fantasy heretical. A must read for any fan of both speculative fiction and mythology. I also love "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beornhelm's Son" reconstructed Saxon poetry. And "Farmer Giles of Ham" - we have Tolkien's Chrysophylax to thank for more modern stories featuring Dragons. And the more clever characterizations eventually put forward in the Dungeons & Dragons game. Tokien gave the Dragon depth.
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Among what fiction I have read, 19th Century Russian heavily represents. The overly-intelectual destroying and rebuilding himself through spiritual focus. The utter pointlessness of some acts, and the deep significance of others. Finding yourself adrift inside your own head. And the overarching dreariness. There are other works I like more, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Chekov's plays, much of Pushkin's canon, Gogol as well - but I read "The Grand Inquisitor" when I was 14 and it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. And I wouldn't have read War and Peace or the numerous books and plays that followed without it.
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
Coupled with the book of photography, "The Kommissar Disappears", Koestler's novel reinforced the importance of having real democratic institutions rather than placing faith in annointed leaders or concepts. In Darkness (the main character Rubachev was based loosely on politburo member Mikhail Bukharin) Koestler produces a powerful exploration of fanaticism gone wrong, of Communism as the God That Failed, culminating in the purges, show trials, and forced confessions. And simply great literature.
Republican Paradoxes, Liberal Anxieties - Ronald Terchek
This is a cheat. I could list "The Prince", "Leviathan", Adam Smith's "A Theory of Moral Sentiments", Aristotle, Plato, Bentham and Mill, John Locke... but they all tended to influence me along the same lines - and as such I'll go with Techek's anaylsis of those writers and their concepts. Essentially, as tools helping me piece out questions such as "what is the purpose of government?", "how government/society should best organize to support citizen needs?", "who are stakeholders in society, and how should their interests be reflected or represented?" and "how should government conduct itself to further those aims?". The list really goes on. John Rawls, Kenneth Waltz, Paul Kennedy, Henry Kissenger, Clausewitz, Acheson's "Present at the Creation", Sun Tzu... I was a government major. I really did read the books and think about them.
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Good old American Fiction. Like Darkness, it's really a political/historical novel, as Willie Stark is heavily modeled on Huey Long. (For more about Long, check out T. Harry Williams' excellent Biography, Huey Long.) It's an examination of ambition, of duty to serve the public, of ego, of jealousy, of love. Of charisma. Of what makes us want to serve others, of what makes us want to serve the public. Of ethics. And of Anne and Adam Stanton - and how we measure our disappointment. And there is beautiful, gorgous writing, particularly in the historical sections about Cass Mastern. If you found Clinton interesting, read about Huey Long. I cannot rave about these two Huey Long books enough.
America's Longest War - George Herring
Do you want to know what was really up with Vietnam. Nutshell, fairly apolitical overview. Get a larger sense of why we were involved, what that entailed, and how the US Policies failed in the region. This is the book. Herring is an excellent Historian, and provides a perfect starting point on the topic. Pearl Harbor fans can go read At Dawn we Slept by Gordon William Prange. Both, some high quality Historical Non-fiction.
The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
Because I wanted to know what it was like to be my dad, when he was a kid. "Boys of Summer" is a recounting of the 1952 and 1953 National League pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers, the team my dad grew up on. (He missed Carl Erskine's second no-hitter, when my grandmother grounded him for reasons we can no longer remember.) If you are a baseball fan, and are a sucker for nostalgia of "the golden age" when the only teams that got any press or titles resided in New York City, this is a must read for you. Then go out and watch Aviva Kempner's "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg."
Pumping Irony, Tony Kornheiser
A collection of Kornheiser's Washington Post Style columns, none of which are about me. The other, non-professional, side of my writing style is best reflected in Tony's self-absorbed meanderings. It's self-indulgent, New York Jewish humor, sometimes about sports, but not really, and just very amusing for someone like myself. Tony still writes a sports column and can be seen on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption with fellow Post Columnist Mike Wilbon. They argue about everything under the sun, and it amuses the hell out of me. Want to know what my daily conversations with people not on the Friends' List, and not in Government service sound like? Watch this show...
If you read this far, I am shocked and awed. Also, perhaps, chagrined and bewildered...
Not listed, because I don't have a title: That little green book from Kerwin Charles' Benefit-Cost Analysis class at Michigan. This should probably be listed #1, to be honest. Seeing as my study of the priniciples of risk management, and my massive self-analysis on the issue was worth approximately $300,000 to me... Hard to change one's life more than that.
ralkana for the icon! And to others who sent me others...My ten most important books... Gakked from
oyceter - not favorite, but important. Unlike most of the list's I've seen here, very few on my list are fiction. But that shouldn't entirely surprise. I don't write a lot of fiction (though the GAO may well dispute that) and excepting FanFic, over the past three or far years, I've read far more non-fiction. And I'm not even counting the course books that shaped me, which I've forgotten the title of. I would list Theodore Lowi's The End of Liberalism, but that book is so damn unreadable that I'll never touch it again, no matter how important or significant the ideas contained within really are.
Organized in no order whatsover:
- The New Rhetoric, CH Perelman
- The Federalist Papers - Hamilton, Jay, and Madison
- The Tolkien Reader - JRR Tolkien
- The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
- Republican Paradoxes, Liberal Anxieties - Ronald Terchek
- All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
- America's Longest War - George Herring
- The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
- Pumping Irony, Tony Kornheiser
The New Rhetoric - CH Perelman
This was one of the Texts for my Pre-Law Junior English Course, and it's proven simply invaluable to me in writing and speaking. I love good argumentation, and nothing I'd read before had ever given me the sort of organizing tools to communicate points in an effective way before. Though critical thinking and argumentation come natural to me, nothing I've read has been half as useful in refining my techniques. A relatively easy read, for people who think of language and useage in functional rather than artistic terms.
The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
This is the book that got me to choose Government over History, that has me working on the Hill, in the Navy Yard, and on K Street, instead of chilling out at a University or Teaching HS History. The construction of the US Constitution is rather brilliant from my perspective. And as a fan of history, systems building, analysis and rhetoric, I love the Papers as a document. It's a fairly clear breakdown of the purposes of a government, and how this particular governing structure was constructed to meet those objectives. Starting from the general commentaries of #10 to more specific and arcane. This is the Talmud of Government.
The Tolkien Reader - JRR Tolkien
Many will talk about the Hobbit, LoTR, or even the Siulmarillion. For me, it's really the collected works, and this anthology in particular. Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories" is the defense of fantasy writings for adults on a grand scale - defense against academics who saw it as silly, and religious conservatives who considered fantasy heretical. A must read for any fan of both speculative fiction and mythology. I also love "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beornhelm's Son" reconstructed Saxon poetry. And "Farmer Giles of Ham" - we have Tolkien's Chrysophylax to thank for more modern stories featuring Dragons. And the more clever characterizations eventually put forward in the Dungeons & Dragons game. Tokien gave the Dragon depth.
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Among what fiction I have read, 19th Century Russian heavily represents. The overly-intelectual destroying and rebuilding himself through spiritual focus. The utter pointlessness of some acts, and the deep significance of others. Finding yourself adrift inside your own head. And the overarching dreariness. There are other works I like more, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Chekov's plays, much of Pushkin's canon, Gogol as well - but I read "The Grand Inquisitor" when I was 14 and it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. And I wouldn't have read War and Peace or the numerous books and plays that followed without it.
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
Coupled with the book of photography, "The Kommissar Disappears", Koestler's novel reinforced the importance of having real democratic institutions rather than placing faith in annointed leaders or concepts. In Darkness (the main character Rubachev was based loosely on politburo member Mikhail Bukharin) Koestler produces a powerful exploration of fanaticism gone wrong, of Communism as the God That Failed, culminating in the purges, show trials, and forced confessions. And simply great literature.
Republican Paradoxes, Liberal Anxieties - Ronald Terchek
This is a cheat. I could list "The Prince", "Leviathan", Adam Smith's "A Theory of Moral Sentiments", Aristotle, Plato, Bentham and Mill, John Locke... but they all tended to influence me along the same lines - and as such I'll go with Techek's anaylsis of those writers and their concepts. Essentially, as tools helping me piece out questions such as "what is the purpose of government?", "how government/society should best organize to support citizen needs?", "who are stakeholders in society, and how should their interests be reflected or represented?" and "how should government conduct itself to further those aims?". The list really goes on. John Rawls, Kenneth Waltz, Paul Kennedy, Henry Kissenger, Clausewitz, Acheson's "Present at the Creation", Sun Tzu... I was a government major. I really did read the books and think about them.
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Good old American Fiction. Like Darkness, it's really a political/historical novel, as Willie Stark is heavily modeled on Huey Long. (For more about Long, check out T. Harry Williams' excellent Biography, Huey Long.) It's an examination of ambition, of duty to serve the public, of ego, of jealousy, of love. Of charisma. Of what makes us want to serve others, of what makes us want to serve the public. Of ethics. And of Anne and Adam Stanton - and how we measure our disappointment. And there is beautiful, gorgous writing, particularly in the historical sections about Cass Mastern. If you found Clinton interesting, read about Huey Long. I cannot rave about these two Huey Long books enough.
America's Longest War - George Herring
Do you want to know what was really up with Vietnam. Nutshell, fairly apolitical overview. Get a larger sense of why we were involved, what that entailed, and how the US Policies failed in the region. This is the book. Herring is an excellent Historian, and provides a perfect starting point on the topic. Pearl Harbor fans can go read At Dawn we Slept by Gordon William Prange. Both, some high quality Historical Non-fiction.
The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
Because I wanted to know what it was like to be my dad, when he was a kid. "Boys of Summer" is a recounting of the 1952 and 1953 National League pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers, the team my dad grew up on. (He missed Carl Erskine's second no-hitter, when my grandmother grounded him for reasons we can no longer remember.) If you are a baseball fan, and are a sucker for nostalgia of "the golden age" when the only teams that got any press or titles resided in New York City, this is a must read for you. Then go out and watch Aviva Kempner's "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg."
Pumping Irony, Tony Kornheiser
A collection of Kornheiser's Washington Post Style columns, none of which are about me. The other, non-professional, side of my writing style is best reflected in Tony's self-absorbed meanderings. It's self-indulgent, New York Jewish humor, sometimes about sports, but not really, and just very amusing for someone like myself. Tony still writes a sports column and can be seen on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption with fellow Post Columnist Mike Wilbon. They argue about everything under the sun, and it amuses the hell out of me. Want to know what my daily conversations with people not on the Friends' List, and not in Government service sound like? Watch this show...
If you read this far, I am shocked and awed. Also, perhaps, chagrined and bewildered...
Not listed, because I don't have a title: That little green book from Kerwin Charles' Benefit-Cost Analysis class at Michigan. This should probably be listed #1, to be honest. Seeing as my study of the priniciples of risk management, and my massive self-analysis on the issue was worth approximately $300,000 to me... Hard to change one's life more than that.