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midcan5
11-14-2014, 08:18 AM
One book stands out in my mind and I still have it. 'Sanctions for Evil' essays, ed. Nevitt Sanford / Craig Comstock. But also Dostoevsky's novels, Camus, Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, lots more, and in non-fiction, Albert Hirschman 'The Rhetoric of Reaction,' Peter Watson's Ideas, Parfit, 'Reasons and Persons,' Peter Singer, Martin Gardner, Wittgenstein, William Manchester, and on and on.... Article linked below.

Sometimes books confirm your suspicions but they do so brilliantly.

'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'Voltaire's Bas_tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' by John Ralston Saul

Read recently and worth your time.

'The Betrayal of the American Dream Hardcover' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
'A History of Civilizations' Fernand Braudel
'The Pony Fish's Glow: And Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature' George C. Williams


A few in this list look interesting and about topics that fascinate me. http://chronicle.com/article/What-Book-Changed-Your-Mind-/149839/

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley wrote in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984 Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us...This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right." Neil Postman 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'

Huxley had the more accurate prognosis of our modern times. Both Huxley and Postman are worthwhile reads.

"Quotes are the mental furniture of my life. From certain angles my inner landscape resembles a gallery hung with half-recalled citations, the rags and tag-ends of a lifetime of reading and listening." Geoffrey O’Brien

Common
11-14-2014, 08:26 AM
Being a total non intellectual, the book that stands out to me, I read decades ago.

Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, yanno im going to the library and im reading it again

nathanbforrest45
11-14-2014, 08:51 AM
Lttle Lulu comics.

Chris
11-14-2014, 08:54 AM
What Book Changed Your Mind? (http://chronicle.com/article/What-Book-Changed-Your-Mind-/149839?cid=megamenu) was a good read. Not so much initially but the books got better. I put James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed, subtitled "An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia," in my Amazon cart.

I thought about it, and it was probably Hans-Hermann Hoppe's The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy that put me forever in the anarchist camp.

McCool
11-14-2014, 09:03 AM
The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Calypso Jones
11-14-2014, 10:16 AM
The Bible. It has every story in it every conceived, even the ones you mentioned. There is nothing new under the sun.

PolWatch
11-14-2014, 10:23 AM
I can't say any one book changed my mind. I have been influenced by many books. Lots of them have made me think about something in a new or different way. Isn't that a good book is supposed to do?

btw: I'm reading the auto-bio of (ready for this one?) Jerry Lee Lewis! by Rick Bragg. I'm not a real fan of biographies of stars, but I really like Rick Bragg's writing. If anyone wants to read something by a writer who can really capture the south of the 50's, try Rick Bragg..."All over but the shouting' or Ava's man' are both good. He also wrote one called "All they ever had" about the closing of textile, paper mills in the south and the effects it had on the south.

Common Sense
11-14-2014, 10:24 AM
Yeah, I read the Bible too and it changed my mind...

Common Sense
11-14-2014, 10:25 AM
A great book is Paris 1919 about the Paris Peace Accords and the impact we still live with today.

Peter1469
11-14-2014, 04:01 PM
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.