What are you reading? (Vanity)

22 nov 2015 | vis a vis

[Chode]

about 1/3 way through since i only get to read it on lunch hour, the print is tiny but it's a great read so far

the seller is in London but the inscription inside the cover was by an African Color Sargent named Geoke

[SunkenCiv]

The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour
Andrei Cherny

Bismarck: A Life
Jonathan Steinberg

Ice Age
John and Mary Gribbin (a short treatment, sort of a summary, kinda piss poor)

The Lost Empire of Atlantis
Gavin Menzies (I think I may have finished this one, but the bookmark says otherwise; basically, another of his “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” tomes — sez the Minoans were the Atlanteans, attributes everything ever done in ancient navigation to the Minoans, claiming they went all the way to Lake Superior for instance)

The Vikings: A History
Robert Ferguson (been working on this a long while, have started and finished others in the meantime)

I’d like to track down a copy (out of print) of “The Managerial Revolution”, a trenchantly anti-dictatorship work by a mid-century socialist thinker; had to read it for an economics class run by an articulate doctrinaire dumbass at Michigan State back in the 1970s. Maybe for my Xmas list...

[dynachrome]

I just downloaded “The Complete Collection of H.P. Lovecraft”, “Complete R.L. Stevenson”, and “The Ultimate Weird Tales- Clark Ashton Smith” for Kindle. free at amazon

[Sawdring]

Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Tme by Carroll Quigley.

[Artemis Webb]

Currently reading The Federalist Papers, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Go Dog Go and The Ultimate Guide to Lying.

[Jacquerie]

Yes, first principles are essential.

I spent the summer reading Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government.

At the moment I'm about halfway through John Locke's Two Treatises of Government.

The vast majority of Americans don't realize that because we have abandoned our founding maxims, the best possible outcome next November is the exchange of Leftist despot for a benevolent despot.

[Chode]

belay that, it's Goerke

[SunkenCiv]

thanks!

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/8301?start_index=26&sort_order=release_date

PK Dick is the only sci-fi writer I occasionally go back to; since 1984 the only sci-fi, actually the only fiction, I’ve read (that comes to mind anyway) was the Lord of the Rings (re-read it for the first time in decades to refresh my memory prior to the release of the first of the movies), a James Hogan “Inherit the Stars” (recommended somewhere here in the pages of FR, thanks to whomever that was), and some PK Dick short stories (also re-read some portions of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”). The first of PKD’s I ever read happened more or less by accident, “Our Friends from Frolix 8”, found it in what was a decent-sized library in my small home town, must havbe been around 12 or 13. My sister snagged it first, read it in a couple of days, then let me have it back. :’)

Besides “Blade Runner”, “Total Recall” (which has been movied twice), “Minority Report”, looks like ten others. TR is fun and everything, but the few pages of short story on which it’s very loosely based kicks the crap out of the screenplay. Same goes btw imho with “Blade Runner”, a sad unfinished travesty that uses the names of the characters here and there, otherwise very little connection. I’ve never read “The Minority Report”, so I don’t know how it compares; I’ll say that as Spielberg’s stuff goes, I prefer it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick

[Glennb51]

Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography

[Sawdring]

I tried reading Ulysses but could only make it 40% through it.

[TexasTransplant]

Time for me to re-read The Haj

Thanks for the reminder

[windsorknot]

America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

-Mark Steyn

[SunkenCiv]

Oh yeah... I'm also *listening* to a Clive Cussler novel, unabridged on CD, in the car. It may be about half done, I'm thinking it's getting close, but tackle it in 20-25 minute chunks, unless I'm getting distracted in traffic, or getting frustrated with the pace of the story.

[Jamestown1630]

I’ve usually got two going at once, one that requires less attention for lunchtime, and a ‘heavier’ one:

Paul Davies ‘The Mind of God’

Bernd Heinrich, ‘Winter World’ (great nature writer)

-JT

[EBH]

A Lucky Child

Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir A LUCKY CHILD. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life.

Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship. A LUCKY CHILD is a book that demands to be read by all.

[leaning conservative]

Those are great photographs! There is a local historian who has a weekly column in the newspaper that I sometimes read & it’s fascinating. I bet your neighbors are thrilled w/ all you’ve uncovered.

[leaning conservative]

I keep meaning to read a Lee Child book because I have read such great comments regarding his books. What would you recommend as a first read?

[huldah1776]

bmp4L8R

[billphx]

The man had an amazing imagination

[Billthedrill]

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann.

I just finished that myself and I HIGHLY recommend it. Wachsmann is University of London, and this is probably his life's work. Warning: it is not a comfortable read, and that's a gross understatement.

From the other side, Black Edelweiss, A Memoir of Combat and Conscience, by Johann Voss. Voss (not his real name) is now an international lawyer - this was his story of combat in the far North (Norway) versus the Soviets, and a harrowing march south. For some reason the people seemed to hate his unit more than the other German units but he didn't know why - the Black Edelweiss is the unit badge of the Waffen SS but he was unaware of what the SS had been doing in the rest of Europe. As a POW he was assigned to an American attorney prosecuting the Nuremberg trials as a translator, and he found out what the SS had been doing from testimony and unimpeachable evidence. That realization was as bad as combat. He went into international law as a consequence. Fascinating story.

The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 by Geoffrey Parker. A marvelous case presented by a superb historian. Why were the military innovations of the West so dominating during this period? Why did those of the East, formerly so overwhelming, fade? Great stuff.

Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer. Finally found a decent copy of this. It's what Speer wrote during his 20 years of imprisonment following WWII. Highly perceptive studies of his fellow prisoners including Admirals Raeder and Doenitz, Baldur von Shirach, and most interesting of all, Rudolf Hess, and, of course, Hitler himself. Speer insisted to the end that he did not know about the extermination camps; recent evidence indicates that he probably did. His own words weren't exactly self-exculpatory: "If I did not know it was because I did not want to know."