List, in order, your favorite three conservative books that you recently read. Use your judgment on what "recent" is. If you read "See I Told You So" seven or eights years ago, no, that doesn't count. If you only got around to reading it in the last year or so, okay, include it. But really, I'm interested in finding the books many of us have enjoyed, so that the rest of us can go seek these out. (We can do "books to pass by" another time.)
Please, list only (or at most) three, and please, list only books that you've read and enjoyed, not the ones that you're hoping to read and hope you'll enjoy, or ones that you were told by someone whose opinion you really trust that it is good and you're going to get around to reading it as soon as the library has it available. (You'd be surprised at the conversations I've had concerning books.)
With luck, we'll get a nice response, and I can tally them up when the posting stops.
I start, which will be easy because I've only read three in the past year or so:
Again, forget about what you think about them personally, they're both good reads.
By the way, I would have liked to have added Reagan's book of letters, but, sadly, I've been quite busy and I only managed to get a small fraction of the way through the book before I had to return it to the library. (Couldn't renew it -- someone had it on hold.)
TS
Please add me to the "ping list".
And my book, Germs of War, to the list to be read (more in my profile)
Thanks
Previously, I had read Ann Coulter's How to talk to a Liberal and found it entertaining. I love Ann's thoughts on things. The book is mostly a collection of her columns, but they are great columns. This book isn't one of those foundational books that all conservatives should read in order to understand the movement. However, it's a fun read.
I have also read Michelle Malkin's Invasion within the past year. I think she makes a few mistakes, but I agree that the immigration situation must be addressed. I think she does a good job of presenting her case without just listing outrages and trying to provoke an emotional response.
J.C. Watts' What Color is a Conservative was a pretty good book as well. It's mostly biography, and he's had an interesting life. Again, it's not one of those foundational books for the conservative movement. It's also not obviously a campaign biography designed to build support for some future run for office.
Others getting an honorable mention for the past roughly year have been Founding Brothers which received a bit of press when it came out and Lee, a one-volume condensation of Douglass Southall Freeman's four-volume biography of Robert E. Lee.
I'm currently reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography as well as reading some modern mystery stuff for fun sometimes.
Bill
Great idea. Give yourself an attaboy.
" please, feel free to point out mistakes,"
First off that shirt just doesn't go with those pants. :-)
"point out how to make a "ping" list for folks that want to be a part of this."
I had a campaign finance reform ping list, what I did is send myself an E-mail with the screen names on it. and saved it in a seperate folder. Whenever I had a new name I'd copy and paste the updated list in a new E-mail.
Sign me up too, please! I think it would be great to have freepers offering brief reviews or points of discussion from recently read works, which could be freeflowing or organized. I don't know how much organization freepers would stand for though!
2. Personal Memoirs by U.S. Grant
3. Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution by Benson Bobrick, 1997
Pls add me to the ping list for this.
Philosophy -
I'm always reading Plato and Aristotle. Recently I've been going through Plato according to a scheme laid out by Al-Farabi (who wrote a sort of cliff notes to Plato, sometimes strikingly at odds with the obvious sense of the dialogue described). Alcibiades Major and currently the Theatetus, reading them with his comments. In Aristotle, I'm currently reading Topics (motivated in part by some issues in Averroes, trying to see where he got something) and Metaphysics VII.
Still in philosophy, my other major kick of late has been Santayana, as part of my study of those I consider underappreciate reasonable men in a galaxy of overappreciated crazy people with studied for their supposedly "more interesting" ideas (lol). American pragmatists are my current theme there - before Santayana I was working on Peirce. I am current reading his "Life of Reason" stuff (1906). Before that I read his "Skepticism and Animal Faith" (1923).
History of thought
Then the philosophy subject starts bleeding over into the next, history of thought stuff. The overall theme here is Straussian analysis of medieval Islamic philosophy, and rival understandings of the whole civilization scale reason-religion debates that brings up. Straussian views of the medieval Muslim thinkers, rival modern views of those, their own views of Plato and Aristotle, and the intervening history in the late classical and early Christian period (how P and A were packaged before they got to the Muslims etc) - are the counters on the board, as it were.
The key figures here are Farabi and Averroes themselves, Strauss and those after him recently, and the theological figures al-Ghazali (between F and A) and John Philoponus (pre-Islamic, the Christian reception of P and A). The texts I've been reading are Mushin Mahdi's "Alfarabi and the foundations of Islamic Political Philosophy", his translation "AlFarabi - the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle", Charles Butterworth's translation of Averroes' "Decisive Treatise", Strauss' familiar book "Philosophy and Law", Strauss' translation of Maimonides "Guide to the Perplexed" (especially sections I 70 and following, giving his attitude toward the Muslim theologians), and various bits from Philoponus in Richard Sorabji's (not a Straussian, incidentally) series "Ancient Commentators on Aristotle".
Modern ideology
Next there is the modern ideology theme. A point of contact there is one I read relatively recently (though it has been out for some time) - Harvey Mansfield's "Taming the Prince", trying to connect the thread's from Machiavelli through modern tyranny to American constitutionalism and presidential power within it. I also recently read Gertrude Himmelfarb's "The Roads to Modernity", her review of the British, US, and French enlightenments and their differences. Also Robert Kaplan's "Warrior Politics" and Lee Harris' "Civilization and its Enemies". Then there is the somewhat narrower but related subject of foreign policy proper. The two things I've read on that recently are Walter Russell Mead's "Special Providence" (his typology of schools of thought in US foreign policy) and John Mearsheimer's "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" (a defense of his pessimistic but fairly isolationist realism).
Others in this area that I have not read through recently but do consult regularly as I read these others, are Alan Cassel's overview history "Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World", Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism", Paul Johnson's "Modern Times", and Himmelfarb's edition of essays by Lord Acton "Freedom and Power". The first is convenient, I regard the others as indispensible.
Ancient religion
Another theme that is raised by questions of historical parallels and by religion and philosophy issues that come up in the history of thought stuff above, is the whole question of ancient (especially pagan) religion and its less than reasonable basis. Outside any of the above schools of thought, there is a whole field of scholarship there, and within it a kind of Vico-esque set of writers I find illuminating. (Vico-esque meaning along lines suggested by him in "the New Science of...").
The first of these is Fustel de Coulanges and his incredible "the ancient city". Jose Ortega y Gasset steered me to Coulanges, and clearly made an impression on Gasset (see his "An interpretation of universal history" - a scathing review of Toynbee by the way).
Much more recently there is an essayist who combines bits of this tradition with some Heideggerianism named Robert Pogue Harrison, who has written two interesting books that are basically philosophic anthropology - "Forests - the Shadow of civilization" is the earlier and weaker of the two. The second and stronger is "The Dominion of the dead" - which must be read as taking up Coulanges relatively undeveloped but striking theme at the start of "the ancient city".
Another striking book in this area - ancient religions etc I mean, not Vico-ists - is "Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come" by Norman Cohn, which traces the apocalyptic theme and its undeveloped predecessors from Sumer to early Christianity, noticing some telling points along the way, and putting forth a highly provocative thesis (especially on the essentially Persian origins of moral dualism). Won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it thought provoking.
Military history
Flimsier than all the above, I also read military history, as a hobbyist basically. Most recently I've been reading David Glantz's more recent book on the first year of WW II in Russia "Before Stalingrad" (considerably more up to date than his older Barbarossa book, offers considerable insight but tends to keep the operational narrative rather high, without plumbing the tactical bits as much as one would like). Also reading through the parts of David Chandler's "Campaigns of Napoleon" dealing with the 1813 campaign in Germany. (Chandler can sometimes be silly, but the wealth of operational detail he gives covers many sins).
On deck in this area are Glantz's Kursk book (I've skimmed it in the library but want to study it for real) and Esposito's "Swords Around the Throne" (his full study of the structure etc of the French army in the Napoleonic era). Amazon says they will be here soon (lol).
Before those I was reading a volume of essays by numerous writers on WW I, edited by Geoffrey Parker and others, called "the great war and the 20th century". Some good, some less good. And Christopher Duffy's "The military experience in the age of reason", which is OK at what it does (tells you what it was like for those involved, basically) but is too thin on both tactical detail and historical narrative.
Popular science
I also read occasional big think popular science books. Recently my reading theme has been computation and intelligence, and in practice has meant Roger Penrose, Stephen Wolfram, Paul Davies, Rudy Rucker, Gregory Chaitin, and James Bailey.
I hope somewhere there is at least one person besides me who cares a lick (lol).