College student seeks book recommendations (Saturday night vanity request)

My daughter's suggestion ^ | 9/17/15 | A devoted mom

[jla]

From TownHall.com Book Club

Foreign Policy

• Jesus in Beijing by David Aikman
• Inside the Asylum by Jed Babbin
• Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard
• Why We Fight by William J. Bennett
• Escape from Slavery by Francis Bok
• So Many Enemies, So Little Time by Elinor Burkett
• Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson
• The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the 21st Century by Robert Cooper
• Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians by Jerome R. Corsi
• The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz
• Cowboy Capitalism by Olaf Gersemann
• Hating America: The New World Sport by John Gibson
• Hatred's Kingdom by Dore Gold
• The Connection by Stephen F. Hayes
• In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
• What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis
• The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis
• Islam at the Crossroads by Paul Marshall, Roberta Green, and Lela Gilbert
• Our Oldest Enemy by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky
• Breaking the Real Axis of Evil by Mark Palmer
• At Any Price: How America Betrayed My Kidnapped Daughters for Saudi Oil by Patricia Roush
• Reagan's War by Peter Schweizer
• The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky
• Confronting Jihad: Israel & the World After 9/11 by Saul Singer
• Can America Survive? by Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth
• Statecraft by Margaret Thatcher
• Countdown to Crisis by Kenneth R. Timmerman
• Preachers of Hate by Kenneth R. Timmerman
• The French Betrayal of America by Kenneth R. Timmerman
• The Sword of the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic
• Rogue State by William C. Triplett III
• Dawn over Baghdad by Karl Zinsmeister

[jocon307]

This is so great, this is just the kind of dialoge I was hoping to have, thanks to you both.

[Tanniker Smith]

FR bookclub ping.

[Lejes Rimul]

I was lucky enough to stumble onto a dusty copy of it on sale for a quarter at a used book store almost a decade ago, just entering high school. His thesis about the dangers inherent in imperial overstretch was my first indication that conservatism wasn't just a founding principle of our nation but the very bedrock of our Great Power status. Precisely why I'm so wary of the open-ended GWOT today...

[jocon307]

Thans for that list. I wanted to read "Emergency Sex" myself, I knew it must be great when I say how much trouble they got into for writing it. But I figured it might make my head explode. Insofar as I'm concerned if that commie Chavez wants to relocate the UN to the abandoned Heinz factory I've got $100- to chip in to the effort.

It might be an attractive title to the college set, eh?

[JerseyHighlander]

Here's a Gutenberg Library free download of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/148.html.utf8.gz

That's just to whet the appetite

And then Van Doren's biography of Franklin, the chapters on his time as the Colonists' representative in England and as US ambassador to France are an interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140152601/002-5297798-4768014?v=glance

[warchild9]

A good companion book to Rise and Fall is The New American Militarism, by Andrew Bacevich, a really good analysis of how "patriotism" is being twisted into militarism by the people who run the White House. It's written by a truly conservative, retired officer who has no ax to grind in any political sense.

This book sort of brings up to date and close to home (if you'll forgive the double cliches) Kennedy's lessons.

[Txsleuth]

Thanks for the ping---this is a great topic for a thread, also.

I do appreciate other freeper's opinions about books on these subjects.

[saveliberty]

Wow, you have already received lots of great reading recommendations. I haven't read the Paul Johnson book mentioned, but I have read others and I recommend him highly.

Samuel Huntington is required reading in grad school and you can't go wrong there.

I would also recommend Our Oldest Enemy, by Stephen C. Moore. It's a fascinating history of US relations with France and dispels the myths of French friendship and alliance since the dawning of our country. It's quite a shock to read what French governments have tried to do to the US.

[TomSmedley]

Witness by Whitaker Chambers.

[saveliberty]

Yikes! Wrong author! John J Miller. My apologies

[warchild9]

It's good to talk real history, ma'am. Reality has been getting a little thin on the ground here at FR lately.

[saveliberty]

:-) My father's favorite quote is one of President Washington's. President Washington wrote " We have not heard from our Ambassador to France, Mr. Franklin, in over a year. Perhaps someone should write him a letter."

[jla]

The Emergency Sex book deals with the United Nation's incompetance.
I'd strongly suggest your daughter choose Reagan's War. And she can also pick up a copy of God and Reagan to read afterward.
Best wishes for her.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

I'll second any recommendation of Paul Johnson -- even the books of his I haven't read, knowing how good the ones I read were.

I'm in the middle of reading and impressed so far by Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. It's really a long essay, more than a book.

P.J. O'Rourke has written a lot of good stuff, but Holiday's in Hell, even if from the 80s is maybe his best.

[blam]

Witness, Whitaker Chambers

[1rudeboy]

Daisy Miller, Henry James.

[decal]

For something completely different... Pat O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World and Holidays in Hell

[HitmanLV]

I'd recommend a book by my old college professor Steve Rock, 'When Peace Breaks Out,' or something like that, written in the late 1980s. Problem was the fall of the Berlin Wall just after its publication seriously undermined his thesis.

Nice guy, but pie-in-the-sky liberal. In that respect, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

[jocon307]

"Our Oldest Enemy, by Stephen C. Moore."

Yes, just reading the reviews of that book shocked me. I really thought the French were our friends.