While I have not lately felt up to critical analysis of anything, I have had the minimal capacity to make lists, in this case a list of books in my library that I have found to have value in rounding out my education, in pursuit of valid thinking and a truthful worldview.
These represent maybe half of my books, the better half for sure. I don’t mean to misrepresent that I have read all of each book. Some books have a single central theme which, once understood, makes much of the rest of the book trivial. Others are reference type books which I go to for a search of their encyclopedic information. Some books I have read several times.
These books were not acquired or read in any specified order. I got them when new questions presented themselves, and that occurred fairly randomly as I plowed ahead on several fronts at a time.
And these books are placed into loose categories, but in no particular order.
My academic education addressed almost none of the issues that I find important today. I found that it is necessary to self-educate well outside the boundaries set in academia. It is highly rewarding. If I were to recommend a starting point, I would begin with the study of logic and critical thinking first, followed close on by Bertrand Russell’s “Problems of Philosophy” and “History of Western Philosophy” in order to get an understanding of First Principles and theory of knowledge, and then Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, for a look at innate faculties in the presence of a blank slate mind.
But perhaps none of this applies to you. Certainly everyone is capable of searching on his own. This is merely what happened along the path my own journey.
Government, Liberty and Totalitarianism:
Democracy in America; Alexis De Tocqueville; 1835; Heffner ed. ; Signet Classic, 2001.
Rules For Radicals; Saul D. Alinski;1971, Vintage/Random House.
Origins of Nazi Genocide From Euthanasia to the Final Solution; Henry Friedlander; 1995; Chapel Hill.
Stalin, A Biography; Robert Service; 2004; Belknap, Harvard University Press.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; William L. Shirer; 1960 Simon and Schuster.
The Arms of Krupp; Wm. Manchester; 1968; Little, Brown and Co.
Liberty and Tyranny; Mark R. Levin; 2009, Threshold Editions/Simon and Schuster.
On Liberty; John Stuart Mill; 2008; Wilder Pub.
The Fatal Conceit, the Errors of Socialism; F.A. Hayek, 1988; Univ of Chicago Press.
The Road to Serfdom; F.A. Hayek, 1944/2007; Univ of Chicago Press.
Liberal Fascism; Jonah Goldberg; 2007; Doubleday.
Fascism; Roger Griffin; 1995; Oxford University Press.
The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism; C. Morse; 2003; iUniverse Pub.
The Art of War & The Prince; Machiavelli (Neville and Mariott, trans.); 2005; El Paso Norte Pub.
The Black Book of Communism; Courtois et. al.; 1999; Harvard University Press.
Death By Government; R. J. Rummel; 2007; Transaction Publishers.
Mao, the Unknown Story; Chang and Halliday; 2006; First Anchor Books.
On Utopian and Scientific Socialism; Lenin; 1979; Progress Publishers, Moscow.
ACLU vs. America; Sears, Osten; 2005; Broadman & Holman, Pubs.
Mussolini’s Italy; Bosworth; 2006; Penguin Press.
Common Sense; Paine; 1776 /1953; American Heritage Series; Bobbs-Merrill Co, Inc. Pub.
The Spanish Inquisition; Kamen; 1997; Yale University Press.
Inquisition; Peters; 1989; University of California Press.
Leviathan; Hobbes; 1651 / 1997; Touchstone Books.
Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism; Stove; 1998; Macleay Press.
The Communist Manifesto; Marx & Engels; ~1847 / 1967; Penguin.
The Wealth of Nations; Adam Smith; 1776 / 2003; Random House.
Logic:
Introduction To Logic; Irving M. Copi; 1978; McMillan Pub.
Contemporary Philosophical Logic; Copi and Gould, eds.; St Martin’s Press.
Logic; Paul Thomassi; 1999; Routledge.
Analyzing Informal Fallacies; S. M. Engel;1980; Prentice-Hall Pub.
Critical Thinking: An Introduction; Alec Fisher; 2001; Cambridge Univ Press.
Non-sense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies; R. J. Gula; 1979 / 2002; Axios Press.
Attacking Faulty Reasoning; T. E. Damer; 2001; Wadsworth Pub.
Logic (Schaum’s outlines); Nolt, Rohatyn, Varzi; 1998; McGraw-Hill.
Philosophy:
The Problems of Philosophy; Bertrand Russell; 1912/1997, Oxford Univ. Press.
The History of Western Philosophy; Bertrand Russell; 1946 / 2004; Routledge.
The Story of Philosophy; Will Durant; 1926 / 2005; Simon and Schuster.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; T.R. Malthus; 1798/2004; Oxford’s World Classics.
The Social Contract; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; 1743/1968; Penguin Classics.
Beyond Good and Evil; Friedrich Nietzsche (Kaufmann); 1886/1989, Vantage Books.
The Portable Nietzsche (Kaufmann);1982; Viking.
New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism; B.G.Rosenthal; 2002; Pennsylvania State University Press.
Nietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism?; Golomb and Wistrich; 2002, Princeton University Press.
The Will To Power; Friedrich Nietzsche (Kaufmann); 1888/1968; Vintage.
Critique of Pure Reason; Kant (Meiklejohn); 1781/1990; Prometheus.
Critique of Practical Reason; Kant (Abbot); 1909 / 1996; Prometheus.
Leviathan; Thos. Hobbes; 1651/1962; Touchstone – Simon and Schuster.
The Republic of Plato; Bloom, translator; 1968 Perseus Books.
Ideas and Opinions; Albert Einstein; 1954; Wings Books.
Out of My Later Years; Albert Einstein; 1956 / 1996; Wings Books.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; John Locke; 1693 / 1995; Prometheus Books.
Language Truth and Logic; A.J. Ayer; 1952; Dover Pub.
Reason and Analysis; Brand Blanshard; 1962 / 1991; Open Court.
Meditations on First Philosophy; Rene’ Descartes; 1641 / 1993; Hackett Publishing.
Agents Under Fire; Angus Menuge; 2004; Rowman and Littlefield, Pub.
The Gods of Atheism; Miceli; 1975; Arlington House, Pub.
The Seduction of Unreason – The Intellectual Romance With Fascism From Nietzsche to Postmodernism; R. Wolin; 2004; Princeton University Press.
Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion; David Hume; 2006; Digireads.com Pub.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; David Hume; 1777,1977; Hackett Pub.
Experiments Against Reality; Roger Kimball; 2003; Ivan R. Dee, Pub.
Mind on Fire; Blaise Pascal ( Guiness, Houston); ~1660 / 2006; Victor Books.
Principia Ethica; G. E. Moore; 1959 / 2004; Dover.
Nicomachean Ethics; Aristotle (Sachs); 2002; Focus Pub.
The Stuff of Thought; Pinker; 2007; Penguin.
Science General:
The Logic of Scientific Discovery; Popper; 1935 / 2002; Routledge.
The ABC of Relativity; Bertrand Russell; 1958; Mentor Book.
Relativity: the Special and General Theory; Albert Einstein; 1961; Three Rivers Press.
The Double Helix; James D. Watson; 1969; Mentor Books.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Kuhn; 1962 / 1996; Univ of Chicago Press.
Biophysics of Computation; Koch; 1999; Oxford University Press.
The Elegant Universe; Greene; 1999, Vintage / Random House.
Warped Passages; Randall; 2005 ; HarperCollins.
The Bell Curve; Herrnstein and Murray; 1996; Free Press Paperbacks.
A Brief History of Time; Hawking; 1988 / 1998; Bantam.
The Mind & The Brain; Schwartz, Begley; 2002; HarperCollins.
The Brain That Changes Itself; Doidge; 2007; Viking.
The Origins of Order; Kauffman; 1993; Oxford University Press.
The Selfish Gene; Dawkins; 1989; Oxford University Press.
Psychology As Religion; Vitz; 1977 / 2002; Eerdmans Pub.
Freud Evaluated; Malcom Macmillan; 1997; MIT Press.
Social Commentary & Education
The Closing of the American Mind; Allan Bloom; 1987; Simon and Schuster.
Hoodwinked; Jack Cashill; 2005; Nelson Current Pub.
The Kinsey Corruption; S. Brinkmann; 2004; Ascension Press.
The Homosexual Agenda; Sears and Osten; 2003; Broadman and Holman Pubs.
In The Name of Eugenics; D. J. Kevles; 2004; Harvard University Press.
The Killing of History; Windschuttle; 1996; Encounter Books.
The NAZI Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; R. J. Lifton; 1986; Basic Books, Pub.
Democracy and Education; Dewey; 1916; Free Press Pub.
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America; Iserbyt; 1999, Conscience Press.
Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World; DeMar; 2007; American Vision Pub.
Evolution:
From So Simple A Beginning, The Four Great books of Darwin: Voyage of the Beagle; Origin of the Species; Descent of Man; Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals; E. O. Wilson, ed.; 2006; W. W. Norton & Co.
Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution; Gertrude Himmelfarb; 1959/1996; Elephant Paperbacks, Dee Publishing.
From Darwin to Hitler; Richard Weikart; 2006, Palgrave McMillan.
Slaughter of the Dissidents; Dr. Jerry Bergman; 2008; Leafcutter Press.
Darwinian Fairytales; David Stove; 1995 / 2007; Encounter Books.
The Beak of the Finch; J. Weiner; 1995; Vintage, Random House.
The Making of the Fittest; Sean Carroll; 2006; W.W. Norton Co.
Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Population; Grant and Grant; 1989; Univ of Chicago Press.
Mathematics of Evolution; Fred Hoyle; 1987 / 1999; Acorn.
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis; Denton; 1986; Adler and Adler.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution; Jones, Martin and Pilbeam, eds.; 1999; Cambridge University Press.
Atheism:
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism; Martin; 2007; Cambridge University Press.
Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism; Paul C. Vitz; 1999; Spence Pub.
The Drama of Atheist Humanism; Henri De Lubac; 1944 / 1995; Ignatius Press.
The End of Faith; Sam Harris; 2004; W. W. Norton & Co.
Atheist Manifesto / In Defense of Atheism (same book under different covers); Onfray; 2007; Arcade Pub.
Atheism; Martin; 1990; Temple Univ. Press.
Atheist Universe; Mills; 2006; Ulysses Press.
God: The Failed Hypothesis; Stenger; 2007; Prometheus.
Letter To A Christian Nation; Sam Harris; 2007; Borzoi Books.
The God Delusion; Dawkins; 2006; Houghton Mifflin / Bantam.
God is Not Great; Hitchens; 2007; Hatchette Books.
Letters From the Earth; Twain; 1938 / 1962; Fawcett Crest / Harper & Row.
The Astonishing Hypothesis; Crick; 1995; Touchstone / Simon & Schuster.
Apologetics:
The End of Reason; R. Zacharias; 2008; Zondervan.
Knowledge of God; Plantinga and Tooley; 2008; Blackwell Pub.
The Consequences of Ideas; Sproul; 2000; Crossway Books.
There Is A God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind; Flew / Varghese; 2007; HarperOne.
Beyond Opinion; R. Zacharias; 2007; Thos. Nelson Pub.
The God Theory; Bernard Haisch; 2006; Red Wheel/Weiser, Pubs.
The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World; Alister McGrath; 2006; Gallilee/DoubleDay/Random House.
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