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JohnRoberts

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This is a work in process (experiment).

I will begin by listing a few general interest books, to see how this works, feel free to add titles you like.

-"Thinking fast and slow" Daniel Kahneman
-"Influence, The psychology of persuasion" Robert Cialdini
-"The madness of crowds", Douglas Murray
-"Pre-suasion", Robert Cialdini
-"Tribe", Sebastian Junger

-"Blank Slate", Steven Pinker
-"Homo Deus" Yuval Noah Harari
-"The art of war", Sun Tzu
-"loser think" Scott Adams
-"The world is flat", Thomas Friedman

==History
-"1776" , David McCullough
-"Killing series; Lincoln, Patton, Jesus, etc" , and others by O'reilly and Dugard
-"Andrew Jackson the miracle of New Orleans", "The Tripoli Pirates" and others by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger

===economics
"The Wealth of nations", Adam Smith

===Governance
-"The Federalist Papers", Hamilton, Madison, Jay, et al
-"Democracy in America" , Alix de Tocqueville

=Science Fiction
"Irobot" and anything by Issiac Assimov
"Dune", Frank Herbert

===Health, Wellness

The Psychology of Eating and Drinking, AW Logue
Sunlight, Zane R Kime

mo lata
JR
 
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Good thread!

For starters...

How The World Works - Noam Chomsky

Perhaps we could have a thread for favourite fiction too? Like many, I've done a lot of reading in the last year and a half and I'm always on the lookout for recommendations
 
I'll start with some of the classics I have on my reading table (to re-read mostly)

These are classics and most people know what they are about:

"Faust" - Goethe
"Crime and Punishment" - Dostoyevski
"Demons" - Dostoyevski
"Brothers Karamazov" - Dostoyevski
"Confessions" - Tolstoi
"Beyond Good and Evil" - Nietzche
"Divine Comedy" - Alighieri
"The Great Divorce" - Lewis
"Paradise Lost in Plain English" - Milton

More recent ones that I like:

-"Man's Search for Meaning" - Frankl
The experience of Viktor Frankl during his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and his search for the meaning in life

-"The Gulag Archipelago" - Solschenizyn
Similar to the above but more comprehensive and in a Soviet Gulag, Solchenizyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature

-"The Gospel According to Jesus of Nazareth" - José Saramago
A ficticious novel about a gospel written by Jesus himself, denounced as heretical by several religions, another Literature Nobel Prize winner

-"The Labyrinth of Solitude" - Octavio Paz
A deep insight into Mexican culture and mentality, written by the mexican Literature Nobel Prize winner

-"Rayuela" - Julio Cortázar
An interesting novel in which one can read in many different ways, you can read it sequentially from start to end and it will tell one story, or you can read it randomly or however you like and the story will be different. Interesting literary experiment from the 60s.

-"How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, And Vanish Without A Trace" - Ahearn/Horan
This is a very interesting book, both Ahearn and Horan used to work as "trackers", people who used to track people who went into hidding, like witness protection, divorced spouses, etc... they eventually turned to the good side and now they work helping and counseling people who want to disappear and remain hidden, it is amazing how little it is needed for someone to get info about you, like a tag from a discarded mattress, don't even mention the obvious means like facebook and all that....

- "The Devil's Delusion" - David Berlinski
This book is a response to famous atheist Richard Dawkins's bestseller book "The God Delusion" in which he basically discredits God in every possible way. Berlinski, a mathematician, PhD, author and professor of mathematics, who is an agnostic himself, writes this book to rebute the new atheist movement proponents like Sam Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and claims that there is more than meets the eye and that religion shouldn't be discarded as mere fairy tale.

-"Darwin's Doubt" - Stephen Meyer
Meyer is a physicist and PhD in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge, he is a proponent of intelligent design and analyzes faults and contradictions on Darwin's theory of evolution in light of recent discoveries like the human genome project etc... Meyer is not a creacionist nut who thinks the earth is 6000 years old, he doesn't discard Darwin's theory but argues that it is not as straightforward as it seems.

-"12 Rules for Life" - Jordan Peterson
No introduction necessary, Canadian Clinical Psychologist and YouTube rockstar, both loved and hated by many, but brilliant none the less.

-"12 More Rules For Life" - Jordan Peterson
New book by the same author.

-"The Black Book of the New Left"-Laje/Marquez
A book written by two argentinians who analyze what they refer to as the New Left and how feminism, LGBT+, abortionists, and global organizations, etc.. are impacting the political and global world. Trigger Warning.

-"La Maquina de Matar" (spanish) - Nicolás Marquez
This is the third book written by Marquez (the same co-author of the Black book...) on the life of Guevara, he is an expert biographer on the life of Che Guevara, and in this book, titled with a phrased coined by Guevara himself, is about the life of Guevara from his begginings till his assasination in Bolivia, exposing all the frustrations, mentality, atrocities and genocide comited by Guevara, contrary to the contemporary portrayal of Guevara as a saviour, role model and symbol of freedom.

-"Is God a Moral Monster?" - Paul Copan
For those interested in religion, this book investigates the portrayal of a morally objectionable God of the Old Testament.

I wish I could read German and Russian, there are some great books in those languages only....

Perhaps we could have a thread for favourite fiction too? Like many, I've done a lot of reading in the last year and a half and I'm always on the lookout for recommendations
Oops, I already did that.

I also love math books, do they apply here?

JR said:
 
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This is a work in process (experiment).

I will begin by listing a few general interest books, to see how this works, feel free to add titles you like.

-"Thinking fast and slow" Daniel Kahneman

I've been meaning to read this for a long time and I'm also very curious about his new book - Noise
 
Kind of arbitrary, very US-centric and politically biased for a "sticky" thread by a moderator claiming to be of "general interest" in my humble opinion. Some great ones, definitely (Pinker should be mandatory for everyone to read).

Here are a few non-fiction suggestions:

"Made to stick - why some ideas survice and others die" by Chip and Dan Heath
"Never Split The Difference, Negotiating As If You Life Depended On It" by Chris Voss
"The Entrepreneurial State" by Mariana Mazzucato
"The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond
"The Other Brain" by R. Douglas Fields
"The Intelligence Trap" by David Robson
 
-"The madness of crowds", Douglas Murray
So why not go back to the source of this book's title & add Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds by Mackay.

And the Brewery being what it is, how about Handbook of Political Fallacies by Jeremy Bentham?
 
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How about "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky,
"Animal farm", by George Orwell (warning not really about farming).
"Gulliver's Travels", Johnathan Swift (again not about travel)
"the naked Ape", Desmond Morris
"Lord of the Flies" William Golding
"The Catcher in the rye" , JD Salinger
"the Hobbit" & "The lord of the rings", JRR Tolkien

etc
 
Literature? Really too many too mention. So non-fiction on music maybe?

Daniel J. Levitin 'This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession'

Oliver Sacks 'Musicophilia'
 
Lots of great non-fiction mentioned already

"The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt
"Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"Lessons of History" by Will Durant
"Selfish Gene" or "River out of Eden" by Richard Dawkins
 
The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran. A neuroscientist discusses phantom limbs, synesthesia and much more.
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Far more fascinating than you might think a book about parasites would be.
 
The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran. A neuroscientist discusses phantom limbs, synesthesia and much more.
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Far more fascinating than you might think a book about parasites would be.
Sounds weird but very interesting
 
More books (a lot of what I read are religious-based books, recently I've been interested in the topic of evil)

- Historia del mundo angélico (available for free in different languages) by P. José Antonio Fortea:
An interesting theological novel written by a catholic exorcist about the creation of the angelic world and the rebelion in heaven, similar argument to Milton's Paradise Lost, but non-poetic, easier to read and based on more solid theology and less folklore. All his books have been translated to several languages and are available for free in his website, or you can buy some of them as a printed copy for a modest amount on Amazon.

-The Voyage to Lourdes by Alexis Carrel:
This book is written by 1912 Nobel Prize for Medicine winner Alexis Carrel about his trip to Lourdes France and his testimony about the miraculous healing of a woman dying of tubercular peritonitis whilst visiting the Lady of Lourdes shrine in May of 1902, Carrell was a sceptic and an unbeliever till that moment.

-The Devil in the City of Angels by Jesse Romero
A series of stories by an ex LA Sheriff's Department deputy and now evangelist describing his encounters with evil whilst working in law enforcement, includes personal account of conversations with serial killer Richard Ramirez and similar interesting stories.

-The Lucifer Effect, Understanding how good people turn evil by Philip Zimbardo
The title says it all, psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how and why good people are capable of doing bad things and turn evil.

-Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning
Similar to the above, narrates the true story of a police battalion in Poland during WWII which was composed of ordinary working class men, who turned evil and were responsible for the mass murder and deportation of Jewish people to the Nazi concentration camps. I heard about it in one of Jordan Peterson's talks.

-The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castañeda
The author narrates his mystical experiences during a period of 5 years using Peyote and other drugs under the teachings of mexican shaman Juan Matus in northern Mexico
 
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-"How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, And Vanish Without A Trace" - Ahearn/Horan
This is a very interesting book, both Ahearn and Horan used to work as "trackers", people who used to track people who went into hidding, like witness protection, divorced spouses, etc... they eventually turned to the good side and now they work helping and counseling people who want to disappear and remain hidden, it is amazing how little it is needed for someone to get info about you, like a tag from a discarded mattress, don't even mention the obvious means like facebook and all that....

I just got that one in today...

Don't tell anybody 🤫
 
I've been meaning to read this for a long time and I'm also very curious about his new book - Noise
"Noise by Kahneman has arrived and so far it is not disappointing, but revealing of how flawed our meat computers are about making decisions.
===

I finished reading Unsettled by Dr Koonin exploring the "science" of climate science, explaining what is known with certainty and how much is speculation or worse. The "worse" was revealed in press conferences recently discussing how congress should hurry up to pass the massive green infrastructure bill because man made climate change is responsible for more storms and flooding deaths. Dr Koonin provides (government) charts showing trends that reveal pretty much the opposite.

He doesn't offer any specific advice but helps identify unfounded conclusions we should not accept as fact. A surprising number of those routinely pop up in the news (cough).

JR
 
Shop class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford

The Hundred Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury

The Idea Factory : Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

Jumping Fire by Murray Taylor

History of Semiconductor Engineering by Bo Lojek

Longitude by Dava Sobel

Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein

A Painted House by John Grisham

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
 
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