The book recommendation thread

[GePap]

I think its pretty clear that the OT is filled with relatively well-read individuals. So, anyone have any books that they would enthusiasticly recommend to their fellow Polytubbers?

I will start by recommending

The Dictators by Richard Overy
(ISBN 0-393-32797-3)

It is a long but extremely detailed and well writen comparison between Hitler's dictatorship and Stalin's dictatorship.

[BeBMan]

I recommended the Pulitzer-winning Taubman book about Khrushchev recently but noone wanted to hear it, and I was being ridiculed

So let's try something different:

Paul Zanker "The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus", influential book that demonstrates how "Augustan art as a visual language both expressed and furthered the transformation of Roman society" (JRS) during the rule of well....Augustus.

[Nugog]

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939

Antony Beevor

ISBN-13: 978-0143037651

A good read - especially for someone (like me) who did not know much of the politics that lead up to the conflict.

[Ecthy]

Elliott: Imperial Spain.

[Ecthy]

Reading Great Expectations these days, quite a disappointment so far.

Probably one of those books that make much more sense in the light of the ending.

[BeBMan]

I'd say you had too great expectations /lame

[Ecthy]

That's probably it anyway, the book title made me think it must be some cool piece of literature for years. So far it isn't.

[Thue]

The Songs of Distant Earth is a nice science fiction book, which should be readable for most people.

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, the autobiography of Linus Torvalds, is actually quite funny and interesting. I found that the book was best once I learned to skip the boring passages written by the co-author .

[mrmitchell]

Mythologies by Roland Barthes

[Ramo]

Salman Rushdie's new book, The Enchantress of Florence. Magical realism, Akbar the Great, Florence, brothels.

Also read this awesome book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name. He documents how widespread convicted based labor amounted to a re-imposition of slavery. Basically, the criminal justice system was rounding up black people and charging them with bull**** charges (i.e. vagrancy). Then, a local landlord or industrialist would come along and pay their fine, effectively buying them. This happened at a disturbingly large scale well into the 20th century, and was almost never prosecuted. At the state and local level, black people were almost entirely disenfranchised by the 1890's so they couldn't exercise any power, and the federal government was mostly ambivalent after Grant's Presidency. TR tried some prosecutions in 1903 using an obscure anti-peonage statute (despite the 13th Amendment, there was no federal law, they argued, that actually prohibited slavery), but that ended quickly, and with nominal punishments to a handful of offenders, due to virulent opposition. The feds were on hiatus up till WW 2, when they had to worry about the Japanese stirring up domestic resistance due to slavery. Bill Moyers did a great interview with him:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html

[ramseya]

I'm not done reading it yet but Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson looks to be pretty good if you're interested in the quantifiable reasons why democracy arises and remains strong, why it arises and fails, and why it never arises at all under different economic conditions.

[Jaguar]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. That is all.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ecthy
That's probably it anyway, the book title made me think it must be some cool piece of literature for years. So far it isn't.

I think it's most notable for the ending.

You should finish it.