Reading List → Washingtons Blog
Reading List - Washingtons Blog

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Reading List


There are several books which I can't wait to read, written by people I greatly respect. But I've been too busy to read them yet.

Here's my reading list (in alphabetical order):

Let me know if you've read 'em and what you think.

4 comments:

  1. ughhh you're going to have to skip a lot in ecconned. it drags on before getting to anything worth reading. she takes the first 3 chapters unable to actual define what she thinks a "free market" looks like

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  2. http://www.rmanyc.org/theredbook
    .
    http://www.amazon.com/Red-Book-C-G-Jung/dp/0393065677/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1_rsrsrs2
    .
    http://verbewarp.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's better to tell it like it is, than to dwell in some strange and deluded place made of an all pervading personal-terror -that is coming- not understanding what-the-hell-really-happened.

    First- The country has been greatly dumbed-down. No one reads books.

    Yes, there are some great recent intellects, though clearly and certainly NONE who can hold a candle to the intellects of the past, -not even close-.

    Yes, there have been some scientific works very intensively studied and created by teams of trained scientists in a poisonously bureaucratic setting.

    BUT, by-in-large these are one-offs, like the Apollo Moon Program.

    The ant-and-cockroach-like practitioners of these bureaucratic-scientific-craft-guilds are generally meat-headed morons -apart from the role they played in a scientific-bureaucracy -they each generally hated for every minute -but a few- of their indentured-servitude to it.

    We all know the type. The type is well represented in the population of fat, lazy, often-drug-addicted and incredibly unhealthy public school teachers and university instructors.

    The booze-industry has been built on the modern cultural phenomenon of our sick and perverted societal structures.

    These school-bred morons generally have no other intellectual interests. And even if they did, -they most often have no literary ability to cogently express those other interests.

    The dumbing-down of the country is a widely mentioned topic of conversation in our self-hating contemporary culture of nihilists-and-desperate-existentialists forever caught-up in the clutches of some twisted fear of death, ignorance and being out of favor with the current comic clique.

    -Were they only to know how quickly they are outdated!-

    The great depth of this ongoing ignorance-breeding process though, is rarely mentioned in depth. Few can fathom it.

    Writers today are inclined only to read magazines and Internet articles for their bearing in this otherwise much-more complex reality around all of us, a reality that was far-and-away better gauged in the past, when there were fewer bright lights, loud noises, putrid smells, and not quite so many over-sexed-and-over-weight women trying to get the attention of every half-cocked male in the room.

    The best way to fathom the dumbing down of the country is to first -re-state- it.

    It is the dumbing-down of all western culture we are seeing. The West has been literally bred and self-poisoned into becoming a race of morons.

    Doubt it? Read "Chesterfield's Letters to His Son," or all of Twain, or any good assortment of the non-fiction classics.

    No one writes particularly well any more. And fewer still can think.

    No one really has much knowledge behind their ever-so-human super-human impression of themselves.

    The delusion of knowledge is growing by-leaps-and-bounds -and unfortunately- it is growing in inverse proportion to what people actually know.

    Secondly- No one reads books.

    The general assumption of youth today, is that they were born fully cognizant of the world around them.

    The commonest solution -to everything- I hear youth today espousing, is to legalize pot and let the government tax it. Brilliant, eh?

    I may be an antique, but I see no reason to empower government with any new tax or authority.

    Put the joints and the bong down for a couple of years, and try and read a book or two before you reach the absurdly fat, life-wasting, middle-aged and pharmaceutical company dependent death-march that will greet 99% of your contemporaries in life, kids.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just finished Econned and I think it's genius. For me, Econned reads like the sequel to Shock Doctrine. In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows what happens when the Chicago Boys set their sights on taking over the economy in Chile, Russian, Indonesia, Poland, Sri Lanka, South Africa, China etc. In Econned, Yves Smith shows what happens when the Chicago Boys take over the U.S economy. Econned does a great job of showing the view from inside the Wall Street firms and from inside the mind of the traders (traitors?) who destroyed our economy. I think it's the best analysis yet of the global financial collapse. I mark up a book as I read and I found myself consistently writing Wow! in the margins as Yves Smith brought forth waves of new info I had not read elsewhere.

    ReplyDelete

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