Summer Reading: Your Non-Fiction Suggestions
The other day we solicited summer reading suggestions in fiction. Fiction! Who has time for that? If we are going to be reading something this summer that isn’t philosophy, we better learn something about the real world from it. So, readers, which works of non-philosophy non-fiction do you recommend your philosofriends read this summer?
Richard Estes, “Columbus Circle Looking North” (detail)
I just finished “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger. It’s a pretty quick read and easy to follow. He brings up a lot of good points about the fractured nature of our society and the impact it can have on people.
“The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor” by David Landes. If you read it with the same precaution as philosophy (that its a starting point for insight and debate) then its a very good read and also easy (suitable for those lazy summer afternoons).
The Shepherd’s Life — James Rebanks aka @herdyshepherd : An ode to a form of life.
“A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn
Seconded.
Economics without Illusions, by Joseph Heath. Aka Filthy Lucre in Canada. Does a great job explain some basic economics, and exposes 12 major fallacies, six that left-wing thinkers are prone to, and six that right-wing thinkers are prone to.
Two books relevant to the present US political situation:
1. Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion, by Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam (Chicago Press, 2010)
2. The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy, by Suzanne Mettler (Chicago Press, 2011)
The first develops a theory of ethnocentrism, backed up by cross-cultural empirical data, and applies it to a variety of policy disputes (including the war on terror, welfare reform, foreign aid, immigration, marriage). The second explores how a shift towards pro-“free market” government subsidies and tax breaks ends up hiding its operation from the average citizen.
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World by Jay Nordlinger
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics can’t Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey
Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane by Frederick Starr
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
And not for the faint of heart:
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free the Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
I haven’t read The Swerve, but I did recently read some criticism of it that I found interesting:
http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2016/05/the-ethics-of-inventing-modernity.html
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang
Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
A lot of folks here have probably already read this, but also, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand.
This was recommended to me by a political scientist, and it was very interesting on a straightforward level but also simply because it is a Cold War book, with all that entails: Coming Out of the Ice by Victor Herman. It shares some similarities with Herzog’s movie, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, but is even more harrowing.
Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted gives a very disturbing account of a very serious problem that causes many people great suffering
On a related note, see Neal Gabler’s “The Secret Shame of the Middle Class” Atlantic Monthly May 2016. Gabler says that nearly half of all Americans would have trouble paying an unexpected bill of $400.00
“Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us” by John Hills – powerful but highly readable debunking of some common myths about the UK welfare state (that is broadly applicable to other liberal democracies).
“Social Democratic America” by Lane Kenworthy – succinct, well-supported argument for expanding the welfare state, presented in a super readable, dispassionate debate style
“Enlightenment 2.0” by Joseph Heath (and a second vote for Filthy Lucre)
“Strangers Drowning” by Larissa MacFarquhar
“Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. Their new one, “American Amnesia,” looks good too.
“The Coming of the Third Reich” by Richard Evans
Tim and Eric’s Zone Theory: 7 Easy Steps to Achieve a Perfect Life by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, about plants, academia, and life.