Recommend Books on This Thread

10 posts

Cornelio
William's House
Tito Perdue

I've only read the first three volumes of this tetralogy (The Builder, The Churl, The Engineer). The fourth one (The Bachelor) has just been published. I want to recommend this work though. I enjoyed the humor and the poetic style; it's a book capable of inducing nostalgia for a world lost even to someone like me who is not even remotely related to the place.

Tito Perdue is a white nationalist and therefore one would expect him to be mentally retarded and a bad writer -- there are no good WN novels. This is however high literature, one of the best modern novels I have read. The racism is not explicit: he speaks compassionately of blacks as a decrepit race who has lost its course.
Thomas777
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Kebab Removal Service
From Zero to One
by Peter Thiel

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Peter Thiel played an essential role in the rise of Trump. That alone makes him interesting. If you add his personal history as a successful founder (PayPal),
venture capitalist (Facebook, Palantir) & especially as an advocate of „fringe“ ideas (seasteding, life-extending, opposing suffrage), you‘ll have the impression of a person you should pay close attention to.

When I first heard about "From Zero to One" in 2015, i thought it was a standard Start-Up hype book with the standard range of bullshit buzzwords.
I was quite surprised to learn that my assumption was wrong and Peter Thiel is indeed a brilliant thinker.

If you should describe the main message of his book in a simple term, the term would be: "contrarian thinking & action"

To give you fellow Salotrean a more accurate impression of the book, i'll illustrate my short summary of his short book by quoting him:

On contrarian thinking:
„Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present“ (backing Trump as a president would be a perfect example for this, imho)

On the future:
„Most people think the future will be defined by globalisation, but technology is more important“

Highly interesting matrix on future planning & some examples (already mentioned here )
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The definite optimist has a concrete plan for the future and strongly believes in that future being better than today.
The indefinite optimist is bullish on the future but lacks any design and plan for how to make such a future possible.
The definite pessimist has a specific vision for the future but believes that future to be bleak.
The indefinite pessimist has a bearish view on the future but no idea what to do about it.

As mentioned above, this was only a short summary of the book's content, but it should be enough to make you interested in it.
Enjoy.
HR Professional of Color

1. The Hermit of Peking, Hugh Trevor-Roper

2. The Devils of Loudun, Aldous Huxley

3. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*, Edward Gibbon

4. Empire of the Summer Moon, SC Gwynne

5. The Masks of God, Joseph Campbell**

6. Rabbit, Run, John Updike ***

7. Prime Obsession, John Derbyshire

8. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco

* I read an abridged version, the whole 6,000 pages or whatever is probably excessive. But it is incredible how modern the writing is, always lucid, could easily have been written 50 years ago.

** Nothing can ever remove the stain of chatting about the mytheopoetic depths of Star Wars with Bill Moyers' offensive sweater collection in between John Tesh concerts on PBS pledge drives, but Campbell was a serious and perceptive thinker.

*** Updike might have been the most talented writer of all time, his prose and his poetry are effortless, but he didn't really have that much to say. This is his best, I haven't read everything, but some of his novels are beautiful bores

Longface
The Good Soldier Švejk

“Stupid people have to exist too, because if everyone were wise then there would be so much good sense in the world that every other person would be driven crazy by it.”

This probably the best war book I've ever read. What it does, more than anything, is to illustrate how futile and stupid it is to take military life seriously and to glorify the ridiculous notions of service, duty, and sacrifice when it's really in essence just slavery. It's very funny, especially in its portrayal of the pretentiousness of military personal and what Svejk characterizes as the semi-fart. Heller said that this book influenced him but it supersedes Catch-22 in many respects. It's more simple and charming, it doesn't try to shock or make you laugh, it's less egoistic, and almost never gets over involved or emotional. It also has that same golden sort of wit which is also found in the Apocolocyntosis and is also apparent sometimes in Rabelais, but more than that, there is a simple charm to it that brings you very close to understand the culture, conditions, and people of that time so that I couldn't help but feel a certain cosy familiarity. A friend recommended this book to me at a time when I myself was having trouble at the military. All I can say is that it's a fun read and a great uplifter. Read it!

5/5 :agree:
Cornelio
Good review, I've just ordered the book.

Hasek also founded the only political party I'd consider voting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_of_Moderate_Progress_Within_the_Bounds_of_the_Law
Schmeisser

I recently read a new biography of Stonewall Jackson called "Rebel Yell." It was a thorough, authoritative, and readable bio that I would recommend to anyone.

It detailed how Jackson was a crank in civilian life but came into his own at war. Even strange physical ailments that he suffered from for years vanished after heavy fighting began. A hardcore Calvinist, his personality was entirely religious and claimed that he had transformed everything he did into an act of worship for God. A very remarkable man and a really entertaining and comprehensive read.

That's true. Nobody thinks of technology when they think of the future. So many works of science fiction that envision the future only really touch on globalisation, and technology is forgotten about completely. Thiel made a really good point here and proved himself to be an insightful and original thinker.
kimchizzle

Kaczynski could have said something similar to Thiel about tech with an entirely different interpretation of its meaning. At least I read Thiel in that quote as being positive towards tech and the need to stay of the cutting-edge of tech innovation.

Roody
Reminds me of the old war song "Stonewall Jackson's Way."

Silence! ground arms! kneel all! caps off!
Old Blue Lights' going to pray.
Strangle the fool that dares to scoff!
Attention! it's his way.
Appealing from his native sod,
In forma pauperis to God,
Say "bare Thine arm; stretch forth Thy rod,
Amen!" "That's Stonewall Jackson's way."

Jackson's chief staff officer, RL Dabney, is interesting in his own right. He was a Calvinist (Presbyterian) theologian, and was perhaps with Jackson one of the last sincere Calvinists.

After the war he wrote two books worth reading. The first was a biography of Jackson. The second was called A Defense of Virginia and of the South, which is actually more of an attack on the philosophical foundation of modern social and political arrangements. Ironically for a professor at Hampden-Sydney College, he really trashes Locke.
Rodger Young

Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin

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An in depth look at islamic/sharia law straight from the primary sources that jihadists use in order to justify their attacks. Coughlin explains his theories on what "true" islam really is and shows how the quran and other islamic law primary sources can be understood to implicitly demand jihad and violence vs non-muslims. Book is very technical with names and terminology and may require rereading of sections to get the full understanding. Also covers modern islamic organizations such as the muslim brotherhood which have intentionally and maliciously pulled the wool over the eyes of western governments (coughlin himself had his joint chiefs advisory job taken away on behest of the brotherhood)


You can also search him on youtube and watch some of his lectures for a summary of what is covered in the book.