Book Recommendations

[Shooter]

Here's a thread to recommend a book, classic or not, to other posters.

I'll start it off with one of my top ten favorites. 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand.

It's a fictional philosophical book about a dystopian United States and the people who refuse to be exploited by society.

I've read this novel a few times in my life and am currently reading it again. Warning to all. It's not a light read. It's long, deep and philosophical. But definitely worth it. Absolute classic.

 

[elvis]

 

[strollingbones]

separate peace john knowles

 

[johnrocks]

 

[boedicca]

One of the best books ever:

 

[PoliticalChic]

Melanie Philips "The World Turned Upside Down."

From Amazon:
In The World Turned Upside Down, Melanie Phillips explains that the basic cause of this explosion of irrationality is the slow but steady marginalization of religion. We tell ourselves that faith and reason are incompatible, but the opposite is the case. It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible, Phillips asserts, that gave us our concepts of reason, progress, and an orderly world on which science and modernity are based.

 

[Ragnar]

 

[Greenbeard]

In the vein of this forum, a wonderful book:

 

[JakeStarkey]

Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America [Hardcover]

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Various American evangelicals have claimed the founding fathers as believing and practicing Protestants who intended America to be a Christian nation. Secularists, on the other hand, see in the same historical record evidence that the founders were often Deists at best. Both views are grossly oversimplified, argues Waldman, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com. In this engaging, well-researched study, Waldman focuses on the five founding fathers who had the most influence on religion's role in the state—Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams and Madison—and untangles their complex legacy. They were certainly diverse in religiosity, with Jefferson a self-diagnosed heretic, for instance, and Washington a churchgoing Anglican who was silent on points of doctrine and refrained from taking communion. All, however, were committed to the creation of religious freedom in the new nation. Waldman deserves kudos for systematically debunking popular myths: America was not primarily settled by people seeking religious freedom; the separation of church and state did not result from the activism of secularists, but, paradoxically, from the efforts of 18th-century evangelicals; and the American Revolution was as much a reaction against European theocracy as a struggle for economic or political freedom. Waldman produces a thoughtful and remarkably balanced account of religion in early America.

 

[strollingbones]

salvation on sand mountain dennis covington.....he studes pentacostal serpent handlers to the point the begins to handle serpents. easy read

i have read several books on this.

 

[Madeline]

Uh, guys? Could you say a bit about why you are recommending a book?

Thankies.

My all time fav nonfiction work:

This book is especially helpful in learning to manage anxiety and worry. A must-read for any kid leaving home or lady living alone, etc.

 

[Tom Clancy]

More than halfway done.. Wonderfully explained. I recommend it.

Amazon.com: Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World (9780525950745): Thomas F. Madden: Books

Does America face the same destiny endured by ancient Rome? Is the U.S. military overextended? Does the separation of church and state strengthen or weaken a geopolitical powerhouse? Is the United States just another Empire of Conquest being corrupted by its own power? Of late, it is not only historians who have been asking these questions. Thomas Madden, an award-winning professor of history, now shows almost everything we thought we knew about Rome to be wrong, and revolutionizes our understanding of what a good world empire can be.

Taking readers on a dramatic tour of the Roman Republic, a golden era before the depravities of the Caesars and late Empire, Madden uncovers a peaceful, retiring people who above all wanted to be left alone to enjoy their own families and communities, maintaining the rural traditions of their forebears. But external threats required them to establish security, which they did by creating superlative military forces and transforming defeated enemies into friends. Trust, not brutality, was the key ingredient. All other empires since have been Empires of Conquest—until now.

Beginning with a Roman story strikingly parallel to the American Abu Ghraib scandal, Madden provides a much needed historical context to our burning contemporary debates. The United States can be an empire of trust, and Madden is on a mission to get pundits, candidates, and other election-year spectators—which means all of us—to recognize this profound duty.

 

[Sheldon]

separate peace john knowles

God that's one of my all-time favorites. I read it about once a year.



Here's one I finished recently. It's about a mid-thirties male who spends about a week in Brooklyn, where he grew up, trying to piece together enough money so he can provide for his family--his three kids and wife who have temporarily moved in with her racially-resentful mother in Boston while he figures stuff out.

The protagonist is unnamed with mixed race. As he tries to get enough money for a new place for his family and enough tuition for his kid's private school, he reflects on when he was growing up in the streets of Brooklyn and how the city and people in it have changed, and how it's changed him.

Good stuff. Not an action-thriller or sappy romance, but it's well written and the characters come of the page and seem real.

Man Gone Down. Micheal Thomas.

 

[Mini 14]

It is a question of when, not if:

 

[blu]

 

[blu]

 

[blu]

 

[blu]

 

[Madeline]

Zowie, what a bunch of brainiacs. "The Wealth Of Nations"????? Impressive, guys.

Anybody else read Tom Wolfe?

Tom Wolfe

 

[uscitizen]

If you like Scifi I recommend David Webber.
I am currently reading the last of the "Off Armageddon Reef" series.

His Honor Harrington series is good as well.