The Book Thread

[Frank_B]

As an aside, Jocko Willink, one of the authors has favorably mentioned Starting Strength several times on his podcast (although he belongs to the "ass to grass" squatting school).
.

Jocko and the YouTube algorithm are the reason I discovered SS.

I’m currently reading On Desparate Ground by Hampton Sides. The Chosin Reservoir was absolutely brutal.

[Yngvi]

This thread will end up consuming a large amount of my time.

Can we organize and or rank the book recommendations in a post at the start of the thread? I remember seeing some sort of intellectual/academic book recommendation thread somewhere too; maybe that deserves a separate category.

[Mark Rippetoe]

What is this "we" shit?

[Mark E. Hurling]

I have been immensely frustrated by the closure of libraries and I just simply can't get into e-books. Too much lingering Neanderthal DNA I guess.

I re-read and finished "War in Illinois," about the gang war between the Shelton's and Charlie Birger. It's got everything, the Klan, Prohibition, lazy sheriffs, and corrupt state policemen. The Shelton's were ahead of their time in their use of innovative violence. Not content to settle matters with Chicago typewriters, they had a truck fitted with armor and engaged in rolling ambushes with Birger's crowd. When that didn't work they hired a biplane and dropped explosives on his roadhouse. Ineffectively, but they tried it.

I just started ANOTHER book about the Earps, Tombstone, and the OK Corral. The Earp's, like TR, do not bear up well under closer scrutiny than screenplays.

[JFord]

His podcast about this particular topic comes up a lot on my YouTube "recommended" feed. I'll have to read it, based on your endorsement.

Regarding Extreme Ownership, you won't regret it. Very fast read. Very insightful.

I read the entire book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, about 7 years ago. I was able to get into it and learned some things. You're right about The Theory of Moral Sentiments
it's more difficult than Wealth of Nations.

If you read ALL of WON, then you are the man! I will say that I got a great deal of insight into basic economics by drinking directly from the well. Just out of curiosity, how long did it take? I really couldn't read more than 10 pages a day (and feel that I understood what I'd read).

Bribe the kid $50 to read the book and write a book report. Some books are worth paying your kids to read.

Regarding 1984, you’re absolutely right. A friend of mine offered $100 to a mutual friend’s 14-year-old son to read it. What he DIDN’T know was that this young man was a reading STUD and he would have read it for free. It was the easiest $100 he’d ever made!

[JayLivsey]

My good sir, you must read All You Zombies and By his Bootstraps (written under the pen name Anson MacDonald). I've read a fair amount of mid-century science fiction and those two texts are the only examples I can think of of perfectly consistent time travel paradoxes.



As a geographer, I cringe when policy wonks like Zeihan abuse farcical theories of geographic determinism in defense of this sort of jingoistic nonsense. Also, anyone who thinks their grandkids won't be speaking Chinese actually has zero knowledge of contemporary geography and geopolitics. Here's a sobering anecdote that may help to partially explain why this will likely be the future: I teach more online geography classes in China at Chinese Universities than I do in the US. That is to say, China takes geography far more seriously than Americans do (the US has never taken it seriously as an academic subject, even compared to Europe).

As for me, I'm just finishing up Say Nothing a new book about the Troubles which focuses on the role the IRA leadership had in the disappearance of a single mother of 10. Not a particularly flattering portrait of the IRA, but not a bad read either.

How do you explain China’s inverted demographic pyramid? Or Russia’s? Did he make up the data? As I understand it, they don’t have the young people to sustain any type of productive society, are his numbers wrong?

[1200cc]

If you read ALL of WON, then you are the man! I will say that I got a great deal of insight into basic economics by drinking directly from the well. Just out of curiosity, how long did it take? I really couldn't read more than 10 pages a day (and feel that I understood what I'd read).

I'm definitely not the man.

I can't say for certain, but I remember getting through the early part of the book through where he discusses the division of labor, then I put the book down for a while ~3-6 months I think. Then, when I picked it back up again, I was able to get through it in, maybe, a month's time, throughout the working day when I had a moment between clients, lunchtime, after the kids were in bed, etc. I should add though, that it being seven years ago I may not be as mentally agile now as I was then and that may be a factor in the current book seeming to be more difficult to read, or it could be loss of attention span due to computers/internet/message boards.

[TommyGun]

Someone mentioned Blood Meridien.
Yes yes yes yes. What a story.
Perfectly crafted.

[BareSteel]

I haven't, actually. Can you recommend any? I have been eyeing Christopher Hitchen's Why Orwell Matters - incidentally he wrote the forward to the edition I read.

Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier are on my list - although they're probably better classed as historical fiction or literary journalism, not 100% non-fiction. I've heard great things though.

[John Brothers]

At the start of the lockdowns, I took a detour into American History:

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Cultures of North America (Colin Woodard) - An interesting look at the evolution of North America from the start of European colonization, from the perspective of cultural groups rather than political boundaries.

Followed by the country's founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, U.S. Constitution, Federalist Papers, and some Anti-Federalist Papers).