PPR Book Recommendations

Post Reply New Topic

Ok, the purpose of this thread is for members to post the books they would generally recommend to other members or books that they tend to enjoy. Given that this is the PPR book recommendation list, I will have to ask that the books recommended relate to Politics, Religion, or Philosophy, so please try to make sure the recommendation has a significant connection to those themes.

Providing a brief description of the book recommended, or at least placing it in a category would be nice as well, creating an argument as for why the book should be read by other members would also be of benefit.

This list is also not for favorite movies, so I would ask that if you want to list favorite movies, you create a new thread to do so. This is partially just a function of my personal preference, as although I don't hate movies, I don't regard them as being on a similar level to books in terms of intellectual importance, and I often view a number of movies as just being propaganda, so I just would like to avoid having them here.

In any case PPR, go recommend some books!

Catch-22 is one of the funniest books ever written. The basic plot concerns a pilot in WWII who's trying to avoid getting killed. It is quite interesting in some of its comments on war, politics, and morality. There's even a bit of religion in there.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is also hilarious, though unlike Catch-22 it has absolutely no literary or philosophical importance. It does, however, contain the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Given my chosen username, I suppose I must mention 1984 and Animal Farm. Both political tracts, and they also involve some of George Orwell's criticisms of religion. I suppose in 1984 you could also ponder some questions about theory of knowledge.

Following the dystopian theme, there's also Brave New World and, though lesser-known, We by Zamyatin, the granddaddy of dystopian novels. More intended for a younger audience, but still great, is The Giver. That one is interesting because it's weighing pain against the depth of the human experience. The Cure is similar in its basic idea but not quite as good.

Also, Steinbeck is great- there's Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. The latter is much shorter, should only take a lazy afternoon to read at the most. Steinbeck is largely talking about the plight of the poor in Depression-era America, but lots of what he wrote still applies.

Moby Dick is a whale of a tale, if you'll pardon the terrible pun. Lots of philosophical themes underlying the story, and also just an interesting book to read for the quality of the writing itself.

The Bible is a good one for religion, obviously. I like Ecclesiastes and the Gospels.

The Speed of Dark will be of particular interest to those of us on the spectrum. It discusses the implications of a hypothetical cure for autism, where individual rights weigh against what society wants. Also important is the concept of a self and what degree of change is acceptable while remaining true to oneself, or whether it is acceptable to abandon oneself in pursuit of a goal.

Gulliver's Travels is good old-fashioned political satire.

Player Piano is good. Basic premise of the book is that technological advance has rendered most of the population unnecessary.

Really, anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury will be excellent. I like Martian Chronicles by Bradbury, which is a collection of short stories all following different parts of a similar storyline. He also wrote Fahrenheit 451, which is excellent and much deeper than most literary critics seem to give it credit for.

The Narnia series is not bad, but maybe doesn't have enough depth for a PPR reading list.

He wrote plays, but Arthur Miller is still worth reading. The Crucible and Death of a Salesman are the two big ones from him.

Frankenstein, about the potential dangers of applying new scientific knowledge and whether humans should play God. There's other stuff laced throughout as well.

There's plenty of others that come to mind, but I think my list has already grown long enough, so I'll stop now.

My favorite book is Frankenstein "Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley. Orwell also recommended this one.

Fiction eh? Well, I haven't read many books recently, but the first that come to mind are Camus' The Stranger, Kafka's The Trial, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. These are all pretty obvious titles, so an explanation seems unnecessary, although perhaps I shall simply mention that these authors are all frequently considered related to Existentialism to some extent.

Ok, I'll post book recommendations as well:

The Ego and It's Own by Max Stirner
This book is basically a non-fiction existentialist book where Stirner puts forward the idea that the entire world is egoist, and that nothing exists but the concrete things(as opposed to ideals and spirits), a major part of this being the centrality of the self above all other aspects of reality. So, basically, this book is extreme nominalism, and extreme individuality to the point of subjectivity.

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman
This book is a non-fiction political science book by economics and legal scholar David Friedman. It basically offers a tentative view of his idea of anarcho-capitalism, where the government is done away with and all governmental functions are done privately. It is a good book, and Friedman is a bit of an honest scholar, and is willing to point to some of his weaker points.

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
A non-fiction economics book. Some of this book might be taken as ridiculous, however, the section I like the most is the first section, where he discusses his methodology in some level of detail. Mises basically bases analysis of human action in human subjectivity and holds the things outside of this analysis to be irrelevant based upon man's purposiveness. This book by Mises is very polemical though, and rather libertarian of a writing.

The Rebel by Albert Camus
This book is a non-fiction and it is an existential analysis of rebellion. A great element of it is the rejection of the principles of society due to injustice, and how this kind of rejection supposes a value system to appeal to, as otherwise it would not be rebellion. The idea of rebelling against God as well as human authorities is discussed in this book, and the nihilistic elements of rebellion are also recognized in this book as well.

The Bible
In addition to what Orwell recommended, I would recommend Romans. The Bible is the basis of Christianity, which is the dominant religion in most "Western" nations, and an important cultural book. It is a Christian understanding of God that dominates most theological discussion for that reason, and so understanding the Bible to a significant extent can give additional insight into Western history, and intellectual history.

Science in a Free Society by Paul Feyerabend
This book basically holds much of Feyerabend's criticism of scientific processes held in "Against Method" which is another good book, but goes further to argue for points such as the separation of science and state. Feyerabend is a good author to read because even if one does not agree with his ultimate point, he does know some facts about the history of science that can cause some thinking about scientific processes. Kuhn is another good scholar on this matter and also cited by Feyerabend.

Rules and Order by Friedrich Hayek
Hayek basically re-vitalizes a natural law type view of legality by arguing that laws are not created from the top-down such that they can be altered at will, but rather really evolve from the bottom up through social norms that are taken as correct, with legislation only having a role in correcting the norms that society has been forming on it's own. To argue this, Hayek points to views of laws in past societies and other elements like this to argue his point.

Hmm.... I think this is all I feel like recommending at the moment. There were additional books I had thoughts about recommending, but I didn't want to spend too much time recommending books on the basis of one section. The recommendation of Mises is bad enough on that matter. To go quick through some of the less recommended readings(which might be in this category simply due to the time at which I read them, as I might have read them too early, or relatively recently, or a relatively long time ago), here they are:
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty
Pragmatism: A New Term for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James
The New Being by Paul Tillich
Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing by Soren Kierkegaard
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Fatal Conceit by Friedrich Hayek

That should be good enough for now.

The Stranger by Albert Camus
It's fiction, but goes into how people will sometimes care about extremely important things.

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
A non-fiction economics book. It's a bit of a heavy read, but it's a good one. I disagree with his views on monetary policy, but despite that, he makes a lot of good points.

Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
This was the first book ever written about capitalist Economics.

I'm glad to see that a lot of the recommendations are available as free downloads.

We should add Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy to the required reading list for this forum.

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier and The Cyberiad by Stanislaus Lem

And I guess also The Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Becker and both Alice books by Lewis Carroll and A Dylan Thomas Treasury by Walford Davis and The Left hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin and The Beauty of Fractals by Peitgen and Richter and 73 Poems by e.e.cummings and What is Mathematics by Courant and Robbins and The Beast in Me and Other Animals by James Thurber and The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.

Oh yes! I forgot to mention Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and any book of the works of Escher.