On Wednesdays I put up WAYR and I just list what I am reading now, with some notes; then you do the same in the comments. It's fun, and many of us learn about great books.
But I also like my special editions, and I haven't posted one in a while.
So .... on occasional Sunday mornings I will post special editions. Today...
Books for progressives.
UPDATE I am adding the books that were recced in comments
I've done this in the past, and what I will do here is look over past diaries, including comments, and make a compilation, with notes on books I've actually read
Michael C.C. Adams The best war ever
Saul Alinsky Rules for radicals
Jonathan Alter The promise
Eric Alterman: Why we're liberals
Natalie Angier: The canon - a whirligig tour of science
Isaac Asimov Foundation and sequels and prequels. Interesting lessons for America
Margaret Atwood The handmaid's tale
Benjamin Barber: Jihad vs McWorld
Dean Baker: The conservative nanny state
Max Barry Jennifer Government What the tea party wants; SF and very funny.
Douglas Blackmon: Slavery by another name
Jean Bricmont Humanitarian imperialism
David Brock: The Republican noise making machine
Taylor Branch: Trilogy on Martin Luther King
Smedley Butler: War is a racket
Cab Calloway: Minnie the moocher and me
Robert Caro: The power broker - A scathing biography of Robert Moses, urban planner and politician who Caro credits with the fall of New York
His trilogy on LBJ is also very good, if rather relentlessly negative
Graydon Carter: What we've lost
James Carville: We're right, they're wrong
William Catton Overshoot
Sarah Chayes: The punishment of virtue
Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent and various other works
Richard Clarke: Against all enemies
Patrick Cockburn: The occupation
Steven Coll: Ghost wars
Pat Conroy: Beach music
William Dalrympe The last mughal
Richard Dawkins: River out of eden
The blind watchmaker - A great book on how the presence of a watch does NOT imply a watchmaker, at least, not an intelligent one
The ancestor's tale - Evolution in all its glory
John Dean Worse than Watergate
Conservatives without conscience
Broken government
Daniel Dennett
Jared Diamond: Guns, germs and steel - Why Europeans and their descendants run everything - mostly it's due to geography
Collapse
Charles Dickens
Umberto Eco: Travels in hyperreality
Peter Edelman: Searching for America's heart
Riane Eisler: The chalice and the blade
Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel and dimed and generally
Joseph Ellis: Founding fathers - the more I read about the fathers, the less impressed I am with Jefferson, and the more with Hamilton, Franklin and Paine
Federalist papers - Sort of like a blueprint for America
Thomas Frank: One market under God
What's the matter with Kansas?
Paul Fussell: The great war and modern memory
Wartime
James K. Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith: The affluent society and generally
William Gibson: Pattern recognition - Cyberpunk SF
Spook country
Doris Kearns Goodwin: Team of rivals - How Abraham Lincoln ran things when he was in charge
Lyndon Johnson and the American dream - my favorite bio of LBJ, who did a lot of good and had a lot of flaws as well
No ordinary time
Al Gore: Assault on reason
William Greider: Who will tell the people?
Secrets of the temple
One world ready or not
Glenn Greenwald: How would a patriot act?
Michael Harrington The other America
Thom Hartman
Frank Herbert: Dune - A great SF novel about how the 'little people' can win. I didn't like the sequels.
Christopher Hitchens
Richard Hofstadter: The paranoid style in American politics
Anti intellectualism in American life
Irving Howe (ed): Essential works of socialism
Molly Ivins anything
Susan Jacoby: Freethinkers
Thomas Jefferson's works
Chalmers Johnson: The sorrows of empire
Crockett Johnson: Harold and the purple crayon - A wonderful book for the very young. Harold has a purple crayon. With it, he makes the world
David Cay Johnstone: Perfectly legal
Diana Johnstone Fools crusade
Tony Judt Ill fares the land
Michael Kazin (ed) In search of progressive America
John Maynard Keynes: How to pay for the war
Tracy Kidder: Mountains beyond mountains
ML King Jr.: Letter from a Birmingham jail
Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, vegetable, miracle
The poisonwood Bible and generally
Naomi Klein: No logo
Shock doctrine
Richard Kluger Simple justice
Paul Krugman: The great unravelling
Conscience of a liberal
Howard Kuntsler: The long emergency
George Lakoff: Whose freedom?
Moral politics
John LeCarre
Harper Lee To kill a mockingbird
Ursula LeGuin anything. A very literate SF author
Madeline L'Engle A wrinkle in time - A book for tweens and teens, about fighting against dictatorship and how being different doesn't mean being bad
Annie Leonard The story of stuff
Larry Lessig
Julius Lester: To be a slave - This is the first book I read about slavery
Michael Lewis: Liars poker
Sinclair Lewis: It can't happen here
Bernie Mac: Maybe you never cry again
Brotherhood in rhythm
Niccolo Machiavelli The prince
Thomas Malthus: The principles of population
Michael Mandel How America gets away with murder
Charles Mann 1491
Jim Marrs Rise of the Fourth Reich
David McCullough: Truman - An excellent biography of an underrated POTUS
Milton Meyer: They thought they were free
C. Wright Mills: The power elite
The sociological imagination
Chris Mooney: The Republican war on science
Greg Mortenson: Three cups of tea
Bob Moser: Blue dixie
Markos Moulitsas Crashing the Gate
Taking on the system
Ogden Nash: The cruise of the aardvark - For young readers. Uses the tale of Noah's Ark to say that all sorts of creatures are necessary. Wonderful rhymes.
Barack Obama: The audacity of hope - You know, he's the POTUS? That guy.
Thomas Paine's works - One of my favorite founding fathers; he was right about an incredible amount.
Rick Perlstein: Nixonland and generally
Kevin Phillips: American Theocracy, and generally anything
Nina Planck: Real food
Michael Pollan: Omnivore's dilemma
Katha Pollit Reasonable creatures
Karl Popper: The open society and its enemies
Jedidiah Purdy: Being America
[Update [2010-7-25 7:19:36 by plf515]:] Terry Pratchett just about any of the Discworld novels but espectially Small Gods where Pratchett takes on organized religion Jingo! about the follies of nationalism Monstrous Regiment a feminist book Thud! about the idiocy of war and lots of others
Ahmad Rashid: Descent into chaos
John Rawls: A theory of justice
Charles Reich The greening of America
David Remnick: Lenin's tomb - I did read this, but long ago
The bridge
Jacob Riis: How the other half lives - a book which brought the underclass of 100 years ago into the consciousness of some
Clinton Rossiter: Conservatism in America
Philip Roth: The plot against America
Bertrand Russell - almost any of his popular works. Russell must be one of the few people to protest against both WW I and Vietnam
Michael Sandel Justice
John Rosten Saul: Voltaire's bastards
*Eric Schlosser: Fast food nation
Bruce Schneier: Beyond fear
Shel Silverstein The giving tree
Peter Senge The fifth discipline
Dr. Seuss: Yertle the Turtle - The turtles are free, as turtle and maybe all creatures should be.
The Lorax - I speak for the trees
The Sneetches - They all learned that sneetches are sneetches and NO kind of sneetch is the best on the beaches
Hooray for Diffendoofer day! - How school should be
Horton hears a Who
David Shipler The working poor
Upton Sinclair The jungle
E. B. Sledge With the old breed
Gary Snyder Back on the fire again
Rebecca Solnit Savage landscapes
John Steibeck The grapes of wrath
Joseph Stiglitz
Ron Suskind: The way of the world
Studs Terkel: American dreams
Working
Hunter Thompson - anything. Gonzo journalism.
Henry David Thoreau: On civil disobedience
Walden
Jeffrey Toobin The nine
Dalton Trumbo Johnny got his gun
Lynn Turgeon: Bastard Keynesianism
Kees van der Pijls generally and The foreign encounter in myth and religion
Gore Vidal
Kurt Vonnegut: Man without a country, and generally - Vonnegut is wonderful
Franz de Waal: Peacemaking among primates
Bruce Watson Freedom summer
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The spirit level
Gary Wills: Nixon Agonistes
Lincoln at Gettysburg - The story of the great speech
Tim Wise: White Like Me
Tom Wolfe: Bonfire of the vanities - Adventures among the superrich
Gordon Wood: The radicalism of the American revolution
Bob Woodward The agenda
Lawrence Wright: The looming tower
Richard Wright: Native son
Black boy - These two together are both great about civil rights
Howard Zinn: People's History of the US