I am not much of a reader, mainly because I don't have time, but I have been able to list a few.
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! by Andrew Breitbart
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- Cookbooks by Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa
Follow the Money (2010) by Lynndee Kemmet. By the description, everyone in Mt. Lebanon needs to read it.
Follow the Money: A Citizens Guide to Local Government is a citizen’s primer on how to work with local officials on the heart and soul of government: the budget. The goal is collaboration, not confrontation, over how public money is being spent. Too often there’s a clash between citizens and local officials at the witching hour of budget adoption.Our witching hour is tomorrow night.
Richard Gideon's list follows:
EG:
Here are my top ten favorite books, in no particular order:
1. The New Testament in Koine (period Greek)
2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
3. Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman
4. The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh
5. Sophisms of the Protectionists by Frédéric Bastiat (in French)
6. The Four Million by O. Henry
7. Life with Father by Clarence Day II
8. The History of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
9. The Civil War by Shelby Foote
10. Law Miscellanies by Hugh Henry Brackenridge
I should tell you that I have a lot of "favorites" - but this is a "short list."
RG
So what are your favorite books? Maybe this will give some Lebo Citizen readers ideas for the Holidays.
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.
ReplyDelete"According to Gatto’s observations, the seven lessons taught in public schools from Harlem to Hollywood Hills, are these:
Confusion (The natural order of real life is violated by heaping disconnected facts on students.)
Class Position (Children are locked together into categories where the lesson is that “everyone has a proper place in the pyramid.”)
Indifference (Inflexible school regimens deprive children of complete experiences.)
Emotional dependency (Kids are taught to surrender their individuality to a “predestined chain of command.”
Intellectual dependency (One of the biggest lessons schools teach is conformity rather than curiosity.)
Provisional self-esteem (“The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests, is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.”)
One can’t hide (Schooling and homework assignments deny children privacy and free time in which to learn from parents, from exploration, or from community.)"
Excerpts from a biography:
John Taylor Gatto was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a river town thirty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh where his grandfather, Harry Taylor Zimmer, was the town printer in the days when printers still honored their descent from Peter Zenger. John attended public schools in Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown, and the private Catholic boarding school in Latrobe, all towns in western Pennsylvania.
He climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. Later that year he was the subject of a show at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto," which launched a career of public speaking in the area of school reform, which has taken Gatto over a million and a half miles in all fifty states and seven foreign countries. In 1992, he was named Secretary of Education in the Libertarian Party Shadow Cabinet, and he has been included in Who's Who in Americafrom 1996 on. In 1997, he was given the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty, and was named to the Board of Advisors of the National TV-Turnoff Week.
His books include: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling(1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001)
1. The Killer Angels (Civil War Novel) by Michael Shaara
ReplyDelete2. The Way the World Works by Jude Wanniski
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
4. The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John C. Bogle
5. Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises
6. History of the United States by Charles Austin Beard
You can read Gatto's "Underground History of American Education" here for free.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
I have to admit, "Atlas Shrugged" is one of those life changing books.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have a "favorite book" although I did recently have time to read "The Godfather" after having seen the movie(s) multiple times. The book was hard to put down.
I am currently reading "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001" and although it's long, it will change your perspective on America's involvement in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood and Afghanistan.
I'm also reading a lot of child development books but they seem to all be just reminders of common sense.
Another book that was excellent was "Stalingrad" by Antony Beevor. The way he writes history is a bit different than your normal sort of history book and it's a fascinating look at a major turning point in World War II.
The Bible, Hunt For Red October, Heart of Darkness...
ReplyDeleteEndurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
ReplyDeleteFounding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
ReplyDeleteJoseph J. Ellis
If you have any interest in American history, this is one of the best.
Oh yeah, any of the Tom Clancy books or Dan Brown series.
ReplyDeleteThese are in no particular order 1. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald 2. Abundance - Naslund 3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee 4. 1000 Splendid Suns - Hosseini 5. The Vagrants - Li 6. Me Talk Pretty One Day - Sedaris 7. What is the What - Deng/Eggers 8. Unbroken - Hillenbrand 9. Silver Sparrow - Jones 10. Angela's Ashes - McCourt
ReplyDeletePrivate Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
ReplyDeleteBy Steve Coll
Reckless Endangerment
By Gretchen Morgenson
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
By Reinhart and Rogoff
Battling Wall Street
By Donald Gibson
Brain Rules
By John Medina
1. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis
ReplyDelete2. Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
3. His Excellency, George Washington by Joseph Ellis
4. American Sphinx, Thomas Jefferson - Ellis
5. 1776 by Pittsburgh native David McCullough
6. D-Day Revisited - McCullough
7. In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
8. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Issac
9-10. Can't go wrong with any Tom Clancy, Dan Brown or any Ian Fleming Bond book (way better than most of the movies after Goldfinger)
Some great gift ideas, thanks Richard and Elaine.
Jack,
ReplyDeleteHere is a PBS interview by the author of "Ghost Wars" with the Director of the CIA.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/coll.html
I forgot to mention another piece of Richard Gideon's idea. He thought it would be interesting if we signed our names to our lists, just as Jack, John, RG, and I had done. I realize my critics will have an issue with that, because it subjects them to the same hurtful, unapproved anonymous comments which are aimed towards us and piling up in my spam folder. I do find the lists fascinating, so can the bullies give it a rest?
ReplyDeleteElaine