Little-known books

[Pabst Blue Democrat]

Hey everyone,

What are some of the best "little-known," books regarding government/politics/history that you like?

You know the kind I mean, the well-kept secrets that never made a best-seller list, but you still recommend them to anyone you can.

[democracyindanger]

1. War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning

by Chris Hedges, foreign correspondent who's covered more than his share of war around the globe.

[deadparrot]

7. Absolutely!

We have a sort of summer book club at my college, and this was one of the two books chosen.

It's magnificent. It really illustrates the horrors of war, and the impacts on both the soldiers and the civilians.

And even though it was published before the Iraq invasion (2002, I think), some of the stuff he says is so relevant, it's frightening, about Christian fundamentalist extremists, etc. I read a good portion of it wiht my mouth hanging open at how dead-on he was.

[Journeyman]

2. "Points for a Compass Rose" by Evan S. Connell

Neither history nor fiction, poetry nor prose, Points for a Compass Rose defies all easy classification. It is a remarkable journey, a vast excursion through time and place in which all knowledge is the pilgrim’s provenance and the wayfarer slips easily from fact to myth, seeking his way through the follies and frailties of humanity in a multitude of languages and thought. And if we learn anything on the journey, it is that the more we study, the more elaborate the puzzle.

[punpirate]

3. Several...

... with regard to what's going on now, I always recommend John MacArthur's Second Front. The run-up to the first Gulf War, in terms of the propaganda involved, was like a blueprint for the most recent invasion.

I think everyone (especially given that this is the season for nuclear 60th anniversaries) should read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. Both are extremely rich histories of the beginnings of the Cold War and the personalities involved in nuclear weapons development.

As well, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent should be on such a list.

Same with Gore Vidal's Dreaming War.

Mike Davis' City of Quartz, which is more social history, but essential reading, nevertheless.

Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection.

James Kunstler's The Long Emergency.

Chalmers Johnson's Sorrows of Empire.

Cheers.

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[wli]

4. Confessions of an Economic Hitman

[oldtime dfl_er]

5. I'm still trying to get my hands on

"It Can't Happen Here". The book Kerry was prominently photographed with during the election -- I've ordered it from two different places only to be told they didn't have any copies left!

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby.26212910

[WCGreen]

8. It's a great book about a fascist

takeover of the US during the depression......

[notadmblnd]

6. Original Sins

Reflections on the Histoy of Zionism and Isreal
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 1992

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa.