Fall 2006 Virginia Blogosphere Book Fair-Titles by Blogger Submitting
Hello, and welcome to Day Two of the Fall 2006 Virginia Blogosphere Book Fair!
Today I present books as submitted by members of the blogosphere. If links were submitted with the titles, I have edited the submission so the URL is linked to the title of the book. Comments are-for the most part-as submitted (corrections for spelling were made, etc.).
Contributors were asked to send in up to five titles. Where more than five titles were submitted, I had to edit to keep the playing field level. My rule of thumb: If a blog is primarily political, then I printed the title submissions that were non-political or atypical of the blog content. If a blog is not political, and there were more than five titles, then I listed the political books.
Logic? Let's find out something new about the members of our blogosphere. No one is surprised if a GOP blogger or a democratic blogger submits a book bashing the other side, but might be interested in seeing what else said blogger is reading. However, if a non-political type submitted a political book, then it was used because-again-it offers up a different point of view on that blogger.
One blogger in a remarkable display of economcy sent me his Amazon Wish List (that did have more than five titles), so I have simply linked to that list while giveing a sampling of what awaits.
Also, if more folks submit titles, I will add them to the list...it is still not too late!
Books are grouped by blogger and their blog. Blogger comments on their submissions are typically are in italics, but sometimes I used italics for the title.
You will catch on...and away we go!
***********************************
NORM LEAHY-One Mans'Trash
George Mason, Forgotten Founder
by Jeff Broadwater
I haven't read it yet (it should be arriving any day), but I can tell from the reviews I've read so far that this will become a must-read for anyone who wishes to have a better understanding of one of the most important and principled members of the founding generation.
The Road to Serfdom
by F.A. Hayek
The book that launched a thousand classical liberal boats
On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
One of the most important works on individual freedom ever written. Its
relevance only grows greater with time.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
This collection of Joyce's short stories is, quite simply, stunning. If you
read only one story, make sure it is "The Dead," the most heart-breakingly
beautiful creation by any author in the 20th Century. And if you have the
chance, and aren't shy, read the last paragraphs aloud -- the words fall like
the snow: softly, quietly, completely.
The Brothers Karamozov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A difficult work, to be sure. But also a stunning artistic achievement that
takes us on a jopurney through the Russian soul. The dialogue with Satan is one of the most thought-provoking passages in any language.
STEVE RANKIN (southerncrown.blogspot.com)
I've just purchased from Amazon (for an amazingly low price) the 2002 book, Voting at the Political Fault Line: California's Experiment with the Blanket Primary.
Its editors are Bruce Cain of UC-Berkeley and Elisabeth Gerber of the University of Michigan.
NOT BUCK TURGIDSON (vawarroom.blogpost.com)
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
That crunching sound you hear is the last bit of your idealism dying. Kaplan's book is the ultimate work of Realpolitik, proving to me at least that high ideals are the road to hell in foreign relations.
Deliver the Vote: A History of Electoral Fraud in America
Think Florida was the first time an election went south or was stolen? Think again. The first record of vote buying in this country predates the republic... and the purpetrator was George Washington.
Storm from the East
The single best primer on the history of Islamic-Christian conflict I've ever read. A small book that takes you from the revelation to Mohammed to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. Conservatives be warned, it does smack the Bush Administration upside the head, but there's much to be learned here.
Hunters of Dune
Just a plain old good book. I'm a huge Dune fan, and this penultimate novel doesn't disappoint.
How the Republicans Stole Christmas
Should be required reading for every state/federal politician. Bill Press talks about the intersection of faith and politics, and where both parties have gone wrong. I'm not much of a liberal, but I found myself agreeing with him most of the time. A very good, eye opening book.
VIVIAN PAIGE(http://vivianpaige.wordpress.com/)
All Politics is Local by Tip O'Neill
Conservatives Without Conscienceby John Dean
JIM BACON (Bacon’s Rebellion)
Hi, Bwana, Here are a couple of submissions. These are books that I am reading right now:
Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias
by Richard H. Schultz and Andrea Dew
This book deepens the understanding of the foe the United States is facing in the War on Terror and military conflicts in the Middle East. Using insights from anthropology, Schultz and Dew explore the warrior ethos in "primitive" societies, with fascinating case studies like Somalia and Chechnya.
Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship and the Future of Roads
Edited by Gabriel Roth
"Street Smart" consists of a series of essays that examine solutions to traffic congestion from a free-market perspective. The solution is not to raise taxes and add capacity to accommodate demand (which is limitless when someone else pays for it), the authors argue, it is to put into place pricing mechanisms that make people pay for access to roads when and where they want it.
THE VALLEY BLUE DOG
Why Americans Hate Politics by E.J. Dionne Jr
Third time I've read Dionne's book -- Excellent draft on politics in modern America
Theory of Constraints by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Recommended by a friend
Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Recommended by a friend
Unhinged - Exposing Liberals Gone Wild by Michelle Malkin
Why am I a Democrat? Who knows why after reading Michelle's satirical expose
The Unshakeable Kingdom And The Unchanging Person by E. Stanley Jones
Pass the cornbread and say Amen
Finally, there is a book the Blue Dog simply loooves that is written by some guy named Steve Sisson can be found here
Bwana sez-"I wonder what that is all about?" ;-)
THE MASON CONSERVATIVE
Here are my book submissions. I'm trying to find some obscure ones that I have that might generate some interest.
The Shadow of Blooming Grove
by Francis Russell
An enormously entertaining of Warren G. Harding. It reads like a novel. Probably the best written, most engrossing biography I have EVER read. Its huge, but took me only three days too read because I never put it down. Its older, 1968, but holds up very well. Harding is from Blooming Grove, Ohio and the "shadow" is the rumor he had black blood in him. You get a top-notch political biography and large window into what was the crazy, crazy world of turn-of-the-century Ohio politics.
Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884
by Mark Walhgren Summers
As it states, a history of the wildly exciting presidential election of 1884 between James G. Blaine of Maine (the first non-general the GOP had nominated since Lincoln) and Grover Cleveland, the popular, and rotund, reform Governor of New York (AND ex-mayor of Buffalo, my families home town). It will make any campaign today look like church. And Summers takes the perfect tone, mixing the seriousness of the issues
with the clownish nature of the way the newspapers covered it. Summers really gives color to an era, The Gilded Age, that is thought of in steel gray. I've read this four times, and its better every time.
Battle Cry of Freedom
by James McPherson
The absolute, number 1, KICKASS one volue history of the Civil War. In almost 1,000 pages McPherson nails almost every single possible angle of the Civil War and its just tremendous. If there is ONE book on the Civil War you could read, this is it.
Burr
by Gore Vidal
I am a big fan of historical fiction--thought not alternative history. Vidal does the unthinkable and tell a story with Aaron Burr, the black sheep of the Revolutionary family, as almost the hero, weaving the entire story of the Revolution and the Jacksonian era into Burr's long, succesful, tragic, and controversial life. Sometimes fiction can tell a person's tale better than fact. His other books in this series are good, especially Lincoln, but this one is the best.
Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union
by Robert V. Remini
This is the first history book I ever read cover-to-cover, and the first one I ever bought with my own money. If I had to pick oner American political figure in history that I would want to meet in life, it would be Henry Clay. Remini, as usual, is a master and the premier historian of the Jackson era. This is my sentimental pick, and one of my absolute
favore biographies of all time.
STEVE MINOR (SWVA LAW)
Steve submitted several titles, all of which can be found at the site hyperlinked to his name above. Some representative samples (dealing with Virgina) include:
Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women (Vintage) by Laura Fairchild Brodie
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. by John C., Jr. Jeffries
Soldier Of Southwestern Virginia: The Civil War Letters Of Captain John Preston Sheffey by John Preston Sheffey
A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial by Suzanne Lebsock
J. Lindsay Almond: Virginia's Reluctant Rebel by Ben Beagle
James Atticus Bowden
This is just a topical reading list, but not my all time favorites. These books (except the first, which is the absolute favorite), frame many issues I write about and show you what I am reading today.
The Holy Bible (NIV or KJV)
The owner's manual for humans written by the Creator. Never gets old. Insights for individuals with every reading. Best read daily.
The Rise of the West by William H. McNeill
A multi-disciplinary approach to the whole of recorded human history 3000 BC to the present. Shows the way of the world on why things change and how.
The Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America
by James Davison Hunter
A UVa scholar defines the issues based on insights from the late 1980s...a prescient work that still rings true.
One Nation, Two Cultures by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Another scholarly work showing the roots of the division and the intellectual history of the ideas that divide America.
Lee’s Lieutenants (D.S. Freeman) and Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
My current open books.
LOWELL FELD (Raising Kaine)
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L.
Friedman
Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything bySteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies New Edition by Jared
Diamond (Hardcover - Jul 11, 2005)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
BWANA (Renaissance Ruminations)
The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics
by Greg Mitchell
The first great media campaign
A Godly Hero : The Life of William Jennings Bryan
by Michael Kazin
The Great Populist, and author and deliverer of perhaps the greatest convention speech in American history. The chapter on the 1896 convention offers some not-so-common details about how the "Cross of Gold" speech was delivered.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
by Robert A. Caro
Perhaps the greatest political biography of the 20th century, and one where Caro first tries to expose what drives men to want power, and what they will do to get it.
Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President
by Harold Holzer
There are some speeches we are so familiar with that brief phrases bring them to life...words like "I have a dream", "ask not", "moutaintop", and "fear itself", plus a whole raft of Churchill quotes, bring to mind speeches that captured public opinion and changed history. We remember Lincoln at Gettysburg and in his Second Inagural address, but few remember his Cooper Union speech...which is ironic, because it is this speech that put him on the road to the White House, and without which all those other speeches referenced above may never have happened!
Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry
by Graham Stewart
A fairly recent and significant addition to the Churchill literature that tracks the long standing political rivalry between the Churchill's and the Chamberlain's, which came to full fruition in the 1930's as Churchill urged first the Baldwin government and then the Chamberlain government to rearm while Chamberlain chose the path of appeasement even as Nazi Germany prepared for war. Fascinating comparison of attitude, philosophy, and political style in a parliamentary democracy.
************************************
Well, this is the list so far. If you have something to add, please email them to renaissanceruminations@hotmail.com, and please include amazon or B/N hyperlinks if you can!
Today I present books as submitted by members of the blogosphere. If links were submitted with the titles, I have edited the submission so the URL is linked to the title of the book. Comments are-for the most part-as submitted (corrections for spelling were made, etc.).
Contributors were asked to send in up to five titles. Where more than five titles were submitted, I had to edit to keep the playing field level. My rule of thumb: If a blog is primarily political, then I printed the title submissions that were non-political or atypical of the blog content. If a blog is not political, and there were more than five titles, then I listed the political books.
Logic? Let's find out something new about the members of our blogosphere. No one is surprised if a GOP blogger or a democratic blogger submits a book bashing the other side, but might be interested in seeing what else said blogger is reading. However, if a non-political type submitted a political book, then it was used because-again-it offers up a different point of view on that blogger.
One blogger in a remarkable display of economcy sent me his Amazon Wish List (that did have more than five titles), so I have simply linked to that list while giveing a sampling of what awaits.
Also, if more folks submit titles, I will add them to the list...it is still not too late!
Books are grouped by blogger and their blog. Blogger comments on their submissions are typically are in italics, but sometimes I used italics for the title.
You will catch on...and away we go!
***********************************
NORM LEAHY-One Mans'Trash
George Mason, Forgotten Founder
by Jeff Broadwater
I haven't read it yet (it should be arriving any day), but I can tell from the reviews I've read so far that this will become a must-read for anyone who wishes to have a better understanding of one of the most important and principled members of the founding generation.
The Road to Serfdom
by F.A. Hayek
The book that launched a thousand classical liberal boats
On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
One of the most important works on individual freedom ever written. Its
relevance only grows greater with time.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
This collection of Joyce's short stories is, quite simply, stunning. If you
read only one story, make sure it is "The Dead," the most heart-breakingly
beautiful creation by any author in the 20th Century. And if you have the
chance, and aren't shy, read the last paragraphs aloud -- the words fall like
the snow: softly, quietly, completely.
The Brothers Karamozov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A difficult work, to be sure. But also a stunning artistic achievement that
takes us on a jopurney through the Russian soul. The dialogue with Satan is one of the most thought-provoking passages in any language.
STEVE RANKIN (southerncrown.blogspot.com)
I've just purchased from Amazon (for an amazingly low price) the 2002 book, Voting at the Political Fault Line: California's Experiment with the Blanket Primary.
Its editors are Bruce Cain of UC-Berkeley and Elisabeth Gerber of the University of Michigan.
NOT BUCK TURGIDSON (vawarroom.blogpost.com)
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
That crunching sound you hear is the last bit of your idealism dying. Kaplan's book is the ultimate work of Realpolitik, proving to me at least that high ideals are the road to hell in foreign relations.
Deliver the Vote: A History of Electoral Fraud in America
Think Florida was the first time an election went south or was stolen? Think again. The first record of vote buying in this country predates the republic... and the purpetrator was George Washington.
Storm from the East
The single best primer on the history of Islamic-Christian conflict I've ever read. A small book that takes you from the revelation to Mohammed to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. Conservatives be warned, it does smack the Bush Administration upside the head, but there's much to be learned here.
Hunters of Dune
Just a plain old good book. I'm a huge Dune fan, and this penultimate novel doesn't disappoint.
How the Republicans Stole Christmas
Should be required reading for every state/federal politician. Bill Press talks about the intersection of faith and politics, and where both parties have gone wrong. I'm not much of a liberal, but I found myself agreeing with him most of the time. A very good, eye opening book.
VIVIAN PAIGE(http://vivianpaige.wordpress.com/)
All Politics is Local by Tip O'Neill
Conservatives Without Conscienceby John Dean
JIM BACON (Bacon’s Rebellion)
Hi, Bwana, Here are a couple of submissions. These are books that I am reading right now:
Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias
by Richard H. Schultz and Andrea Dew
This book deepens the understanding of the foe the United States is facing in the War on Terror and military conflicts in the Middle East. Using insights from anthropology, Schultz and Dew explore the warrior ethos in "primitive" societies, with fascinating case studies like Somalia and Chechnya.
Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship and the Future of Roads
Edited by Gabriel Roth
"Street Smart" consists of a series of essays that examine solutions to traffic congestion from a free-market perspective. The solution is not to raise taxes and add capacity to accommodate demand (which is limitless when someone else pays for it), the authors argue, it is to put into place pricing mechanisms that make people pay for access to roads when and where they want it.
THE VALLEY BLUE DOG
Why Americans Hate Politics by E.J. Dionne Jr
Third time I've read Dionne's book -- Excellent draft on politics in modern America
Theory of Constraints by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Recommended by a friend
Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Recommended by a friend
Unhinged - Exposing Liberals Gone Wild by Michelle Malkin
Why am I a Democrat? Who knows why after reading Michelle's satirical expose
The Unshakeable Kingdom And The Unchanging Person by E. Stanley Jones
Pass the cornbread and say Amen
Finally, there is a book the Blue Dog simply loooves that is written by some guy named Steve Sisson can be found here
Bwana sez-"I wonder what that is all about?" ;-)
THE MASON CONSERVATIVE
Here are my book submissions. I'm trying to find some obscure ones that I have that might generate some interest.
The Shadow of Blooming Grove
by Francis Russell
An enormously entertaining of Warren G. Harding. It reads like a novel. Probably the best written, most engrossing biography I have EVER read. Its huge, but took me only three days too read because I never put it down. Its older, 1968, but holds up very well. Harding is from Blooming Grove, Ohio and the "shadow" is the rumor he had black blood in him. You get a top-notch political biography and large window into what was the crazy, crazy world of turn-of-the-century Ohio politics.
Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884
by Mark Walhgren Summers
As it states, a history of the wildly exciting presidential election of 1884 between James G. Blaine of Maine (the first non-general the GOP had nominated since Lincoln) and Grover Cleveland, the popular, and rotund, reform Governor of New York (AND ex-mayor of Buffalo, my families home town). It will make any campaign today look like church. And Summers takes the perfect tone, mixing the seriousness of the issues
with the clownish nature of the way the newspapers covered it. Summers really gives color to an era, The Gilded Age, that is thought of in steel gray. I've read this four times, and its better every time.
Battle Cry of Freedom
by James McPherson
The absolute, number 1, KICKASS one volue history of the Civil War. In almost 1,000 pages McPherson nails almost every single possible angle of the Civil War and its just tremendous. If there is ONE book on the Civil War you could read, this is it.
Burr
by Gore Vidal
I am a big fan of historical fiction--thought not alternative history. Vidal does the unthinkable and tell a story with Aaron Burr, the black sheep of the Revolutionary family, as almost the hero, weaving the entire story of the Revolution and the Jacksonian era into Burr's long, succesful, tragic, and controversial life. Sometimes fiction can tell a person's tale better than fact. His other books in this series are good, especially Lincoln, but this one is the best.
Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union
by Robert V. Remini
This is the first history book I ever read cover-to-cover, and the first one I ever bought with my own money. If I had to pick oner American political figure in history that I would want to meet in life, it would be Henry Clay. Remini, as usual, is a master and the premier historian of the Jackson era. This is my sentimental pick, and one of my absolute
favore biographies of all time.
STEVE MINOR (SWVA LAW)
Steve submitted several titles, all of which can be found at the site hyperlinked to his name above. Some representative samples (dealing with Virgina) include:
Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women (Vintage) by Laura Fairchild Brodie
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. by John C., Jr. Jeffries
Soldier Of Southwestern Virginia: The Civil War Letters Of Captain John Preston Sheffey by John Preston Sheffey
A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial by Suzanne Lebsock
J. Lindsay Almond: Virginia's Reluctant Rebel by Ben Beagle
James Atticus Bowden
This is just a topical reading list, but not my all time favorites. These books (except the first, which is the absolute favorite), frame many issues I write about and show you what I am reading today.
The Holy Bible (NIV or KJV)
The owner's manual for humans written by the Creator. Never gets old. Insights for individuals with every reading. Best read daily.
The Rise of the West by William H. McNeill
A multi-disciplinary approach to the whole of recorded human history 3000 BC to the present. Shows the way of the world on why things change and how.
The Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America
by James Davison Hunter
A UVa scholar defines the issues based on insights from the late 1980s...a prescient work that still rings true.
One Nation, Two Cultures by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Another scholarly work showing the roots of the division and the intellectual history of the ideas that divide America.
Lee’s Lieutenants (D.S. Freeman) and Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
My current open books.
LOWELL FELD (Raising Kaine)
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L.
Friedman
Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything bySteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies New Edition by Jared
Diamond (Hardcover - Jul 11, 2005)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
BWANA (Renaissance Ruminations)
The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics
by Greg Mitchell
The first great media campaign
A Godly Hero : The Life of William Jennings Bryan
by Michael Kazin
The Great Populist, and author and deliverer of perhaps the greatest convention speech in American history. The chapter on the 1896 convention offers some not-so-common details about how the "Cross of Gold" speech was delivered.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
by Robert A. Caro
Perhaps the greatest political biography of the 20th century, and one where Caro first tries to expose what drives men to want power, and what they will do to get it.
Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President
by Harold Holzer
There are some speeches we are so familiar with that brief phrases bring them to life...words like "I have a dream", "ask not", "moutaintop", and "fear itself", plus a whole raft of Churchill quotes, bring to mind speeches that captured public opinion and changed history. We remember Lincoln at Gettysburg and in his Second Inagural address, but few remember his Cooper Union speech...which is ironic, because it is this speech that put him on the road to the White House, and without which all those other speeches referenced above may never have happened!
Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry
by Graham Stewart
A fairly recent and significant addition to the Churchill literature that tracks the long standing political rivalry between the Churchill's and the Chamberlain's, which came to full fruition in the 1930's as Churchill urged first the Baldwin government and then the Chamberlain government to rearm while Chamberlain chose the path of appeasement even as Nazi Germany prepared for war. Fascinating comparison of attitude, philosophy, and political style in a parliamentary democracy.
************************************
Well, this is the list so far. If you have something to add, please email them to renaissanceruminations@hotmail.com, and please include amazon or B/N hyperlinks if you can!
posted by Bwana | 11:45 AM
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