Erik

Flynn goes over a very detailed description of the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, and compares these seeds to the operation of the American federal government at that time. He rails against the concentration of power in the federal government, and calls the actions of FDR the beginning of a totality, and the impotence of the Congress a consent to fascism in America. He criticizes the threat of FDR to pack the Supreme Court with poisoned justices in place of those who were over 70. He also criticizes the appropriation of funds (3.3 billion dollars) to FDR which were to be used at his discretion. Most of his discussion centers around the warning signs of socialism, fascism, and national socialism, but at the very end he mentions communism. A supporter of McCarthy after the book was written, it's interesting that he comes out and says that fascism is much more dangerous.

All in all, a great book to learn about the American condition in World War II from a viewpoint that doesn't characterize FDR as a hero, as all our mainstream history books do.

Awesome book. I highly recommend to anyone interested in a non-Keynesian view of economics. Hazlitt goes over inflation, trade, labor, foreign exchange, social programs, and many other topics. He uses logic to explain his viewpoints, shedding all emotion from his arguments. Many, many fallacies are explained away almost instantaneously.

This is a very easy read for this type of material. It is clear and concise, and does not take a college degree to understand.

A good study of all the counties in America and how discretionary and non-discretionary gun laws affect crime. His main conclusion is that non-discretionary concealed-carry laws decrease crime by a very significant margin, especially when viewed at the county level. He also goes into how they affect suicide rates, demographics, effects on different cities and population densities, and gun ownership. At the end, he spends quite a few pages iterating all of the criticism (personal and professional) that he has gotten over the study, responding to each point made.

Very dense reading, but valuable. von Hayek gives an excellent argument against all kinds of collectivism. He describes hundreds of parallels between 1940's England and America and 1920's Germany and Italy, which are really quite astounding. It's really hard to argue with any of the points he makes since they are all based on very valid and non-anecdotal logic. The biggest problem with the book is the writing style, but it's manageable.

This is a good read if you are interested in how one might rule over people. It has many interesting parallels with current times as well, and that makes it well worth a bit of your time. Though what people take away from it is generally the crude generalization that being strong is better than being loved, it's actually much more complicated than that.

The best manga ever (but I might be biased since this is the only series I've read). I have, in fact, read up through volume 32, but I thought it would be obnoxious and inflationary to put all of them in my read list.

This is an extremely bloody, scary tale of the greatest warrior of all time. The characters are pretty deep, and the action is constant.

A good book detailing the rise and fall of youth culture, hip-hop, graffiti, medicine patents, and many other things. Also includes a great analysis of the open-source community and the economic and political motives behind all of it. It's a very music-centric book, linking what we see in the physical world of art with what we are doing online.

This book is available online as a free PDF.

This book is awesome. It reminded me of 1984 quite a bit since it deals with a futuristic culture, but instead of complete oppression like Orwell wrote about, Burgess depicts a society which still has lots of corruption. The complete disregard for human rights will shock you, but the punishment will shock you even more. The ending of the version I read left in an extra chapter that had been left out of previous American editions, and I must say that it leaves the reader with much more closure about the situation at the end of the book. I highly recommend this edition over others because of that. It's a real bezoomny book! Your glazzies will leak kroovy all over - it's horrorshow.

This turned out to be a good recommendation from Jim. Though it looks like a daunting book, this one is written rather well, and keeps the reader engaged using short data-filled chapters. Basically, Bloom introduces us to the concept of the social superorganism that encompasses religion, politics, and family life. Rather than a single human going through life looking to simply have a child to continue on his/her genetic line, most of our species pursue an entirely different goal - learning (subscribing to new memes) as well as propagating (getting others to get on board). This extremely interesting concept is basically exclusive to humans, with a few exceptions mainly in primate behavior.

The book goes on to talk quite a bit about the history of memes, including specific religious history, economic history, military history, and political history. Much of this is very engrossing. He applies pecking order to the superorganisms, claiming that they are all striving to reach the top, usually by asserting their power over an inferior superorganism. He then argues that this implies the current leader in the pecking order must keep arms against those wishing to top it. He argues that Ancient China failed because of disarmament, and Britain's economy in the 19th century was overtaken by the Germans because of arrogance and incompetence of the pecking order leader.

He has some very strong negative opinions of Islam, many of which he justifies or attempts to justify in the book. There is a good discussion on the difference between Shiite and Sunni Muslims as well. Yet, it's hard to put him on one side or the other of the American political spectrum, as he makes many arguments against the Republicans' actions in the text.

Overall, this was a very good read, and I'm interested in reading his other work.

I really enjoyed this book. There were sections where I wished for more detail, but the format of the series is to condense the material for the casual reader, so that was alright. This book presents good cases against many of the explanations for and solutions to the Great Depression, including Hoover being a do-nothing president, the New Deal getting us out, and WWII getting us out. The Austrian case is presented nicely, and authors such as Hayek, Mises, and Hazlitt are brought up.

The format of the book is a bit weird. The normal text flows page to page, but there are lengthy sections of text interspersed around the main body, so the reader constantly has to either skip over those sections or find a good stopping point in the main text so he/she can take in a box of related content.

I really liked the abundance of quotes from the era, many of which were humorous or very illustrative. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a different side of the Great Depression than the mainstream.