Beck’s Books

Mr. Beck has a list of books he thinks are very worthwhile reading
Here’s some I’d suggest to supplement his (or, at least in one case, replace) choices.

[Links lead, either directly or through the Online Books Page, to online versions where available, or else to the relevant Amazon page]

Thucydides: History of the Pelopennesian War
It’s not so much a history of a war as an analysis of how the desire to dominate others ends up destroying everyone involved

Plato: Symposium
You may totally disagree with everything he said, but this dialogue is the foundation of at least half of Western intellectual history, and one of the great underpinnings of Christianity.

Machiavelli: Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
The Prince is the famous book, but this is where Machiavelli described his real political ideals

Shakespeare: The Sonnets
Milton: Samson Agonistes
Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Eliot: Four Quartets
What poetry can do, these did. The Blake, if possible, should be read in a copy that contains Blake’s original engravings.

Cao Xueqin: The Story of the Stone (aka The Dream of the Red Chamber)
It’s one of the greatest novels ever written, even if in the full translation it comes (in the Penguin Classics edition)to five volumes (the last of which was written by someone else after the death of the original author), with the added benefit that you’ll learn almost everything you need to know about the Chinese in Imperial China by the time you get to the end–which means learning a lot about the Chinese in modern China

Jane Austen: Persuasion
My personal choice for the greatest novel ever written.

Edmund Crispin: The Moving Toyshop
Dorothy Sayers: The Nine Tailors
Two of the greatest mysteries ever written. In the first one, not only does the corpse disappear, but so does the scene of the crime. In the second, the question is not only who the murder victim was, but also whether he was murdered at all.

Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds
Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates and The Stress of Her Regard
What fantasy can be: intricate plots set into the midst of human history (early Imperial China for Hughart; 19th century London for the first Powers and the lives of the English Romantic Poets for the second Powers)

William Manchester: The Last Lion: William S. Churchill–Alone 1932-1940
Manchester intended to write a three volume biography of Churchill, but became too ill to write the third. Instead he wrote “A World Lit Only By Fire”, and we are the loser for it (which is why I’d kick it off the list). “Alone” is the second volume, in which Manchester focuses on Churchill’s “Wilderness Years”, and in doing so portraying the appeasement movement of the 1930s in damning detail: the elite of Britain acting on the premise that Britain was not really worth defending.

Simon Schama: Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
One of the best histories of the French Revolution: the culture and society of France in the last third of the 18th century and how it produced the prototype of Soviet Russia and all other modern totalitarian states

There, that should give you enough to read for a week or so…

Note to Mr. Beck

This is fabulous. My god: another Stalin biography. I own more of them than anyone I know. I’m going to try to resist for a while (Gibbon goes slowly), but I won’t for long, I think.

Yes, it’s a very worthwhile read, although it’s more a group portrait of the people who surrounded Yosif Vissarionovich, who sometimes fades well into the background (but he’s always in the background, looming like the monster in a horror story).

But while you’re at it, you may as well also get the prequel.

An overlooked seccessionist link with Palin

It’s a little bit more remote than the AIP, both in time and place, of course. But there is a direct link between Sarah Palin and Jefferson Davis.

You see, the first American governor of Alaska was Jefferson Davis., which makes Palin his successor in office.

Of course, it’s not the Jefferson Davis most people think about. This is Jefferson C. Davis, who served as a general in the Union army (highest rank–brevet Brigadier General). He was present at various battles in the Western theater, with varying results, ending up under Sherman during the taking of Atlanta, the March to the Sea, and the Carolina Campaign. His most memorable action during the war was, however, the murder of his superior officer, Major General William “Bull” Nelson after Nelson repeatedly insulted him. [The book in which I discovered General Davis says Nelson was his former commanding officer.] He was never tried, because the army needed all the generals it could get.
In Alaska, his major accomplishment was ordering all the Russians out of Sitka to make room for the Americans he presumed would be crowding in. Two years later, he took control of the US forces fighting the Modoc War, and obtained victory after the Modocs had previously defeated the forces sent against them. He died in 1879 in Chicago.