(a partial list, in rough reverse order, some w/ approx. [completion dates])
Jump to: 2022 2021 2020 2015 2010
"Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire" Caroline Elkins [4/24]
"Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought 1882-1948" Nur Masalha (ebook) [4/24]
"Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution" Cat Bohannon [3/24]
"Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World" Alison Weir [3/24]
"History by Subtraction" (ch. 10 of "Knowing Too Much") Norman G. Finkelstein (ebook) [2/24]
"The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad" Eqbal Ahmad, et. al. [2/24]
"The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017" Rashid Khalidi [12/23]
"The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories" Ilan Pappe [11/23]
Sections of "Quality of Life" Ed. by Martha C. Nussbaum & Amartya Sen, including "Part II: Traditions, Relativism, and Objectivity" [10/23] and most of "Part I: Lives and Capabilities" [11/23]
Papers read November-December 2023 Amartya Sen: "Equality of What?" (1979); Joel Beinin: "No More Tears: Benny Morris and the Road Back from Liberal Zionism (2004?); Ilan Pappe: "Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers" (2013); Alisdair MacIntyre: "Epistemologicl Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science" (1977)
"Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA", R.C. Lewontin (ebook) [10/23]
"Ten Myths About Israel" Ilan Pappe (ebook) [10/23]
Papers read July-October 2023 Stefaan Blancke & Maarten Boudry: "'Trust Me, I'm a Scientist' How Philosophy of Science Can Help Explain Why Science Deserves Primacy in Dealing with Societal Problems" (2022); Arnon Keren: "The Public Understanding of What? Laypersons' Epistemic Needs, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and the Demarcation of Science" (2018); AMARTYA SEN: "Elements of a Theory of Human Rights" (2004); Bruno Latour: "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World" (book chapter n.d.)
"The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling" Arlie Russell Hochschild [8/23]
"Ordinary Vices" Judith N. Shklar [7/23]
"The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers and the Last Days of Greek Freedom" James Romm [7/23]
"Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral" Firoze Manji & Bill Fletcher Jr., eds. [6/23]
Papers read May-June 2023 Heather E. Douglas: "Inductive Risk and Values in Science" (2000), and "Border Skirmishes between Science and Policy: Autonomy, Responsibility, and Values" (2004); Sandra D. Mitchell: "The Prescribed and Proscribed Values in Science Policy" (2004);Carl G. Hempel: "Science and Human Values" (1965); Michael Walzer: "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands" (1973; Dennis F. Thompson: "Democratic Secrecy" (1999); David E. Pozen "Deep Secrecy" (2010); Dorota Mokrosinska: "Democratic Authority and State Secrecy" (2019); Steven Aftergood: "Reducing Government Secrecy: Finding What Works" (2009); RAND Corporation: "Secrecy in U.S. National Security: Evaluating the Secrecy Paradigm" (2018); Michael Stocker: "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories" (1976)
Also a few other SF novels: "Tomoe Gozen" by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, which I'd been working at for quite a while, "The House That Stood Still" by A.E. van Vogt (not one of his best), and "The Idylls of the Queen" by Phyllis Ann Karr (an excellent fantasy novel set in King Arthur's court).
"Brown Girl in the Ring" Nalo Hopkinson [5/23]
"Poverty by America" Matthew Desmond [5/23]
Papers read Jan-April 2023 Michele M. Moody-Adams: "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance" (1994), and "The Idea of Moral Progress" (1999), and "On Surrogacy: Morality, Markets, and Motherhood" (1991); Benson Paul: "Culture and Responsibility: A Reply to Moody-Adams" (2001); Hilary Putnam: "Why Reason Can't Be Naturalized" , and "Philosophy of Mathematics: Why Nothing Works"
"The Sovereignty of Good" Iris Murdoch [4/23]
"Realism with a Human Face" Hilary Putnam [4/23]
"Night of the Living Rez" (Stories) Morgan Talty [3/23]
"Black Girl, Call Home" (Poems) Jasmine Mans [3/32]
Usually, with books of poems, I browse. This one I read cover-to-cover.
"Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously" Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò [3/23]
"The Daughter of Doctor Moreau" Silvia Moreno-Garcia [2/23]
"Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope" Michele Moody-Adams [2/23]
"Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture & Philosophy" Michele M. Moody-Adams [2/23]
Reread "Bandits" Eric Hobsbawm [1/23]
Inspired by the movie, "Emily the Criminal"
"Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life" David Treuer [1/23]
"The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays" Hilary Putnam [1/23]
"The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals are Shaping the Future of American Politics" Raina Lipsitz [1/23]
Reread "Burger's Daughter" Nadine Gordimer [12/22]
"Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings" Amilcar Cabral [12/22]
"Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West" Dee Brown [12/22]
"Catnap: A Kate Baeier Mystery" Gillian Slovo [11/22]
"Amilcar Cabral: Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary" Peter Karibe Mendy [11/22]
Reread "Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country" Gillian Slovo [10/22]
Reread "A Guest of Honour" Nadine Gordimer [10/22]
"The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest" Aminatta Forna [9/22]
"The Word Hord: Daily Life in Old English" Hana Videen [8/22]
"Patternmaster" Octavia E. Butler [8/22] (One of hers I had not read, previously.)
Reread "Mind of My Mind" Octavia E. Butler [8/22]
"Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wns Elections" Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and Maria Poblet, eds. [7/22]
Reread "Parable of the Sower" Octavia E. Butler [7/22]
"Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)" Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò [6/22]
"Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It" Brett C. Miller [6/22]
Also reading quite a bit of poetry 6/22 & early 7/22, in Elizabeth Bishop's "Complete Poems", the Norton Anthology, and the FSG Anthology.
"God's Children Are Little Broken Things - Stories" Arinze Ifeakandu [6/22]
"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" Robert M. Sapolsky [5/22]
Reread "The Reactionary Mind" Corey Robin [4/22]
"Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" Arlie Russell Hochschild [4/22]
"Agents of Repression" Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall [3/22]
"Fledgling" Octavia E. Butler [3/22]
"Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism" Benedict Anderson [2/22]
"The State of Israel vs. the Jews" Sylvain Cypel [2/22]
"The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" David Graeber & David Wengrow [1/22]
"Empire of Cotton: A Global History" Sven Beckert [1/22]
"Not a 'Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion" Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz [12/21]
"Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age" Peter Green [12/21]
"The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights" Simon Wendt [12/21]
"Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right's Challenge to State and Empire" Matthew N. Lyons [12/21]
"The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History" James M. Banner [11/21]
"From Grand Duchy to a Modern State: A Political History of Finland Since 1809" Osmo Jussila, Seppo Hentilä, Jukka Nevakivi [11/21]
"Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay" Nancy Milford [10/21]
"Misfits: A Personal Manifesto" Michaela Coel [9/21]
"The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban" Sarah Chayes [9/21]
"Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth" Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford [7/21]
Plus about half each of "A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into the Formal Imagination of Poetry" by Robert Haas and "A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution" by Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis
"Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior" Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wiilson [6/21]
"To Read a Poem" Donald Hall [5/21] Read most of this years ago. Reread - the text part, anyway. Did not read 100% of the example poems.
"Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again" Andy Clark [4/21]
"On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987-1997" Paul M Churchland & Patricia S. Churchland [4/21]
"Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process" Irene M. Pepperberg [4/21]
"Ignorance: How It Drives Science" Stuart Firestein [3/21]
Plus read in 3/21 a number of papers and articles that had been sitting on my tablet: David Kahneman "Maps of Bounded Rationality", Kahneman, Thaler, et al "Anomolies; The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion & Status Quo Bias", Paul Krugman 9/6/09 "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong", Jane Mansbridge "On the Importance of Getting Things Done", Sigmund Freud "The Future of an Illusion", Kruger & Dunning "Unskilled and Unaware of It", Jane Hardisty "My On-Again, Off-Again Romance With Liberalism", Lisa Feldman Barrett & Kristen A. Lindquist "Corrections to Panksepp", Ralph Adolphs "How Should Neuroscience Study Emotions?", Albert Camus "The Myth of Sisyphus" ch. 1 & 4 (skipped the middle).
"Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics" Richard H. Thaler [2/21]
"What Makes Biology Unique?" Ernst Mayr [2/21]
"How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain" Lisa Feldman Barrett [2/21]
"Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer" Judea Pearl et al [2/21]
Not sure I should even list this here. Read very quickly, for concept, not mastery, and not even sure how much I got at that level.
"West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850" Basil Davidson [1/21]
"To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown" Stephen B. Oates [1/21]
"The Wars of the Roses" Alison Weir [1/21]
"Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica" Zora Neale Hurston [1/21]
"Julian" Gore Vidal [1/21]
"Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude 'MA' Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holliday" Angela Y. Davis [1/21]
"Post-Truth" Lee McIntyre [12/20]
"Surviving Autocracy" Masha Gessen [12/20]
"An Economic Theory of Democracy" Anthony Downs [12/20]
"Xerxes" Jacob Abbot (ebook) [12/20]
"1919, The Year of Racial Violence" David F. Krugler [12/20]
"Xingu" Edith Wharton (Kindle) [11/20]
"The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Heny Wallace's Antifascist, Antiracist Politics" John Nichols [11/20]
"A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" Ishmael Beah [11/20]
"The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart" Alicia Garza [11/20]
"The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English" Marjorie Chibnall [10/20]
"Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas" Roberto Lovato [10/20]
"Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" Patrick Radden Keefe [9/20]
"Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow" Henry Louis Gates, Jr. [9/20]
"Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times" Amy Sonnie & James Tracy [9/20]
"Trumping Democracy: From Reagan to the Alt-Right" Ed. by Chip Berlet [7/20]
"Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways To Think Like a 21st Century Economist" Kate Raworth [6/20]
"I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech" Ralph Keyes [6/20]
"The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama" Sanjay Subrahmanyam [6/20]
"Capitol and Ideology" Thomas Piketty [5/20]
"A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain" Marc Morris [4/20]
"Frederick Douglass - Prophet of Freedom" David W. Blight [3/20]
"The Challenge of Change: Crisis in our two-party system" Edward W. Brooke [2/20]
"Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class" Ian Haney López [1/20]
"To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism" Jerome L. Himmelstein [1/20]
Sometime in 2021, or late 2019 - I think - I read or reread "Nervous Conditions" by Tsitsi Dangarembga. I didn't write it down, apparently, but it was some time after Anna went to Malawi, which was in 2019.
"Angela Davis/An Autobiography" Angela Davis [12/19]
"How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them" Jason Stanley [12/19]
"A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood" Harry Haywood, ed. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall [12/19]
"The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay" Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman [11/19]
"Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour" Barbara W. Tuchman [reread 11/19]
"A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century" Barbara W. Tuchman [10/19]
"Six Easy Pieces" Richard P. Feynman [9/19]
"A Critique of Pure Tolerance" Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., Herbert Marcuse [9/19]
"Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City" Steve Early [9/19]
"Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language" Gretchen McCulloch [8/19]
"Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism" Rohini Hensman [8/19]
"The Courage To Hope: How I Stood Up To The Politics of Fear" Shirley Sherrod (with Catherine Wood) [7/19]
"A Democratic Socialist's Fifty Year Adventure" Milt Tambor [7/19]
"We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy" Ta-Nehisi Coates [7/19]
"Liberty" Isaiah Berlin (H. Hardy ed.) [6/19]
"After the Revolution? (Authority in a Good Society)" Robert A. Dahl [6/19]
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" Daniel Kahneman [6/19]
"The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience" Lee McIntyre [5/19]
"Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries" Arend Lijphart [4/19]
"Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream" Gregg Jones [3/19]
"The Calculus of Consent:Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy" James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock [3/19]
"The Reactionary Mind: Conservatives From Edmund Burke to Donald Trump" Corey Robin [2/19]
"The Theory of Committees and Elections" Duncan Black [2/19]
"The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1942" Anita Brenner (Photos assembled by George R. Leighton) [2/19]
"Bandits" Eric Hobsbawm [2/19]
"The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry" John Dewey [1/19]
"Public Opinion" Walter Lippmann [1/19]
"Conjectures and Refutations" Karl Popper [12/18]
"The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge" Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann [11/18]
"1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed" Eric H. Cline [11/18]
"The Open Society and Its Enemies" Karl Popper [11/18]
"It Can't Happen Here" Sinclair Lewis [10/18]
"Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300-1100 B.C.E." Ann E. Killebrew [10/18]
"Far-Right Fantasy: A Sociology of American Religion and Politics" James Aho [10/18]
"The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right" David Neiwert [9/18]
"One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict" Benny Morris [9/18]
"The Making of Modern Lebanon" Helena Cobban [9/18]
"The Basic Political Writings" Jean-Jacques Rousseau (trans/ed D. Cress; ann/intro D. Wootton) - most of it; not sure I finished "The State of War". [9/18]
"To the Finland Station" Edmund Wilson [8/18]
"Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism" S. M. Amadae [7/18]
Also reread parts of Kenneth Arrow's "Social Choice & Individual Values" and of the first chapters of von Neumann & Morgenstern "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior " and read the essay "Rational Fools" by Armatya Sen
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Right's Stealth Plan for America" Nancy McLean [6/18]
"The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America" Timothy Snyder [5/18]
"The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton"" Fawn M. Brodie [5/18]
"The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois"" W.E.B. Du Bois [5/18]
"Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery" James Brewer Stewart [4/18]
"Giovanni's Rooom" James Baldwin [4/18]
"Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South" Fawn M. Brodie [4/18]
"Black Reconstruction in America" W.E.B. Du Bois [3/18]
"Our Sister Killjoy" Ama Ata Aidoo [2/18]
"The Souls of Black Folk" W.E.B. Du Bois [2/18]
"As if: Idealizations and Ideals" Kwame Anthony Appiah [1/18]
"Black Skin, White Masks" Frantz Fanon [1/18]
"Julius Nyerere (Ohio Short Histories of Africa)" Paul Bjerk [1/18]
"The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" Ayi Kwei Armah (reread) [1/18]
"Black Star: A View of the Life & Times of Kwame Nkrumah" Basil Davidson [1/18]
"The Soccer War" Ryszard Kapuscinski [1/18]
"Ujamaa/Essays on Socialism" Julius K. Nyerere [12/17]
"The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam" Robert Malley [12/17]
"The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics" Helena Cobban [12/17]
"A History of the Arab Peoples" Albert Hourani [11/17]
"The Question of Palestine" Edward W. Said [11/17]
"Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System" David Kotz & Fred Weir, plus last few chapters of the same authors' update, "Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin" [10/17]
"The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991" Eric Hobsbawm[10/17]
"The Wretched of the Earth" Frantz Fanon [9/17]
"Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350" Janet L. Abu-Lughod [9/17]
"1948: The First Arab-Israeli War" Benny Morris [9/17]
"Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" & "Exiting the Vampire Castle" Mark Fisher [8/17]
"The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood" Rashid Khalidi [8/17]
"The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000" Chris Wickham [7/17]
"Kill All Normies: Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right" Angela Nagle [7/17]
"Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che" Max Elbaum [6/17]
"Effortless Mastery" Kenny Werner [5/17]
"The Age of Empire: 1875-1914" Eric Hobsbawm [5/17]
"Bismarck and the German Empire" Erich Eyck [4/17]
"The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You" Eli Pariser [4/17]
"Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind" Andy Clark [3/17]
"The Age of Capital: 1848-1875" Eric Hobsbawm [2/17]
"Anton Wilhelm Amo: The Intercultural Background of his Philosophy" Jacob Emmanuel Mabe [2/17]
"Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877" Eric Foner [2/17]
"Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" Doris Kearns Goodwin[12/16]
"Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy" Diana C. Mutz [12/16]
"Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World" Barrington Moore, Jr. [11/16]
"Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War" Eric Foner [10/16]
"Steps Towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution" Manfred Eigen (There was a lot that I lacked the chemistry, and sometimes the math, to really follow, though.) [9/16]
"Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science" Ian Hacking [9/16]
"Existentialism is a Humanism" & "A Commentary on The Stranger" Jean-Paul Satre [8/16]
"The Language of Thought" Jerry A. Fodor [8/16]
"Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are" Frans de Waal [8/16]
"The Second Sex", Simone de Beauvoir (Borde & Malovany-Chevallier, trans.) [7/16]
"Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner: A Story of Women and Economics", Katrine Marçal [6/16]
"Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom", Carol Ascher [6/16]
"Existentialism: A Beginner's Guide", Thomas E. Wartenberg [5/16]
"One Hundred Years of Socialism", Donald Sassoon [4/16]
"The Anatomy of Fascism", Robert O. Paxton [1/16]
"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", Jonathan Haidt [12/15]
"Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt", Barrington Moore, Jr [12/15]
"Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty", Gerd Gigerenzer [11/15]
"The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination", Ursula K. LeGuin [10/15]
"The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate", Andrew Rudalevige [10/15]
"The Imperial Presidency", Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. [9/15]
"National Security and Double Government", Michael J. Glennon [8/15]
"Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party", Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. [8/15]
"Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation", Sarah Irving [7/15]
"The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism", Cornel West [7/15]
"Reflections on the Revolution in France: A Critical Edition", Edmund Burke (ed. and anotated by J.C.D. Clark) [6/15]
"Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution", R. R. Palmer [5/15]
"The French Revolution, Vol 1: from its origins to 1793", Georges Lefebvre [4/15]
"Garibaldi", Jasper Ridley [3/15]
"Americanos: Latin America's Struggle for Independence", John Charles Chasteen [3/15]
"The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848", Eric Hobsbawm [2/15]
"The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution", C.L.R. James [2/15]
"The Age of Jackson", Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. [1/15]
"Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America", Lawrence Goodwyn [12/14]
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century", Thomas Piketty [11/14]
"The Hidden Injuries of Class", Richard Sennett & Jonathan Cobb [7/14]
"Essays in Experimental Logic", John Dewey [7/14]
"Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking", Daniel C. Dennett [5/14]
"Where Mathematics Comes From: How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being", George Lakoff and Rafael. E. Núñez [4/14]
"The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge", Philip Kitcher [3/14]
"Taking Darwin Seriously", Michael Ruse [2/14]
"Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic", P. A. Brunt [1/14]
"The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World", G. E. M. De Ste. Croix (sans Appendices, which were too hard to read if you don't read Latin) [1/14]
"Who Rules America?", 4th Ed., G. William Domhoff [12/13]
"Philosophical Explanations", Robert Nozick [11/13]
"Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry", Laura Maria Agustin [9/13]
"The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West", Gilles Kepel [8/13]
"Orientalism", Edward W. Said (25th Anniversary Ed.) [7/13]
"A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America", Leila Ahmed [7/13]
"Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting", Daniel C. Dennett [6/13]
"Roman Republics", Harriet I. Flower [6/13]
"The Age of Keynes", Robert Lekachman [5/13]
"Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went", John Kenneth Galbraith [5/13]
"Naturalizing Epistemology", Hilary Kornblith, ed. [3/13]
"Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Daniel C. Dennett [1/13]
In late 2012 I was reading in various books that, for one reason or another, I haven't finished yet. Some of them I put aside for a while, because events took me in other directions. The list includes: William Greider "Secrets of the Temple", Adam Smith "Theory of Moral Sentiments", Hilary Kornbluth, Ed. "Naturalizing Epistemology" and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn "The Rebel Girl". I also reread a good bit of Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", and read some good chunks of a couple of computer books, "PHP, MySQL, Javascript & CSS" and "Professional WordPress Design and Development", not to mention "WordPress for Dummies", "Podcasting for Dummies" and a couple of books on sound engineering.
"A People's Guide to the Federal Budget", National Priorities Project [10/12]
"Democracy and Its Critics", Robert A. Dahl [8/12]
"Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved", Frans de Waal, et al [7/12]
"Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life", Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, Tipton [6/12]
"The Origins of Democratic Thinking: The invention of politics in classical Athens", Cynthia Farrar [5/12]
"Democracy: The Unfinished Journey 508 BC to ad 1993", Ed. John Dunn [3/12]
"Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras", Plato [1/12]
"The ‘S’ Word: A short history of an American tradition... Socialism", John Nichols [1/12]
"Citizen Tom Paine", Howard Fast [12/11]
"The Idea of Justice", Amartya Sen [12/11]
"Naming and Necessity", Saul A. Kripke [11/11]
"Experience & Education", John Dewey [9/11]
"The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism" David Harvey [9/11]
"Social Choice & Individual Values" Kenneth J. Arrow... at least a first reading... Also, over past few weeks read "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", by Sherman Alexie & William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition". [6/11]
"Main St. $marts: Who got us into this economic mess, and how we get through it..." Grace Ross [5/11]
"Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary" W. V. Quine [5/11 - after picking away at it for years]
"Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosopy of Science" Peter Godfrey-Smith [4/11]
Read a little more than half of "The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution" by Christopher Hill, but got a little bored with it. Also finished "The Classic Philip Jose Farmer: 1952-1964", which I started last summer, and read an old crime novel "An Eye for an Eye" by Leigh Brackett. [3/11]
"Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England" C.H. Firth [2/11]
"Ideology & Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge" Karl Mannheim [2/11] I've also been reading in Jane Harrison's "Themis", and read a novel "The Laughter of Aphrodite" by Peter Green. Plus some math books, or maybe that was earlier.
"The Dialectical Biologist" Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin [11/10]
"The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America" Lawrence Goodwyn [10/10]
"Selections from the Prison Notebooks" Antonio Gramsci (Hoare & Smith, ed.) [10/10]
"A Common Faith" John Dewey [9/10]
"The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir" Staceyann Chin [8/10]
"False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy" Dean Baker [7/10]
"Antonio Gramsci" Antonio A. Santucci [6/10]
"A Brief History of Time - from the big bang to black holes" Stephen W. Hawking [6/10]
Reread Machiavelli's "The Prince" (don't think I'd read it since I was a teenager) - also reread parts of the "Discourses" [5/10]
"Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", "Theses on Feuerback" and "The German Ideology: Part I" by Karl Marx in "The Marx-Engels Reader" Ed. by Robert C. Tucker (for the Boston DSA Reading Group), also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Feuerbach, and reread Russell's article on Hegel in "History of Western Philosophy". [5/10]
"Violent Politics: A history of insurgency, terrorism & guerrilla war from the American Revolution to Iraq" William R. Polk [5/10]
"Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy" Dean Baker [4/10]
"Created Unequal" James K. Galbraith [2/10]
"Consciousness Explained" Daniel C. Dennett [2/10]
"The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and Environment" Richard Lewontin [1/10]
"The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus" Elliot Sober [12/09]
"The Future of Democratic Equality: Building Social Solidarity in a Fragmented America" Joseph M. Schwartz [11/09]
"Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" Richard Rorty (yeah, well, I tried. urgh.) [10/09]
"Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 B.C." Paul Cartledge [9/09]
"Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals" Frans De Waal [9/09]
"Philosophy and Feminist Thinking" Jean Grimshaw [8/09]
"The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008" Paul Krugman [8/09]
"Galbraith & Market Capitalism" David Reisman [8/09]
"Economics and the Public Purpose" John Kenneth Galbraith [7/09]
"Ontological Relativity & Other Essays" W.V. Quine (Well, I did my best...) [7/09]
"The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot" Russell Kirk [6/09]
"The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market, and Why Liberals Should Too" James K. Galbraith (And a worthy successor to his dad he’s turned out to be!) [6/09]
"Leviathan" Thomas Hobbes (Barely skimmed most of Parts 3 & 4. The tortured logic of their argument, which seeks to derive a doctrine rational and consistant, if false, from a scripture that is arbitrary, irrational, and inconsistant, is of interest as an historical curiosity, only, and curiosity is not strong enough to justify the investment.) [5/09]
"A History of the Roman World 753 to 146 BC" H. H. Scullard [5/09]
Whilst reading in some more books on Rome and one on European prehistory, managed to get in a few novels and a short book on Freud: Leigh Brackett’s "No Good From a Corpse", Jack Williamson’s "Darker Than You Think", Tariq Ali’s, "The Book of Saladin", and "Freud: A Very Short Introduction" by Anthony Storr [3/09]
"The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic" Harriet I. Flower, ed. [2/09]
"Perils of Empire: The Roman Republic and the American Republic" Monte L. Pearson [1/09]
"After Virtue (2nd Ed.)" Alasdair MacIntyre [12/08]
"The Greco-Persian Wars" Peter Green [12/08]
Reread Finley's "Politics in the Ancient World" [12/08]
"Gödel's Proof" Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman [11/08]
"Methods of Logic" Willard Van Orman Quine (Mostly review—but a classic! I read it quickly, without doing a lot of Examples. Now I can get back to "Set Theory and It's Logic"...) [11/08]
"Word & Object" Willard Van Orman Quine [9/08]
"African Political Leadership: Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkruma and Julisu K. Nyerere" A.B. Assensoh (Fascinating topic - not a very good book.) [8/08]
"Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism" Greg Grandin [7/08]
"Understanding Thermodynamics" H.C. Van Ness [7/08]
"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" Daniel C. Dennett [6/08]
"Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain" Patricia Smith Churchland [6/08 - but mostly read April & May]
"How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy" Mark Engler [5/08]
"From a Logical Point of View" Willard Van Orman Quine [5/08]
"Plato and Parmenides" tr. w/ commentary by Francis M. Cornford [4/08]
"Plato's Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and The Sophist" tr. w/ commentary by Francis M. Cornford [3/08]
"The Ancient Economy" M.I. Finley [2/08]
"The New Industrial State (4th Ed.)" John Kenneth Galbraith [2/08]
"Democracy and Classical Greece" J. K. Davies [2/08]
"Where Does the Weirdness Go? Why Quantum Mechanics is Strange, But Not As Strange As You Think" David Lidley [1/08]
"Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons" John Carter [1/08]
"The Classical Athenian Democracy" David Stockton [1/08]
"The Affluent Society (4th Ed. Revised and Updated)" John Kenneth Galbraith [12/07]
"John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics" Richard Parker [11/07]
"Economic Philosopy" Joan Robinson [10/07]
"Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation" Sidney Hook [9/07] (I did not read all the introduction & appendix material)
"In the Shadow of Man" Jane Goodall [9/07] (mostly read earlier in the summer, though)
"Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity" Sarah B. Pomeroy [9/07] (I read her "Women in Hellenistic Egypt" years ago, having come across it by accident, but somehow never sought this one out until reading Leila Ahmed, who makes important connections to it.)
"'They Take Our Jobs!' and 20 other myths about immigration" Aviva Chomsky [9/07]
"A Border Passage: from Cairo to America - A Woman's Journey" Leila Ahmed (Boy! I love this woman. Please write another book, Ms. Ahmed!) [8/07]
"Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win" G. William Domhoff [8/07]
"Women and Gender in Islam" Leila Ahmed [8/07]
"Experience and Nature" John Dewey [8/07] (but, man! do I need to read it again!)
"The Essential Dewey" Hickman & Alexander, ed. (Read most of Vol 1 & some of Vol 2, then put aside to read "Experience & Nature" - needed more depth) [1/07 - 6/07]
"The GOD Delusion" Richard Dawkins [6/07]
"Greek Religion" Walter Burkert [5/07]
"The History" Herodotus (David Grene, Translator) [4/07]
"Sisu - Even Through a Stone Wall" Oskari Tokoi [1/07]
"Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind" Donald Johanson & Maitland Edey [1/07]
"The Quest for Community" Robert Nisbet [1/07]
"Two Treatises of Government" John Locke [12/06]
"Anarchy, State, and Utopia" Robert Nozick (needed wider margins) [12/06]
"Chimpanzee Politics: Power & Sex Among Apes" Frans De Waal [11/06]
"Socialism" Michael Harrington [11/06]
"Capital (Vol. 1)" Karl Marx [10/06]
"Reason, Truth and History", Hilary Putnam (yeah, well I understood maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of it. Maybe.) [9/06]
"Mental Spaces" Gilles Fouconnier (A lot of the technical linguistic stuff I had to skip/skim as he assumed more background knowledge than I had, and it wasn't my primary interest, so it didn't seem worth putting the book aside to acquire the requisite background.) [9/06]
"Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind" George Lakoff [8/06]
"Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy", Donald Kagan [7/06]
"Don't Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate" George Lakoff [7/06]
"The Economics of Innocent Fraud" J. K. Galbraith [5/06]
"America Beyond Capitalism" Gar Alperovitz [5/06]
"Civilization and Its Discontents" Sigmund Freud [4/06]
"Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descarte and the Meditations" Gary Hatfield [4/06]
"Electoral Systems: A comparative introduction" David M. Farrell [3/06]
"Teachings from the Worldly Philosophers" Robert Heilbroner [2/06]
"Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategies in Historical Perspective" Ha-Joon Chang [1/06]
"Meaning and Necessity" Rudolph Carnap [11/05]
"Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879", Noel Perrin [9/05]
"Caesar: Politician and Statesman", Matthias Gelzer [9/05]
"Nine Parts of Desire: the Hidden World of Islamic Women", Geraldine Brooks [8/05]
"The Peloponnesian War", Donald Kagan [8/05]
M.I. Finley, "Politics in the Ancient World" [8/05]
M.I. Finley, "The World of Odysseus" [7/05]
"Wet Mind (The New Cognitive Neuroscience)", Stephen M. Kosslyn & Olivier Koenig [prev. read thru Ch. 3, but started over at Ch. 2; 4/05-7/05, roughly]
David Hume, "An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" [6/05]
Victor Davis Hanson, "The Western Way of War" [5/05]
"Pragmatism: A Reader", Louis Menard, Ed. (Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey, et al) [4/05]
John Stuart Mill, "The Subjection of Women" (at last completing "On Liberty and Other Essays") [4/05]
"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" and "The Natural History of Religion", David Hume [3/05]
Locke "Selections" (mostly from Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a little from Treatise of Civil Government, and other works) [2/05]
"The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money", John Maynard Keynes [mostly 8/04 but finished 1/05, but really needs rereading...]
"The Nature of the Gods", Cicero [1/05]
"Five Stages of Greek Religion", Gilbert Murray [1/05]
"Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics", Immanuel Kant [1/05]
"Meditations on First Philosophy", Rene Descartes [1/05]
“Considerations on Representative Government”, John Stuart Mill (in "On Liberty and Other Essays") [11/04]
"The Twelve Caesers", Suetonius [11/04]
"An Introduction to Mathematics" Alfred North Whitehead [10/04]
"The Problems of Philosophy", Bertrand Russell [10/04]
"Against Capitalism", David Schweickart [9/04]
"After Capitalism", David Schweickart [7/04]
"Philosophical Theories of Probability", Donald Gillies [7/04]
"Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation About the Deficit, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America", Ellen Frank [7/04]
“On Liberty” and “Utilitarianism”, John Stuart Mill (in "On Liberty and Other Essays")
"A Theory of Justice", John Rawls [6/04]
"Algebra of Probable Inference", Richard T. Cox (axiomatic derivation of probability theory from mathematical logic - using two VERY simple axioms, plus an assumption of differentiability) [6/04]
"The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith [c. 11/03 thru 5/04]
"Autobiography", J. S. Mill [5/04]
"The Republic", Plato [c. 4/04]
"The Republic and The Laws", Marcus Tullius Cicero
"From the Gracchi to Nero (A history of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68)", H. H. Scullard
[parts of] "The Twelve Caesars", Suetonious [c. 12/03]
"The Discourses (on Livy)", Niccolo Machiavelli
"Nichomachean Ethics" and [about 1/2 of] "Politics", Aristotle
"Beyond the Limits of Thought", Graham Priest (roughly on how antinomies always arise if we push certain types of argument to their logical limits, and what might be the philosophical implications if we were to embrace, or at least accept, them, rather than rejecting them.) [c. 11/03 - read about 1/2 then put aside for now]
"An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic", Graham Priest [c. 10/03]
"Meno", "Crito", "Phaedo", Plato [c. 9/03]
"An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding", David Hume [c. 9/03]
"Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits", Bertrand Russell [c. 8/03]
"Wet Mind (The New Cognitive Neuroscience)", Stephen M. Kosslyn & Olivier Koenig [read thru Ch. 3, then put aside for a while - finished c. 7/05]
"Principles of Mathematics", Bertrand Russell [read into Ch. 6, then put aside for now]
"Elementary Logic", Willard Van Orman Quine
"Foundations of Analysis (The Arithmetic of Whole, Rational, Irrational and Complex Numbers)", Edmund Landau [c. 6/03]
"Symbolic Logic", Susanne K. Langer
"Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics", Howard Eves [c. 3/03]
var. essays in "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell"
"A History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell
"Wisdom of the West", Bertrand Russell [? late /02, early '03?]
And I probably should mention...
a whole bunch more I've read or at least read at that I'm not listing 'cause I can't be bothered to dig up the citation, or figure out roughly when I read 'em, like that "One Market Under God" book (Frank), a few computer books (Perl, XML, Windows XP), a book called "Bitch" on labeling of girls, a few lefty or feminist books like "Backlash", "Global Woman", (half of) "Making Sweatshops", "Nickel and Dimed", that I think fell into this time frame, not to mention engineering stuff.... and a BUNCH more that are still in my unread/in-progress pile.
Not to mention the occasional novel or science-fiction or fantasy book (even though I no longer read 1-2 paperback SF books a day, the way I used to in high school, many years ago...)