My Most Recent Reading List

Title: Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Author: Richard P. Feynman
Comment: This book is out of date. It is not worth reading.

Title: Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii and Ostia
Author: Gregory S. Aldrete
Comment: Written in 2004, needs to be updated for new information related to DNA analytics. We no longer have to guess what people ate in ancient times.

Title: Justice Is Coming: How Progressives Are Going To Take Over The Country And America Is Going To Love It
Author: Cenk Uygur
Comment: Mostly about racial politics but the economics mentioned are overly simplified. Actually, changes to our tax code are complex.

Title: Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age
Author: Will Durant
Comment: Brief overviews of major historical events. Interesting insights into the Reformation and Roman Catholicism.

Title: Helmet For My Pilllow
Author: Robert Leckey
Comment: Robert writes a personal narrative of his experiences in World War 2. It is amazing he survived.

Title: Mastery
Author: Robert Greene
Comment: I only mastered one subject in my life which was the design of radio electronic circuits. I achieved a perfect score on the FCC radio exam. The test seemed easy and I could 'see' how the exam was designed. I even felt the last circuit was too clever and unfair. You have to study voraciously to achieve mastery.

Title: The Swann Way
Author: Marcel Proust
Comment: Marcel Proust is a brilliant writer. We gain insight into French society early 1900s.

Title: The Laws of Human Nature
Author: Robert Greene
Comment: Lots of advice related to dealing with difficult people. Am I able to read a person? Not yet.

Title: Return of the God Hypothesis
Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Comment: Excellent overview of the current topics related to the science of cosmology. He is arguing for the existence of God. This is a great read.

Title: David Copperfield
Author: Charles Dickens
Comment: Reading a Dickens novel is like watching a movie.

Title: The Selfish Gene
Author: Richard Dawkins
Comment: Brilliantly written explanation of genetic development by many species. This is a must read.

Title: The Canceling of the American Mind
Author: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott
Comment: On only a mild disagreement someone can damage your career through social media.

Title: Elon Musk
Author: Walter Isaacson
Comment: Biography of America's most successful entrepreneur with emphasis on personal deamons in the life of Elon Musk.

Title: Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Bronte
Comment: The writer goes back and forth in time in this clever novel about two families.

Title: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir
Author: by Paul Newman (Author), David Rosenthal (Editor), Clea Newman Soderlund (Afterword), Melissa Newman (Foreword)
Comment: When he finally decided to marry Joanne Woodward after a long on again off again affair she was very wealthy.

Title: Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body Hardcover – Illustrated, September 5, 2017
Author: Daniel Goleman, Richard J. Davidson
Comment: Some history on the growth in the study of the actual impact of meditation. This is a good review, while the title is clever, many people will miss reading this book.

Title: Hitler Downfall 1939 to 1945
Author: Volker Ullrich
Comment: The downfall of Hitler and a review of the late Nazi era.

Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Comment: If people think you are low they won't speak to you.

Title: Ulysses
Author: James Joyce
Comment: Now that was an experience. Will read again in a few more years.

Title: So Help Me God
Author: Mike Pence
Comment: Autobiography from Mike Pence, interesting insights into the Trump administration.

Title: Man's Search For Meaning
Author: Viktor Frankl
Comment: The importance of meaning in life explained to us by a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.

Title: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: space, time, and motion
Author: Sean Carroll
Comment: Sean explains to us that the equations are not that scary. This is a 'must read' for those who follow science.

Title: The Master and Magarita
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Comment: Satire with strong supernatural events, beautifully written, a visit to Moscow by Satan in the 1930's.

Title: Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
Author: Sabine Hossenfelder
Comment: Sabine helps us to understand that a lot of what we hear is just not science.

Title: Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
Author: Sean Carroll
Comment: Facing up to quantum mechanics.

Title: Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
Author: Nick Lane
Comment: How we connect to the origin of life.

Title: Human Diversity: The Biology Of Gender, Race, And Class
Author: Charles Murray
Comment: Advances in genetics and neuroscience.

Title: Woke, Inc. Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam
Author: Vivek Ramaswamy
Comment: Wokeness turns E Pluribus Unum on its head - from "from many, one" to "from one, many".

Title: Viral
Author: Alina Chan, Matt Ridley
Comment: The search for the origin of Covid-19.

Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Comment: People struggle finding meaning in life - 1870's Russia.

Title: One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of the Attorney General
Author: William P. Barr
Comment: Perspectives on the Mueller report, Durham investigation, Russiagate, and many others.

Title: Waiting For Hitler, 1929-1941 STALIN
Author: Stephen Kotkin
Comment: How a political system forged a person and vice versa. The execution of 1 million elites, and the starvation deaths of 2 million rural poor.

Title: Battlegounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
Author: H. R. McMaster
Comment: The good the bad and the ugly of American foreign policy.

Title: Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
Author: Henry Roediger, Mark McDaniel
Comment: How to commit learning to long term memory

Title: The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna and the Future of the Human Race
Author: Walter Isaacson
Comment: A book about the development of gene editing technology.

Title: Rationality: What It Is : Why It Seems Scarce: Why It Matters
Author: Steven Pinker
Comment: The importance of our fundamental knowledge. We cannot take it for granted.

Title: American Marxism
Author: Mark R. Levin
Comment: We have people in America today who seem to have lost the concept of the dignity of work. Marxism has been a major fail anywhere applied.

Title: The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge
Author: Matt Ridley
Comment: We don't apply by invention alone, we apply through trial and implement hands on, and we improve over time. Open and free trade is the foundation.

Title: How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Author: Matt Ridley
Comment: How and why innovation happens and why sometimes it does not.

Title: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Author: Matt Ridley
Comment: Human development shows that trade helps ideas and concepts to grow and dessiminate.

Title: Freedom
Author: Sebastian Junger
Comment: Sometimes when you are free you are not safe, among other things.

Title: Tribe
Author: Sebastian Junger
Comment: Once long ago we were all part of a tribe, modern society has not replaced the tribe.

Title: The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
Author: Michael Malice
Comment: Where did this New Right come from? Insights into the background of American politics.

Title: CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Author: Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring
Comment: An intense review of the Manson Family and their criminal activities some 50 years ago.

Title: Humankind: A Hopeful History
Author: Rutger Bregman
Comment: We tend to have a pessimistic view of others, but we should not, as we don't see the world that way ourselves.

Title: The White Tiger
Author:Aravind Adiga
Comment: Cleverly written book about life in India.

Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F.Scott Fitzgerald
Comment: America in the 1920s.

Title: The Conservative Sensibility
Author: George F. Will
Comment: A great book about the wisdom of the founders of our nation, a defense of natural rights.

Title: The Idiot
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Comment: A person is thoughtful and selfless and people around him call him an idiot, just like life today.

Title: The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity In Our Society
Author: Debra Soh Phd
Comment: Is our gender something we’re born with, or are we conditioned by society?

Title: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To
Author: David A. Sinclair Phd
Comment: The science of what happens to us as we age.

Title: The Brothers Karamasov
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Comment: The meaning of live and death. A great read for our time.

Title: A Farewell to Arms
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Comment: A novel about war and love.

Title: The Town and the City
Author: Jack Kerouac
Comment: A great read for our time, it's all there - you have to move for a job, loneliness, friendship, life and choices.

Title: A Moveable Feast
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Comment: Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s. Insights into the life of a writer.

Title: An Introduction to Mathematics
Author: Alfred North Whitehead
Comment: All of the best books on math were written in the early 1900s.

Title: What is Mathematics
Author: Courant, Robbins
Comment: A great read, what was known up to the Calculus - Answer: A Lot

Title: Something Deeply Hidden Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
Author: Sean Carroll
Comment: Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. This is a great read. What did he say? Uh, well, uh...

Title: BEHAVE The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst
Author: Robert M. Sapolsky
Comment: Sapolsky encourages us to always think in this interdisciplinary way. Our behaviours are influenced by a multitude of factors, some that happen seconds before the action takes place to thousands of years before.

Title: Shiloh
Author: Shelby Foote
Comment: A Civil War battle though the eyes of the officers and soldiers who were there.

Title: Crime and Punishment
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Comment: This is a great read. Insights into Russia 1860s.

Title: The DEEP HISTORY of OURSELVES The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
Author: Joseph LeDoux
Comment: Even bacteria have awareness.

Title: 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do
Author: Amy Morin
Comment: Sometimes the better answer is what you should not do.

Title: War and Peace
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Comment: This is a great read. Great insight into Russian history.

Title: CHAOS Making a New Science
Author: James Gleick
Comment: This is a great read. A fundamental text on the science of tomorrow.

Title: Stumbling on Happiness
Author: Daniel Gilbert
Comment: Why do we project the future so poorly? This excellent read explains why.

Title: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Author: Eckhart Tolle
Comment: A guide to personal growth.

Title: The Joy of X A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
Author: Steven Strogatz
Comment: Intuitive explanation of basic concepts in mathematics.

Title: The Bhagavad Gita
Author: Introduced and Translated By Eknath Easwaran
Comment: 700 verse Sanskrit sripture touching upon ethical dilemmas and philosophical issues.

Title: 12 RULES FOR LIFE: AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS
Author: Jordan B. Peterson
Comment: Twelve directives for living properly. This is a brilliantly written book. It is a great read.

Title: the untethered soul: the journey beyond yourself
Author: Michael A. Singer
Comment: Spiritual teachings to a state of inner freedom. Can I do this? We'll see.

Title: The Four Agreements
Author: Don Miguel Ruiz
Comment: Codes of conduct for life improvement.

Title: Let Me Finish
Author: Chris Christie
Comment: After a biographical start Chris Christie tells us about his role in the Trump campaign. We learn about events in the campaign not normally reported in the press.

Title: Republican Like Me
Author: Ken Stern
Comment: Former CEO for ten years of NPR and life long liberal Democrat travels the country to talk to the other side. Side benefit of this book is the amount of factual information related to issues of our time such as climate change.

Title: A History of God
Author: Karen Armstrong
Comment: Densely written, impressive work. Quote of last sentence: "The idols of fundamentalism are not good substitutes for God; if we are to create a vibrant new faith for the twenty-first century , we should, perhaps, ponder the history of God for some lessons and warnings."

Title: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
Author: David Quammen
Comment: The book reads well, but I would have liked more science and less history.

Title: Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency
Author: Don Abrams
Comment: This is a great read. Based on the extensive documentation we have about this trial.

Title: TAILSPIN The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall-and Those Fighting to Reverse It
Author: Steven Brill
Comment: View from the left for why things do not get done in Washington. Steven Brill needs to visit Indiana. We get a lot done here without massive increases in taxation.

Title: Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason Science Humanism and Progress
Author: Steven Pinker
Comment: Covers a lot of ground on human progress through historical statistics. Notable for what is left out.

Title: Who We Are and How We Got Here
Author: David Reich
Comment: An explanation of developments in using ancient DNA to trace human history. This is a great read.

Title: Understanding Trump
Author: Newt Gingrich
Comment: Newt Gingrich explains policy positions important to the Trump presidency. Interesting take on elitism.

Title: What Happened
Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Comment: Interesting in terms of what is mentioned and not mentioned about the presidential election in 2016.

Title: Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential
Author: Barbara A. Oakley
Comment: Excellent text on the topic of learning to learn.

Title: The Road to Character
Author: David Brooks
Comment: Very interesting stories about people told in a way that displays how events in their lives had impact on character development.

Title: The Givers: Wealth Power and Philanthropy in a Gilded Age
Author: David Callahan
Comment: A must read to understand the impact of big money on American politics and policy formation.

Title: The Courage To Act A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath
Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Comment: Well written explanation of the 2007-2010 Great Recession, but curiously does not mention how the technology sector was not impacted.

Title: Life Ascending The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
Author: Nick Lane
Comment: They are: The Origin of Life, DNA, Photosynthesis, The Complex Cell, Sex, Movement, Sight, Hot Blood, Consciousness, Death

Title: Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune Truth and Faith in the New China
Author: Evan Osnos
Comment: Interviews scores of people in China to learn about what is going on there.

Title: How Not to be Wrong The Power of Mathematical Thinking
Author: Jordan Ellenberg
Comment: Math is all around us in everyday life.

Title: The Invisible History of the Human Race
Author: Christine Kenneally
Comment: People are sensitive about who they really are.

Title: The Information A History A Theory A Flood
Author: James Gleick
Comment: We have now the information and it affects all of our research, science, and knowledge.

Title: The Vital Question
Author: Nick Lane
Comment: How did life form?

Title: The Gene An Intimate History
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Comment: History of the gene, what will become of us?

Title: Hitler Ascent 1889-1939
Author: Volker Ullrich
Comment: This is a masterfully written account of the rise of Hitler. This is a great read.

Title: Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind
Author: Noah Yuval Harari
Comment: Modern times came to us so recently in the history of humankind.

Title: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Author: Noah Yuval Harari
Comment: Will we fashion a super human? What if we do?