Over on the porch
Books that we want
These are books that we’d like to get our hands on to read and review. Our wishlist can be found here.
If you want to buy these for yourself, I’ve linked them with our Amazon associates link, so any purchases made from them give us 5% of the cost with no extra cost to you.
Marxism
- E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory
- Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School
- Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Feminism
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
- bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
- bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody
Conservatism
- Peter Viereck, The Unadjusted Man
- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism, from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse
- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision
- Betrand de Jouvenel, On Power
- James Burnham, The Machiavellians
- Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History
- Sam Francis, Shots Fired
- James Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative
Progressivism
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
- Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
- Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
Reaction
- Thomas Carlyle, Chartism
- Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets
- Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Reflections of a Russian Statesman
- John Lukacs, Confessions of an Original Sinner
- Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism
Mass Media
- Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent
Liberty
- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Liberty or Equality
Non-interventionism
- Freda Utley, The China Story
- Hilaire du Berrier, Background to Betrayal
Economics
- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
Hard Science
- Max Kuhn, Applied Predictive Modeling
History
- Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Volumes One & Three)
- James Anthony Froude, The Bow of Ulysses
- George McKenna, Puritan Origins of American Patriotism
- Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals
- Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers
- John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness
- Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair
- Victor Klemperer, Language of the Third Reich
- W.E.H. Lecky, American Revolution
- W.E.H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century
- William James Sidis, The Tribes and the States
- J.R.T. Wood, So Far and No Further
- Henry Summer Maine, Popular Government
- Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition
- Carl Shmitt, Theory of the Partisan
Civilization
- Samuel P. Huntington & Lawrence E. Harrison, Culture Matters
- Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest
- Richard Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
- Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial
Religion
- James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith
- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
- Carl Anderson, A Civilization of Love
- George Herring, What Was the Oxford Movement?
Philosophy
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
- Frank P. Ramsey, Facts and propositions (this is an article that I can’t find)
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
- Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism
- Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge
- Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
- Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan
Novels
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Did we miss anything good? Leave a comment.
Voters and the fanciful stories they tell themselves
It’s only June, 17 months out from Election Day, and the 2016 primary contest is in full swing. The field is swelling with potential candidates, both serious and long shot. And surprisingly enough, the media is doing its job of asking the presidential hopefuls tough questions (everyone except Queen Hillary, that is). The number one inquiry this election cycle is a highly uncomfortable topic for Republicans: was invading Iraq was really worth it, given that the intelligence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program was heavily flawed?
Our intrepid journalist class wants nothing more than to entice GOP nominees into violating the Eleventh Commandment, and trashing George W. Bush’s ill-fated Iraq invasion. Thankfully, most Republicans are finding their marbles and recognizing reality: the invasion wasn’t worth over $1 trillion and thousands of American lives. As Iraq descends into chaos, each candidate, both declared and undeclared, has said it was wrong to topple Saddam’s regime. That’s a safe answer, seeing as how most American believe the Iraq War was poorly conceived and too costly, and President Obama was elected largely based on voters’ misgivings about the invasion.
Magicians of the Outer Right
It’s a common error to think that mystics and magicians are generally liberals or leftists. At least in America.
Most Boomer Americans, monolingual, insulated from the rest of the world and from history, associate “magick” with hippies, the “60s”, Tim Leary, pot and acid, and sexual freedom. When they think about it at all which isn’t often, these days. Most younger Americans don’t think about it at all, being too busy sexting, face booking and in other ways competing for visible status. Ritual, programmed self-hypnosis and other inner work are less common now, since they don’t yield outward signs of wealth or cool.
At least not right away.
I don’t know as much about Europe directly, but my impression is that there’s bit more attention to these subjects still, especially in Eastern Europe, and across the age groups. But as a rapidly shrinking population of young people plugs in, turns on and tweets out, I suppose the same thing is happening there, too.
In truth, ritual magick, symbolic meditation and related practices have always been the tool of a tiny, cognitive elite, in all societies and across all civilizations. They’re simply too difficult, too esoteric, too scary and too uncertain. And while I jest about status-signaling today, it’s always been important to most people, and occult practices have never brought the kind of status boost that killing the biggest buffalo, having the biggest automobile or (nowadays) being the biggest “victim” did.
A few New Orleans photos
Apologies for the light posting, I’ve been on vacation the last week in New Orleans. It was my first time in the city, and also my first time using Airbnb, and both were great. The night we arrived Irma Thomas was playing for free in Lafayette Square:
Sacred Harp 175: ‘Highlands of Heaven’
Sinner, go, will you go,
To the highlands of heaven;
Where the storms never blow,
And the long summer’s given?
Where the bright blooming flow’rs
Are their odors emitting;
And the leaves of the bow’rs
On the breezes are flitting.Where the saints robed in white,
Cleansed in life’s flowing fountain,
Shining, beauteous, and bright,
Shall inhabit the mountain.
Where no sin, nor dismay,
Neither trouble, nor sorrow,
Will be felt for today,
Nor be feared for the morrow.