Books Worth Reading

The Editor has asked for recommendations. It’s Easter Sunday and I’m re-reading ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ — the gospel made plausible by humane Philip Pullman. Here are some more fave raves:

‘Permanent Record’ by Edward Snowden. The author is so intelligent, so sweet, so straight… I was sad to read that he started having seizures before he fled the land of the free. I hope that in Russia he’s got access to effective anti-epilepsy medication. 

‘Hue 1966’ by Mark Bowden. Describing one decisive battle he describes the whole war. 

‘Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962.’ Scintillating accounts of everyday life by the Hollywood writer whose career was interrupted by the blacklist. Devoid of self-pity. 

‘House of All Nations’ by Christina Stead. The underrated Australian novelist is known primarily for ‘The Man Who Loved Children’ (a story based on her childhood, which her publishers made her set in the US). This book recounts in great detail what she saw working at a small, elite bank in Paris in the 1930s. 

‘Reporter’ by Seymour Hersh. The ace of aces tells the story behind all the important stories he covered, including the My Lai massacre.

‘Human Smoke’ by Nicholson Baker. A pastiche of clippings and anecdotes showing how World War I morphed into World War II. Never read anything like it. A brilliant history.

‘Children of Light’ by Robert Stone. The narrator is an actor playing Lear and the prose is infused with cocaine. 

‘Measure for Measure’ by William Shakespeare. Isabela can save her brother’s life by letting Angelo fuck her. But she’s a good girl. 

‘Travels with My Aunt’ by Graham Greene. The most entertaining of his “entertainments.”

‘Leaves in the Wind’ by Gwyn Thomas. A beautiful, lyrical novel set in a Welsh mining village in 1835 as the Industrial Revolution takes hold.

‘Divided We Stand’ by Eric Darton. How the Rockefeller brothers destroyed lower Manhattan to build their twin tombstones. 

‘Rockefeller Medicine Men’. How “Scientific Medicine” was imposed on the US.

‘Love and Capital’ by Mary Gabriel. A biography of Karl and Jenny Marx. Much more readable and illuminating than ‘Das Capital.’ 

‘The Port Chicago Mutiny’ by Robert Allen (who probably spent some time in the Anderson Valley when he was married to Alice Walker).

‘Strike’ by Jeremy Brecher. US labor history by a scholar who is also an organizer and mines the past for applicable tactics.

‘Toxic Psychiatry’ by Peter Breggin. “Why therapy, empathy and love must replace the drugs, electroshock and biochemical theories of the ‘new psychiatry’.”

‘The People vs. Clarence Darrow’ by Geoffrey Cowan. Soon after the great lawyer defended the McNamara brothers, accused in 1910 of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times, he himself was charged with attempting to bribe a juror. A fascinating, little-known episode.

‘The CIA’ by William Blum. Documents the evil deeds of “our” spooks in 48 countries, from China in 1945 through Nicaragua in the early 1980s. 

How about some movie recommendations?