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Thread: What non-fiction books do you recommend reading?

  1. #1

    What non-fiction books do you recommend reading?

    I'm always looking for new books to read, but the last few kinda sucked for me. I got done with a Dinesh D'souza recently......never again. It wasn't bad, it was just highly partisan.

    My book recommendations are Antifragile and Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In that order. My favorites. He's not exactly a libertarian, I don't think, but he's thought A LOT of things through.

    Also, I find Anthony Bourdain's books very entertaining, even though he's a lefty. Kitchen Confidential, A Cook's Tour, Medium Raw, Nasty Bits.

    Hey if anyone can help me out, I'm looking for some history books on Roman Empire (rise/decline), 20th century socialism, Chinese communism, and stuff like that.

    What are your own personal book recommendations?




    (in before someone mentions Rothbard)



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  3. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    Hey if anyone can help me out, I'm looking for some history books on Roman Empire (rise/decline) [...]
    The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan.

    It's not about the Empire. Nor is it about the oft-told and well-known story of the fall of the Republic (Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Marc Antony, the two Triumvirates, crossing the Rubicon, etc., etc.) Rather, it's about the much less familiar events and people who set the stage for the fall of the Republic (the Gracchus brothers, Marius, Sulla, et al.). The parallels with what's going on today are numerous and striking.

    It's also written by the same guy who did The History of Rome podcast (also highly recommended).
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 10-18-2020 at 09:22 PM.
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    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
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  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    I'm always looking for new books to read, but the last few kinda sucked for me. I got done with a Dinesh D'souza recently......never again. It wasn't bad, it was just highly partisan.

    My book recommendations are Antifragile and Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In that order. My favorites. He's not exactly a libertarian, I don't think, but he's thought A LOT of things through.

    Also, I find Anthony Bourdain's books very entertaining, even though he's a lefty. Kitchen Confidential, A Cook's Tour, Medium Raw, Nasty Bits.

    Hey if anyone can help me out, I'm looking for some history books on Roman Empire (rise/decline), 20th century socialism, Chinese communism, and stuff like that.

    What are your own personal book recommendations?




    (in before someone mentions Rothbard)
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  5. #4
    Is the Bible Non-Fiction? Either way it is a good read.
    I hardly have time to read. All I have to do is look out a window or turn on any media. The Non-Fiction is writing itself in front of my eyes. This is like Reality.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by DiverseSegregation View Post
    Is the Bible Non-Fiction? Either way it is a good read.
    I hardly have time to read. All I have to do is look out a window or turn on any media. The Non-Fiction is writing itself in front of my eyes. This is like Reality.
    Bible is too long didn't read.

  7. #6
    When Genius Failed is a great, easy read. Taleb emphasizes fat tails a lot in finance and the hedge fund the book is about was started by a bunch of efficient markets Nobel Winners who used a lot of leverage. It blew up because an event that shouldn't happen in their models. Probably read it 15 years ago but still remember a lot of the anecdotes.

    Slightly more dense is Against the Gods: The remarkable story of risk. I probably read this 20 years ago and don't remember many specifics other than it was good.


    A new book I read hat was good was the The Man who Solved the Market. Mostly about how the most successful hedge fund ever was formed and some of the inner details. Gets a little into politics at the end. Jim Simons was Hillary's largest supporter. Bob Mercer basically owns Breitbart. And funded Trump and Ted Cruz. He's a big Rothbard fan who funded some quirkier candidates like Art Robinson who was promoted on this site.

    Almost forgot. A Man for All Markets. Taleb wrote the forward. Guy had a successful hedge fund. Accomplished mathematician. Invented a wearable computer to beat roulette. Wrote the original book on how black jack could be beaten using card counting.
    Last edited by Krugminator2; 10-19-2020 at 10:36 AM.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    Bible is too long didn't read.
    I think theologians would argue that the Bible is actually made up of many short books.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by DiverseSegregation View Post
    I think theologians would argue that the Bible is actually made up of many short books.
    Thats how I look at it . As a Missouri Synod Lutheran we had two years of study before being confirmed ( 14 yrs old I think ). We studied the Book of Matthew for two years , one evening a week .



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  11. #9
    It's almost 20 years old, but Robert K. Massie's Peter the Great is a good read.
    We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. "At least," as one man said, "there's one advantage about death; it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
    Erwin N. Griswold

    Taxes: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an automatic extension.
    Anonymous

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by DiverseSegregation View Post
    I think theologians would argue that the Bible is actually made up of many short books.
    Each book is too long didn't read. Did Jesus write cliff notes for the Bible? I would consider reading that.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    When Genius Failed is a great, easy read. Taleb emphasizes fat tails a lot in finance and the hedge fund the book is about was started by a bunch of efficient markets Nobel Winners who used a lot of leverage. It blew up because an event that shouldn't happen in their models. Probably read it 15 years ago but still remember a lot of the anecdotes.

    Slightly more dense is Against the Gods: The remarkable story of risk. I probably read this 20 years ago and don't remember many specifics other than it was good.


    A new book I read hat was good was the The Man who Solved the Market. Mostly about how the most successful hedge fund ever was formed and some of the inner details. Gets a little into politics at the end. Jim Simons was Hillary's largest supporter. Bob Mercer basically owns Breitbart. And funded Trump and Ted Cruz. He's a big Rothbard fan who funded some quirkier candidates like Art Robinson who was promoted on this site.

    Almost forgot. A Man for All Markets. Taleb wrote the forward. Guy had a successful hedge fund. Accomplished mathematician. Invented a wearable computer to beat roulette. Wrote the original book on how black jack could be beaten using card counting.
    I just looked up when genius failed and it wasn't written by Taleb. Some other guy.

  14. #12
    The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

    American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton

    Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton

    Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King

    Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America's Opiod Epidemic by Barry Meier

    There is a sub forum for Books and Literature under Family, Parenting, and Education.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    I'm always looking for new books to read, but the last few kinda sucked for me. I got done with a Dinesh D'souza recently......never again. It wasn't bad, it was just highly partisan.

    My book recommendations are Antifragile and Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In that order. My favorites. He's not exactly a libertarian, I don't think, but he's thought A LOT of things through.

    Also, I find Anthony Bourdain's books very entertaining, even though he's a lefty. Kitchen Confidential, A Cook's Tour, Medium Raw, Nasty Bits.

    Hey if anyone can help me out, I'm looking for some history books on Roman Empire (rise/decline), 20th century socialism, Chinese communism, and stuff like that.

    What are your own personal book recommendations?




    (in before someone mentions Rothbard)
    There is lots , Capitalism and Freedom ( Milton Friedman) , Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee ( D. Brown ) , The Conscience of a Conservative ( Goldwater) etc

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    I just looked up when genius failed and it wasn't written by Taleb. Some other guy.
    He didn't write it but the topic relates to everything Taleb writes about.

  17. #15
    Can anyone recommend books on Stalin or Mao's genocide and factors that led up to their totalitarianism? Just finished listening to some jordan peterson and realized that I'm not as educated as I should be about such topics.

    Thanks

  18. #16
    History of the Peloponnesian War. That's the one to read. AFA Stalin's genocides: Gulag Archipelago (Not easy to find, I don't think unabridged versions are even in print anymore.)



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  20. #17
    The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto Polar

    The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else is a 2000 book by Hernando de Soto Polar about the persistence of poverty in developing countries. In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to a formal, unified legal property system, but in the West it was forgotten that creating this system is also what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. De Soto speaks about "dead capital" that cannot be used to its full potential.

    "Imagine a country," writes De Soto, "where nobody can identify who owns what, addresses cannot be verified, people cannot be made to pay their debts, resources cannot be conveniently turned into money, ownership cannot be divided into shares, descriptions of assets are not standardized and cannot be easily compared, and the rules that govern property vary from neighborhood to neighborhood or even from street to street."
    https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/The_Myst...verywhere_Else

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by mtr1979 View Post
    The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

    American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton

    Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton

    Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King

    Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America's Opiod Epidemic by Barry Meier

    There is a sub forum for Books and Literature under Family, Parenting, and Education.
    YES!

    AND, the original Confessions of an Economic Hitman!
    There is no spoon.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by bv3 View Post
    History of the Peloponnesian War. That's the one to read. AFA Stalin's genocides: Gulag Archipelago (Not easy to find, I don't think unabridged versions are even in print anymore.)
    I found the three book set on Amazon. Is the abridged version missing key points in the unabridged version?

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    I found the three book set on Amazon. Is the abridged version missing key points in the unabridged version?
    In my opinion, yes--a fortiori.

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by bv3 View Post
    In my opinion, yes--a fortiori.
    I guess I'll have to look harder.

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by ResponsibleIdiot View Post
    I guess I'll have to look harder.
    3 book set migh tbe unabridged

  26. #23
    It's good to see some people still reading books
    ''There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 300 million and the two top guys are Trump and Biden. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong.'' ~ Mort Sahl

  27. #24
    Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution

    Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Marenco View Post
    It's good to see some people still reading books
    Well the fact that you said that is evidence of our cultural decline. None of my younger coworkers straight out of college read books, they listen to video or sound clips to get their information.

  30. #26
    I believe that George Orwell's "1984" has been moved to the Non fiction Shelves.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  31. #27
    Deep Survival by Lawrence Gonzales
    Modeling for All Scales by Howard Odum
    Life and Death of Planet Earth by Peter Ward
    Circles by James Burke
    The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris
    Cartoon Guide to Physics by Larry Gonick

    XNN
    "They sell us the president the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars. They sell us every thing from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars. I want to know who the men in the shadows are. I want to hear somebody asking them why. They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are but theyre never the ones to fight or to die." - Jackson Browne Lives In The Balance



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