I need some specific book recommendations.

I figure that I’m going to need to refresh my memory on a bunch of topics in the next couple months or so, so I’ll just post what I’m going to be catching up on and let people recommend books.  You can safely assume that I already have a basic working knowledge about everything on the list below: what I’m looking for are books that will let me touch up my existing knowledge base.  Also, I know what I’m not looking for: I’ll go over that in the list.

  • Basic breakdown of Islamic religious sects.  Nothing written after 2000.  Nothing that thinks that Islam is ZOMG the Greatest Thing Ever.  Nothing that requires the existence of a global Muslim conspiracy/Islamic hive minds in order to support the thesis.  Nothing that has a variant of the word ‘dhimmi’ in the title.
  • Political shenanigans in US Presidential elections. NOTHING WRITTEN AFTER 1999.
  • Post-Marx, pre-Lenin Communist thinkers.  Nothing written by a Marxist.  Nothing written by a person who takes Marxism seriously as an economic/political theory.  Nothing boring as hell (which is always a problem when it comes to Marxism).
  • A general survey of dystopian fiction.   …I can’t think of anything besides “Nothing boring as hell.”

That should do it.

10 thoughts on “I need some specific book recommendations.”

  1. Not sure how close this is to what you’re looking for, but Robert Jay Lifton’s “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China” allows for some very interesting parallels between the #OWS crowd and Mao-era thought reform and group-think.

  2. The Human Disguise and The Double Human by James O’Neal. While both books are dystopian fiction, the political commentary is so outragous it’s very funny (if only we share the same sense of humor) and I don’t know if the author is liberal or conservative! As one atheist to another, I swear to Almighty God that you’ll love these books!

  3. (re)Read Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis. Least boring dystopian transhumanist cyberpunk story ever.

  4. racken fracken percaloma fargasharkin link is broken So anyways, Mr. Kowalski is a physics prof. who’s father was a Polish communist who moved to Russia sometime in the ’20s or ’30’s, iirc. He comments sometimes over at Republican Operative, which is where he posted that broken link I just tried to share. I sent him a pm about that link.

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