Sunday Discussion Group

The Grapes of Wraith – John Stienbeck

CB, it’s gotta be Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” The animals take over the farm on the premise of creating a better life for themselves and all of animaldom (sounds a lot like that “Contract-With-America” thing). Then, the pigs start ramming their agenda down the other animals’ throats (“Religious Reich, anyone?)—and in the end, the pigs become the very thing that they were rising up against in the first place—and in many ways, they even become worse….

I’m an atheist, but they could do worse than carefully reading the Gospels.

“1984” pretty much explains the modus operandi of the Bush White House in an engaging manner.

Republicans read? Kidding, kidding.

How about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle? It would at least help Republicans better understand the importance of unions.

Nolt that crazy about Steinbeck myself, but if must do him, might better begin with “In Dubious Battle.”

For the raw face of the American experience, I much prefer Dos Passos’ USA–but is that a liberal book?

Isn’t Animal Farm about the Russian Revolution and Communism?

I would recommendNo Ordinary Time by Dorris Kearnes Goodwin.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Big and clumsy, like “Shrugged” – but still better written by half – “Tragedy” is a portrait of the crushing effects of religiousity and factory labor; of the gulf between workers, managers and owners; of striving and social insecurity, as well as the need for safe and legal abortion services. To top it off it finishes with one of the most heartbreaking portraits of the abomination that is capital punishment ever written.

I’ve always thought that the “personality trait” that most separates liberals from conservatives is empathy. I’m not too sure that can be taught or gained from reading a book. That said, however, I would second (third?) The Jungle. It sure worked for me when I was 14. I’ve never read anything since that so vividly portrays what unregulated capitalism can mean.

I am going to be “trollish” here. There is a plethora of misspellings in the comments this morning. These misspellings can be reduced, if people would download the Google Toolbar and use its spellcheck feature before posting their comments. The spellcheck is no good on proper names, but it can save you from some embarrassment. Also, here’s a hint: If you are unsure of how a word is spelled, throw in an extra “wrong” letter and the spellcheck will give you spellings to choose from.

John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and his non-fiction “The Harvest Gypsies.”

Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” for a great anti-war novel. And anything by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut’s an avowed secular humanist, but he’s got such a firm grasp on what the New Testament is really about.

And just for good measure: The Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.

And then I’d follow up with handing them The Minutemen’s “Double Nickels on the Dime” and Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” It’s … um … “poetry.”

Whoa. That’s such a tremendous question, CB. It’s kind of hard to figure out what they’d be most willing to read & that they’d also see as relatable to how things are today.

My first instinct on this was really to differ with you- and go with Al Franken’s The Truth. It exposes a lot of crap that’s little-known. It cuts through a lot of spin that a lot of conservatives probably still have no idea about- a lot of them probably still believe that Kerry said that terrorism was a “nuisance” and they would have no idea that Hannity and O’Reilly were lying to them if they don’t read about the lie. So Franken is really good for that- so of the “express lane to reality” for the uninformed Republican.

It’s not a book, but I continue to hope Republicans — the new, radical kind — would closely read the U.S. Constitution. It applies to all political leanings. In addition, reading some literature on the creation of that document and the thoughtful and difficult gestation involved should be helpful. (“Miracle at Philadelphia” is one example.)

Two books I’d recommend are “A Bright and Shining Lie,” for understanding the liberal dissent regarding Iraq and “All Quiet on the Western Front” for understanding what actually happens to young men (and now women) when belligerent nationalism trumps diplomacy.

I’d agree with Swann. Al Franken’s “Truth” is a fact-swarm, but entertaining. I’d even go so far as to recommend the audio book version. The conservative listeners would be well-served to listen to someone take apart jr.’s make believe worldview in real-time. They might even listen to Al’s radio show to cross-check the lies they’re otherwise getting from winger radio.

And sorry about any misspellings — no spell check on the phone.

I might suggest they re-read the 1994 Contract With America, in the hopes they’d remember that they once claimed to oppose the use of procedural tricks to inhibit democracy, and that they once all opposed a permanent political class and promised to go away after a couple of years.

More seriously, there are numerous compilations of writings (and letters to one another) of the Founding Fathers. These private writings – or even some of the public writings in the Federalist Papers – often wholly expose claims of the Right, particularly with regard to the role of religion in matters of state.

I also somewhat agree with Swan and DrL about Franken. Let them read “Lies,” or “Truth”, and challenge them to rebut or disprove what Franken is saying.

My final thought is that RM’s friend suggested the wrong book. No one can really be expected to slog through Atlas. The more interesting suggestion would have been Fountainhead, which can serve as an interesting (although still amateurly overwritten) Rorschach test. Rand herself, in a patronizing author’s foreword declares the book a politcal allegory, which is sad because on that score it is clumsy and obvious. I suspect somewhat accidentally, Rand along the way created a much better story about integrity, being true to one’s beliefs, being willing to sacrifice for what one believes in, and the intrinsic value of refusing to pander. In some ways, it wouldn’t hurt conservatives to read that, except that they surely would only see the half of the picture Rand intended: libertarianism good, caring for your fellow human beings bad.

I’ll echo what a couple previous posters have written and suggest that our conservative friends read the Gospel according to Matthew.

Then, I’d challenge them to reconcile the actions of the present-day Republican party with the words and actions of Jesus, to show me “Christ” in this alleged Christian in the White House.

Actually, I think we liberals should commit the Beatitudes to memory and be familiar with the Sermon on the Mount; there’s an awful lot in there we can use to beat down on Conservative Christians.

I don’t think that Molly Ivins is a bad choice. I loaned Bushwacked to a friend who was a lifelong Republican, but had become unhappy with the way things were going under Bush. After reading the book the book he told me “I’ll never vote for another f@cking Republican again in my life.” That 8 or 9 dollar purchase price was a good investment.

Another one that I like, and think does the best job of stating liberal principles is The Good Society by John K. Galbraith. I think that Galbraith does an excellent job of stating how we as a society should direct our resources and the benefits of doing so. One of the things I like about Galbraith’s writing style is that he takes a complex topic – economics – and puts it forth in a manner that is easy to understand and easy to read.

As I was writing this, I was wondering if lack of reading is the problem with hardcore Bush supporters. Reading requires thinking, which may require challenging our preconceived notions. It seems that a lot of these people get the largest percentage of their information from places like Fox and Rush but don’t spend a lot of time with the printed word. Maybe we could get some of the suggested books redone in comic book form. Sort of a Reader’s Digest with pictures.

PS:

I second Ecotopia too…

“Ishmael,” by Daniel Quinn. It’s a sociological/historical/cultural commentary disguised as allegory. Forced me to look at human events in a completely different way.

koreyel, i would add F451 to the list with Animal Farm and 1984 of books that fall into the “I’m Afraid They’d Look at it as a How-To Manual” category. 451 should, instead, be required reading (or re-reading) immediately for all progressives to see where it is we are heading and to remember what the stakes are for sitting idly by.

marcus, i tend to share your suspicion that wingnuts dont read. i really can’t imagine Dumbya reading much other than My Pet Goat, or a John Birch Society handbill. maybe we should list movies to show them (we kind of coverd songs to play them earlier this week) so they can absorb the information more passively.

Fallenwoman wrote:

“I can’t believe that some of you recommended “Animal Farm” and “1984” as liberal books. They are anti-communist/socialist books.” (13)

Orwell was a committed socialist right up to the end of his life. He was indeed vehemently anti-Stalininst, anti fascist and anti-imperialist, as are all good people. Neither “Animal Farm” nor “Nineteen Eighty-Four” can be accurately described as “anti-communist/socialist books. “Animal Farm” would be more accuratley described as an anti-communist(comma!)socialist book, while “Nineteen Eighty-Four” concerns itself with extreme nationalism and imperialism in all its malignant forms. I realize that a lot of conservatives such as yourself aren’t too big on book learnin’, but I’d advise you to get your facts straight before you troll this site. For starters, try looking up the difference between communism and socialism. You may be suprised to find out that they’re really quite different.

I want to add one suggestion to slip kid no more’s post. If you have a browser that doesn’t support Google toolbar there is a free utility called Clever Keys to spell check with. If you highlight a word and hit CTRL + L on your keyboard, a browser window will open to the Dictionary.com page for that word.

Of course only trolls misspell words and none of the rest of us do. Wink, wink.

‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’, not that I’ve read it. I’ve only seen the movie 😉

Anything distopian which is not too obscure for the Conservative to follow and see the parallels.

So that they will understand how religion is being used by the Republican party to manipulate them, how about “The Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis and “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer. I found both of those very eye opening when I read them in high school. On second thought, they might not get the point….

Fallenwoman, “Animal Farm” clearly represents a revolt against a big-government/special-interest model typified by the farmer and his wife—uncannily synonymous in both depth and scope to the Reagan Revolution of the 1980’s. The “animalspeak only” portion of the new rules is, I find, eerily similar to the fanaticism of the GOP’s current attempts at “immigration reform.” And the socioethical collapse of the Pigs is the equivalent of watching the Republikanners come to power, and then fall into the decay of their “culture of corruption.” They trade their “animaldom” for the extremism of being just like people—they even take to walking upright on two legs which, to an animal, is viewed as “de-evolutionary….”

I’d recommend they print and read the full archives of “The Carpetbagger Report”. There’s more interesting facts, and entertaining reading in there that shows the problems with the current administration than you’ll ever find in any book.

Noam Chomsky – “Imperial Ambitions – Conversations on the Post 9/11 World”.

A Newspaper.

“the Culture of Makebelieve” by derrick jensen

Anything by John Kenneth Galbraith, but especially THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY (1958) and THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE (1967). Not only does this great man embody the best of what it means to be a progressive/liberal, he’s a fun read and can actually make you laugh out loud.

The other book – THE GREAT DEPRESSION: AMERICA 1929-1941 (1984) by Robert McElvaine. All the factors that led up to The Great Depression are in place today, especially the maldistribution of income. McElvaine presents a convincing case that it wasn’t The War that got us out of the depression, rather the massive amounts of money we spent on the war effort. So, if we’d spent that much money on the New Deal ….

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.

“Johnny Got His Gun” Dalton Trumbo. This book kicked me in the teeth as a teen. I will never forget it.

Nickel and Dimed is a great choice; likewise Vonnegut’s Player Piano. It’s a truly difficult question, though — I can think of books that take on particular areas of interest but not one that encompasses everything. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible address illegal immigration and colonialism magnificently; Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle eviscerates religious fundamentalism; To Kill a Mockingbird takes on racial prejudice; Johnny Got His Gun will turn anyone into a pacifist.

As much as I tend to recommend nonfiction books for specific purposes — for instance, Gershom Gorenberg’s The End of Days and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith to spark serious discussions of religion — novels seem to go down easier, being harder to pick fights with and, like song lyrics, coming at issues metaphorically rather than directly.

Lots of recommendations of the gospels in this thread, but here’s a rec from the OT: The Book of Amos.

From biblegateway.com …

Amos Chapter 5

10 you hate the one who reproves in court
and despise him who tells the truth.

11 You trample on the poor
and force him to give you grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.

12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
You oppress the righteous and take bribes
and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

13 Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.

14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.

15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.

…

18 Woe to you who long
for the day of the LORD!
Why do you long for the day of the LORD ?
That day will be darkness, not light.

19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.

20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

21 “I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.

22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.

23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.

24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole,

this book reflects well on all who love it. appeal to someones humanity and give them points for having an for clever witty prose.

hmmm…how green was my valley…rent them the movie…

The only thing about Al Franken’s book is, I suspect many conservatives might not be willing to read through 2-4 pages of jokes and liberal pride at a stretch to get to all the knowledge-dropping.

But, it’s got so, so much stuff on recent event and on the public rhetoric between Democrats and Republicans in the last two presidential elections. It’s a very readable, well-researched, informative book. A few of the jokes and maybe some minor points of the writing, I would have had a little different judgment on than Franken did, but overall, it’s a pretty damn good book.

The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, by Peter Gay. Both volumes.

These guys need to know some real history. Maybe that will curb the bullshit about America being founded on the Bible.

“The Octopus” by Frank Norris. It’s the best look at the gilded age, and since we seem to be reliving that age, it should strike a nerve.

CB, is this a record number of entries? Clearly, a nerve has been touched.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was published exactly a hundred years ago. That’s right, in 1906 “The Jungle” became one of the few works of American literature to actually bring a change in American policy, in this case the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act. (Other books that have affected American policy have included “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”) Ironically, the public and President Teddy Roosevelt were less alarmed by Sinclair’s horrific descriptions of working-class lives than they were by details of the sickening food-preparation standards then in effect.

I enjoyed “The Jungle” very much, though I don’t know if I’d suggest it to a conservative friend. The first half of the book is truly gut-grabbing; but when our hero, Jurgis, turns to crime, the edge is somewhat lost, and the final part of the book (a naive, over-the-top homage to socialism) would have even the most accommodating conservative shaking their head (or perhaps laughing).

There is nothing wrong with recommending Orwell (or Arthur Koestler, for that matter) to a conservative, but they wouldn’t get the point you’re trying to make. In fact, they’d agree with you on the salient points about totalitarianism that Orwell raises. And Robert Heinlein IS (or rather, was) a (libertarian) conservative himself. I know a number of people, including my brother, who morphed from vague liberalism to hardcore libertarianism after reading the works of Heinlein. “Stranger in a Strange Land” is a great read, but the Heinlein fans I know pooh-pooh it as an aberration not typical of the unabashedly libertarian Heinlein oeuvre.

While I can’t think of anyone on the liberal side who writes simple-minded, dumbed-down “philosophy” like Ayn Rand, and I realize that many offerings we might give — even “Silent Spring” — have already been shot down by conservatives, I would go with several books I simply like. A topical offering could be “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank, a great overview of the crazy mindset of conservatives today, which even some conservatives (for different reasons) agree with. Or perhaps Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation,” which is an update of sorts on “The Jungle.”

I also think any of the works of Martin Luther King (often out-of-print and hard to get), such as “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here – Crisis or Community?” and “Why We Can’t Wait,” would be effective. King’s works often have a strong Christian bent, they’re powerful, and at this point in time, with most conservatives saying they “like” King, it would be hard for them to go against him.

Me, I’m going off now to read some W.E.B. DuBois…

Since no one’s offered the Hitler card yet, I suggest ‘Mein Kampf”. Maybe the similarities would scare the crap out of them.

Somewhere on the wonderful Internet, I read a comment on how if you took the typical Limbaugh/Coulter/Hannity/Savage rant, and replaced ‘liberal” with “Jew”, the likeness to a Goebbels tyrade from the 1930s would be disturbing.

Oh my God, wow. This is fantastic! I can’t believe how many responses. In case you didn’t know, I’m the RM in question.

And CB, it is okay to use my name 😉 I use it in my posts because I’m happy to stand by my words here and connect them to my real life self rather than through any sort of handle.

I should mention, just for accuracy, and because I’ll need it to explain on of my comments below, that “my friend” is actually a co-worker of my girlfriend and life-mate, and the bargain is between those two. I have read Atlas Shrugged, she has not. However, I’ll continue to refer to her co-worker as “my friend” just because it’s easier than making up a fake name or always saying “my girlfriend’s co-worker”.

Having given it some thought, I’ve decided that this is a lot harder than it seems because of inherent differences between conservatism and liberalism. You can teach conservatism, ie through tirading soliloquys, because it is so simplistic. I don’t mean that as a swipe, simplicity is the point, to the point of not being able to process exceptions. Liberalism blasts such simplicity in conservatism such as Rand’s philosophy, and I’m not even sure a book as large as Atlas Shrugged can get across its fundamentals. Liberalism, largely, has to be experienced. IE you have to have some idea what it is like to be poor, to be a minority, to have any sort of understanding and thus compassion for the underprivileged. And that really only covers the social justice component of it.

That said, I see a lot of good potential books, but I’m unsure of each one. My specific position is my friend is a libertarian, and while in my experience they aren’t any different from conservatives, he takes the anti-government, pro-business tack, not really agreeing with social conservatives much. He believes abortion shouldn’t be outlawed. He isn’t particularly religious, and Rand is specifically very anti-religion, so I don’t expect the Gospels or anything based on (true, Christ-emulating, not perverted right-wing) Christianity to have much effect on him. Though you guys have listed a great many good examples to use against an evangelical right-winger, since they are so comically un-Christianlike.

Here’s what suggestions I plan on trying out. (It would only be fair that I’ve actually read what I propose to this guy.)

I would read The Grapes of Wrath in spite of Steinbeck’s potentially harmful background, because if he writes well enough it won’t matter. I’m also inclined to give The Moon is Down a try.

I’m unsure of Heinlein being himself a libertarian but I should at least read some reviews. I’m skeptical of him along with Orwell for the reasons some posters have pointed out, that a conservative just won’t see what we see in it, the liberal perspective needs to be more blatently brow-beat into the reader like Rand does.

The Jungle sounds like an excellent choice and I will definitely have to read it, because it sounds perfect for an anti-regulation nut like this guy. I would love to find more stories about when the free market fails and why government intervention is necessary and beneficial. Not that I’m anti-market, I just know that they are too capable of failing and harming too many people when left to their own devices, that we need government to make sure they run smoothly and people don’t get hurt unnecessarily. While I mention Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here might be an interesting read from the title, though I know nothing about it.

Re: #16: I went through a senior-year/post-high-school phase of libertarianism/Randian-objectivism, and the thing that got me eventually was empathy. I couldn’t NOT empathize with the plight of the poor and disadvantaged I see around me every day, (as well as recognize my own economic disadvantages I realized as I tried climbing the social ladder.) Eventually I came out of it and stopped being an asshole. The idea that altruism – evil was the first to go.

Re: #18: your suggestion isn’t trollish at all. Please think nothing of it and I would hope that people would continue to be equally helpful.

Re: # 20: I had a hard time digesting Slaughterhouse 5 when I read it. I just hated it. Yes, the story of the bombing of Dresden was powerful but I had no idea what Vonnegut was trying to do with all the time-travel stuff and I was a little offended by the portrayal of the protagonist as weak and helpless as much as he was. Then again I was in my above-mentioned Ayn Rand phase when I read it, but I suspect I’d probably be equally put off by the book now.

I would love to read the Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount, because in spite of not believing that Christ died for our sins or any of that Christian stuff, I do believe his ideas are incredibly important and need to be reiterated more thoroughly today, especially to some of his self-proclaimed followers. They are, along with the whole original sin idea, as well as my inherent skepticism of “supernatural” events, one of the largest reasons I refuse to consider myself a Christian, in spite of my attraction to many of his ideas. But I got off on a tangent. I assume these are in the Bible, but where exactly? Especially the Sermon on the Mount; what passeges is this in? Thanks.

I love the Public Enemy reference 😉 I’ll have to break it out.

Re: # 22, others: I’m still skeptical of the power of Al Franken, as good as The Truth was. This guy in particular is just steeped in Rush and other right-wing radio crap. While I can’t stand Rush and already knew he’s full of it, I really don’t know if my friend isn’t going to automatically dismiss anything he reads, as well-researched and accurate as it is. That’s the problem with political discourse, people can’t trust anyone on the other side. I could recite Al Franken’s book to my friend and he might be swayed, but I would have to debate every point with him hard, refute all his Rush “knowledge”. Giving him The Truth and asking him to read it just seems useless.

Re: # 28: I remember reading the Fountainhead, which is what spurred me to read Atlas Shrugged in the first place. And while the politics were crap and soon faded as reality set back in, I definitely liked what they had to say about personal integrity. It was powerful, although still over the top. (Did that statue really need to be shoved down the elevator shaft? Come on.)

Okay, this is taking far too long. I wanted to write something in response especially because I’m so thrilled that CB made a Sunday discussion out of my idea, but I fear everyone will be gone before I get my post in! So I am going to avoid commenting on every comment and just list the recommendations that stood out to me, that make me want to read and find them.

The Grapes of Wrath
Gospels of Jesus
The Jungle
Jude the Obscure
The Moon is Down
Sermon on the Mount
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (hehe)
It Can’t Happen Here
Ecotopia
Myth & Ritual in Christianity
Bushwacked
The Good Society
Fahrenheit 451
Left Hand of God (though I’m not sure it’s relevant here, it sounds interesting enough)
Stranger in a Strange Land
Common Sense
Dreams of my Father (The name of the autobiography of Barak Obama that was mentioned? A very compelling recommendation!)
A Confederacy of Dunces (if nothing else because of the mention of clever, witty prose!)
Stud Terkel’s books (interesting segmentation with the titles)
Strength to Love (and other Dr. MLK Jr works, especially since conservatives try so hard to co-opt a man whose ideas were so diametrically opposed to theirs.)
Fast Food Nation (always wanted to read this, though I’m not sure if it will address any helpful points except only tangentially.)

Some additional comments:

Re # 39: Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor for Clinton, had some very similar ideas in his book, Reason. I recommend you start there. The book is small and easy to digest. He concedes that markets are a fact of life and governements cannot possibly restrain them to the measures that some protectionists would want, ie prevent our manufacturing jobs from moving overseas, and that our country is becoming too rich to continue to be competitive in fields like manufacturing, etc, where a lot of foreign countries are becoming more competitive, largely because of cheap labor. His idea, which I like, is that rather than doing a lot of harm to trade by trying to hold back the tide, that we instead [i]direct it[/i] by retraining our workers to be able to make new careers in fields that America will remain competitive in and will not be able to easily export. Essentially what you argue, and I think it’s a fantastic idea and spot-on. I think that also (he may have mentioned this, I can’t remember,) that at the same time we need to be influencing our foreign competitors to strong labor standards and encourage unionization, not this Washington Consensus deregulation crap, so that they actually benefit from their competitive advantage, not the US-based stockholders of some multinational corporation that owns all the capital in that foreign country. I hope this helps, even though I’m rambling. Oh, and if you find anything else on what you’re looking for, please let me know – guspasho at yahoo.com

Re: #59: Nickel and Dimed is one of the few books listed that I have had the advantage of already having read. And while very eye-opening for someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to hold a low-wage job, I must admit, I think the premise is somewhat flawed for speaking to a conservative. It’s easy to point out that Ehrenreich did hop from job to job rather quickly and without a very long experience. There’s something artificial about it. To contrast, what I found to be very refreshing, and actually my default recommendation for my Atlas Shrugged friend is The Working Poor by David Shipler. Rather than actually trying on several low-wage jobs for only weeks at a time, he interviews people who have been working low-wage jobs their whole lives, as well as their bosses, which I think is a much more real and richer experience. I recommend The Working Poor to anyone who has read Nickel and Dimed.

Re: #77: You hit the nail on the head! So precient to my plight is your statement that yours should have been the first comment on this topic. That is largely my conceptual problem in a nutshell. Bill Moyers is fantastic but when I re-read one of his books for this purpose I was concerned that he would never accept it. Just as Al Franken has been so thoroughly smeared by the right-wingers, so has Bill Moyers, and everything one would expect them to read of theirs, it has to fight through the built-up prejudice against them. An unfair disadvantage.

Lastly, there are so many more great recommendations, but I doubt I could even read just the stuff I listed. Again, I apologize for digressing a bit but I’m so excited to get so many responses and recommendations!

I’d go for “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, one of the nation’s greatest living novelists.

Either of the Fear and Loathing books.

Never have read Rand, never will. What is funny is NRO ran historical articles on it’s 50th anniversary. One that ran was a review of that very title by Whitaker Chambers. Too hysterical. Sorry for the length of the post but I had a hard time choosing. Go read the whole thing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp

I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the “looters.” These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. This,” she is saying in effect, “is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.”

snip

And I mean it.” But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired “naked self-interest” (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This book’s aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned “higher morality,” which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.

I second this nomination. The only conclusion is either that the reader believes justice was served and that the reader admits (s)he is racist, or that social/legal inequality exists, is morally repugnant, and “we the people” have a duty to govern ourselves such that such inequalities are addressed and rectified.

Any book Gingrich would like banned: the Grapes of Wrath comes to mind.

Throw in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for fun.

Add Paris 1919, Collapse and Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 for education sakes.

Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide…, Derek Humphry

Suggestion: A book I started but didn’t have time to finish, was one by Dennis Kucinich. Don’t remember the title (has he written more than one?), but I was impressed.

The Bill of Rights.

Strength to Love by MLK, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, The Federalist Papers, To Kill A Mockingbird by Lee, The Jungle by Sinclair, Common Sense by Tom Paine are all exceptional offerings, and I’d put MLK’s first.

Others worthy of consideration include:

Man’s Search For Meaning, by Victor Frankl

People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Letters From The Earth, by Mark Twain (the one his descendants kept from public view for decades)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Regulating The Poor, by Piven & Cloward

Anything by Jonathan Kozol, Elie Weisel, James Baldwin, Dorothy Day and Alex Haley.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Our Bodies, Our Selves by the Boston Women’s Collective

And I’d also include Profiles In Courage by JFK, as well as anything- even grocery lists – that Tom Jefferson wrote.

Still, MLK’s book comes first.

P.S. Handmaid’s Tale is not a “great” novel, by the way. Just a persuasive one.

How about an additional comment to bump the count up to 100. Call me shameless.