Of course, it's patently ridiculous that I should be getting ready to recommend books to you. I, who have scads of books here on my shelves that I have yet to read, about a half dozen of them only partially read . . . and yet, that's exactly what I'm about to do. Reason is, this is a list of really necessary books. I'm happy to say, I've probably read about ten percent of them already, but I got the idea for a whole bunch more to see if I can download to my Kindle for free. (One of the advantages of being an Amazon Prime member is one free Kindle book to "borrow" every month . . . with no time limit to return it.) My guess is there are a number of these that are downloadable.
The list is from Counterpunch, another of my regular-read blogs. The list is the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century and Beyond in English. Of course, everybody would come up with a different list, and these, mind you, are from Counterpunch. So by definition they're going to be edgy, counter-cultural, progressive . . . and scintillating. They run the gamut of Ida Tarbell's early 20th century expose of the monster that was and still is Standard Oil (Exxon) to the 2nd Edition of The Oxford English Dictonary. From Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire through Francis Yates's The Art of Memory, you are bound to find a bunch of treats for the mind, heart, and conscience here.
Knock yourself out. If you don't find several things on this list that fire you up, then maybe, as one of my old history mentors used to say: "you have reptile blood."
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