Preface. Many of the books below will turn what you learned in school upside-down.  

More booklists

Alice Friedemann,  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

American History

• N. Isenberg. White Trash: the 400-year untold history of class in America
• B. Bailyn. The barbarous years. The peopling of British North America. The conflict of civilizations 1600-1675
• D. J. Silverman.  Thundersticks (guns and how they affected American Indians)
• C. Johnson. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
• S. Schiff.  The witches: Salem, 1692
• D. Priest. Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
• N. Reding.  Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
• T. Wolfe. The Right Stuff.
• J. Barry. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
• W. Rorabaugh. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
• P. Fussell. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
• M. Levinson. The box: how the shipping container made the world smaller (my note: this is what made globalization possible)
• V. Jenkins. The Lawn. A history of an American Obsession
• Z. N. H. Barracoon. The story of the last “black cargo”
• W. Warren. New England bound: Slavery and colonization in early America
• A. Resendez. The other slavery: the uncovered story of Indian enslavement in America
• S. Northup Twelve years a slave
• C. Knowlton. Cattle kingdom. The hidden history of the cowboy west.
• M. Sperber. Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Education
• J. Ryan. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: Making and Breaking of elite gymnasts & figure skaters
• J. Doyle. Taken for a ride: Detroit’s big three and the politics of pollution.
• J.C. Scott. Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.
• J. Hogshire. You Are Going To Prison.

American Politics: how the extremist right wing “Republican” party came about

• Kruse, K. 2016. One Nation under God: How corporate America invented Christian America.
• J. Mayer. Dark money. The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right .
• J. W. Dean. Conservatives without conscience.
• Nelson, A. 2019. Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.
• Leonard, C. 2019. Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.  
• L. Lessig. Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It
• 2016 Republican party platform: the most extreme ever and The evolution of the Republican party from 1960 to 2012: from moderate to extreme
• N. MacLean. Democracy in chains. The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America
• Terry Heaton. 2017. The Gospel of self. How Jesus Joined the GOP.
• Smith, T. 2020. Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare. Diversion Books.
• Kurt Andersen. 2017. Fantasyland. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History. Random House.
• S. Leitsky. How Democracies die.
• J. W. Dean. Broken government. How Republican rule destroyed the legislative, executive, and judicial branches
• M. Lewis. The fifth risk
• J. Bakan. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
• D. Rushkoff. Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back
• K. Belew. Bring the war home. The white power movement and paramilitary America
• L. Gordon. The second coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political tradition
• L. Harding. Collusion. Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win
• G. M. Graff. Raven Rock: the story of the U.S. government’s secret plan to save itself–while the rest of us die
• M. Isikoff. Russian roulette. The inside story of Putin’s war on America and the election of Donald Trump.
• M. Nance. The plot to destroy democracy. How Putin and his spies are undermining America

Trump and books about why Americans voted for him

• Smith, T. 2020. Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare. Diversion Books.
• J. Bageant. Deer hunting with Jesus. Dispatches from America’s class war.
• Stoll, S. 2017. Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia.
• J. D. Vance.  2016. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Harper.
• D. C. Johnston. The making of Donald Trump
• D. C. Johnston. It’s even worse than you think. What the Trump administration is doing to America

American Corruption

• J. Hari. Chasing the scream. The first and last days of the war on drugs
• J. M. Feinman. Delay Deny Defend. Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.
• J. Eisinger. The chickenshit club. Why the justice department fails to prosecute executives
• J. Lanchester. I.O.U. Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay
• G. Morgenson. Reckles$ endangerment. How outsized ambition, greed, and corruption led to economic Armageddon
• A. R. Sorkin. Too big to fail. The inside story of how Wall Street & Washington fought to save the financial system—and themselves
• C. Bruck. The predators’ ball: the inside story of Drexel Burnham and the rise of the Jumkbond raiders
• F. Partnoy. Infections greed: how deceit and risk corrupted the financial markets
• C. Ferguson. Predator nation. Corporate criminals, political corruption, and the hijacking of America
• M. Taibbi. Smells like dead elephants: Dispatches from a rotting empire
• S. Das. Extreme money. Masters of the universe and the cult of risk
• W. Pavlo. Stolen without a gun: confessions from inside history’s biggest accounting fraud – the collapse of MCI Worldcom
• R. Lowenstein. When genius failed: the rise and fall of long-term capital management
• C. Cooper. Extraordinary circumstances: the journey of a corporate whistleblower
• B. L. Toffler. Final accounting: Ambition, greed, and the fall of Arthur Andersen
• K. Eichenwald. Serpent on the rock: Crime, betrayal and the terrible secrets of Prudential Bache
• M. Zuckoff. Ponzi’s scheme: the true story of a financial legend
• A. Kirtzman. Betrayal: the life and lies of Bernie Madoff
• J. Belfort. Catching the wolf of Wall street.
• D. Grann. Killers of the flower moon: the Osage murders & the birth of the FBI
• F. Portnoy. Fiasco. The inside story of a wall street trader
• L. Leopold. The looting of America: How wall street’s game of fantasy finance destroyed our jobs, pensions, and prosperity—and what we can do about it
• J. B. Stewart. Den of Thieves.
• K. Calavita. Big money crime: fraud and politics in the savings and loan crisis

Russian politics and corruption

• Gessen, M. 2017. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Riverhead Books.
• Malcolm, N. 2018. The Plot to Destroy Democracy. How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. Hachette Books.
• Isikoff, M. 2018. Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Hachette Book Group.
• Galeotti, M. 2018. Vory. Russias Super Mafia. Yale University Press.
• Harding, L. 2017. Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.
• Simpson, G. 2019. Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump. Random House.
• Maddow, R. 2019. Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. Crown.
• Pomerantsev, P. 2015. Nothing is true and everything is possible: the surreal heart of the new Russia. Public Affairs.

Economics & Investing

Now that we’re at the end of growth, have a distribution of wealth worse than before the Great Depression, and a future crash given the utter lack of economic reforms and growing debt, this is not a good time to invest!

• C.A.S. Hall, Energy & the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical economy
• R. Heinberg. The end of growth: Adapting to our new economic reality
• E. Lefevre. Reminiscences of a stock operator: with new commentary and insights on the life and times of Jesse Livermore
• M. Lewis. Liar’s poker.
• D. Liss. The coffee trader.
• W. Bonner. The new empire of debt: the rise and fall of an epic financial bubble
• W. Bonner. Mobs, messiahs, and markets: Surviving the public spectacle in finance and politics
• N. N. Taleb. Fooled by randomness: the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets.
• B. Mann. Republic of debtors. Bankruptcy in the age of American independence
• S. Das. Traders, guns & money: knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives
• J. Rothchild. A fool and his money: the odyssey of an average investor
• E. Chancellor. Devil take the hindmost: A history of financial speculation
• A. Wiggin. Financial reckoning day fallout: surviving today’s global depression