Preface. Many of these books will turn what you learned in school upside-down.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, 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)
- S. C. Gwynne. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
- 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
