Booklist: Trump, Russia, Drugs U.S. History, Politics, Corruption, Feminism

 More booklists

Drugs

American History

  • R Chernow. Grant. 2017
  • 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
  • DJ Silverman.  Thundersticks (guns and how they affected American Indians)
  • SC Gwynne. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
  • B Obama. A promised land.
  • C Johnson. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
  • E Larson. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America 
  • RA Caro. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
  • RA Caro. The path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I
  • RA Caro. Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II
  • RA Caro. Master of the Senate: The years of Lyndon Johnson III
  • RA Caro. The passage of power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV
  • S Schiff.  The witches: Salem, 1692
  • D Priest. Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
  • T Wolfe. The Right Stuff.
  • J Barry. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
  • 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
  • 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.
  • JC Scott. Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.
  • JB Freeman. Behemoth. A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World 
  • D Allosso. Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History
  • P Pagnamenta. Prairie Fever: British Aristocrats in the American West 1830-1890 

American Politics, Authoritarianism, & the End of Democracy 

Trump and books about why Americans voted for him

American Corruption

  • J Hari. Chasing the scream. The first and last days of the war on drugs
  • JM Feinman. Delay Deny Defend. Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.
  • F Vogl. The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption – Endangering Our Democracy
  • S Chayes. On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake And What Is at Stake
  • A Glantz. Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream
  • 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
  • AR 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
  • D Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
  • 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
  • BL 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
  • JB Stewart. Den of Thieves.
  • K Calavita. Big money crime: fraud and politics in the savings and loan crisis
  • D Vine. Base Nation: American Empire Project.
  • M Lewis. Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

Slavery, prison, eviction

  • A  Reséndez. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
  • ZNH Barracoon. The story of the last “black cargo”
  • W Warren. New England bound: Slavery and colonization in early America
  • S Northup Twelve years a slave
  • P Kerman. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison 
  • J Hogshire. You Are Going To Prison.
  • RJ Miller. Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
  • M Desmond. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
  • A Pang. Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods

Russian politics and corruption

  • M Gessen. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
  • P Pomerantsev. Nothing is true and everything is possible: the surreal heart of the new Russia
  • N Malcolm. The Plot to Destroy Democracy. How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. 
  • M Isikoff. Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. 
  • M Galeotti. Vory. Russias Super Mafia. Yale University Press.
  • C Belton. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
  • L Harding. Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.
  • R Maddow. Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. Crown.

Feminism and Women’s history

  • S Simard. Finding the Mother Tree
  • L Cooke. Bitch: On the female of the species
  • P Orenstein. Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
  • HA Garcia. Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide
  • R Miles. Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women’s History of the World
  • K Manne. Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women  
  • R Solnit. Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays
  • E Freedman. The Essential Feminist Reader
  • S McCurry. Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War
  • M Chollet. In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

Female Rulers

  • J Chang. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
  • E Lev. The Tigress of Forli. Renaissance Italy’s most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici
  • J Weatherford. The secret history of the Mongol queens: how the daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his empire
  • S Schiff. Cleopatra: A life
  • S Puhak. The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
  • K Pangonis. Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule
  • J DeJean. Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast
  • J Baird. Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire

Female Spies

  • K Abbott. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
  • J Pearson. Wolves at the Door: The True Story Of America’s Greatest Female Spy
  • S Purnell. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

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

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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