Recommended Reading
Download them quickly before they're banned...
This is a work in progress. I have focused on books freely available online, but I’d strongly recommend starting your own personal library.
Classic Literature
The Greek and Norse myths (for the former, see Hamilton’s Timeless Tales; for the latter, Turville’s Myth And Religion Of The North; on myth in general, see Hatab’s Myth and Philosophy: A Contest of Truths)
The Grimm Fairy Tales
The classic epics: the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Song of Roland.
Shakespeare (especially Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Coriolanus). Cahn’s Shakespeare: The Playwright is a good guide.
Moby-Dick (Yvor Winters’s essay here is the best introduction to this great novel)
Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, especially The Invisible Man, The Secret Garden, The Quick One, The Sign of the Broken Cross, The Honour of Israel Gow, The Queer Feet, The Wrong Shape, The Point of a Pin, The Purple Wig, and The Paradise of Thieves.
Shane (see also the adaptation for radio here)
Dickey, Deliverance
Forbes, A Mirror for Witches
Curtius, European literature and the Latin Middle Ages
Anthropology and Culture
Newell, The Code of Man
Gilmore, Manhood in the Making
Wrangham, Demonic Males
Mansfield, Manliness
Dench, Transforming men : changing patterns of dependency and dominance in gender relations
Rushton, Race, Evolution and Behaviour
Stove, Racial and Other Antagonisms
Stove, The Subjection of John Stuart Mill
Foerster, Marriage and the Sex-Problem
Unwin, Sex and Culture
Booker, The Neophiliacs
Finnis, Law, Morality, and "Sexual Orientation"
J. Budziszewski, Thomas Aquinas on Marriage, Fruitfulness, and Faithful Love
Gilder, Men and Marriage and Naked Nomads
Zimmerman, Family and Civilisation
Van Creveld, Equality: The Impossible Dream and The Privileged Sex
I can’t find it online for free, but by far the best treatment of sexual morality in English is John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, Contemporary Moral Theology, Volume II: Marriage Questions
Socialism and Sexual Degeneracy
Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen
Harrison, Quest for the new moral world; Robert Owen and the Owenities in Britain and America
The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier Selected Texts on Work, Love and Passionate Attraction
Wilhelm Reich, The sexual revolution, toward a self-governing character structure
Kevin Macdonald, The Culture Of Critique
Kraybill, The riddle of Amish culture
History
Starr, A History of The Ancient World
Plutarch's Lives (start with Alexander the Great then read Pericles, Alcibiades, Julius Caesar, and Pompey)
Fustel de Coulanges, The ancient city : a study on the religion, laws and institutions of Greece and Rome
Hadas, A History of Rome
Brown, The world of late antiquity : AD 150-750
Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Blits, The end of the ancient republic : Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Hanson, The End of Sparta
Prescott’s History Of The Conquest Of Mexico And History Of The Conquest Of Peru
Bosworth, Conquest and empire : the reign of Alexander the Great
Marozzi, Tamerlane : sword of Islam, conqueror of the world
Lecky, History of European Morals
Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (also as an audiobook here)
Spengler, The Decline of The West
Adams, Decadent Societies
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence
Toynbee, A Study of History
Burnham, Suicide of the West: an essay on the meaning and destiny of liberalism and The Machiavellians
Parkinson, East and West
Riesman, The Lonely Crowd
Crozier, The Crisis of Democracy
Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, The Anglo-American Establishment and The Evolution of Civilisations
Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
Kennedy, The rise and fall of the great powers : economic change and military conflict from 1500-2000
Dunstan, Grey wolf : the escape of Adolf Hitler : the case presented
Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism
Higham, Trading With The Enemy : An Expose Of The Nazi American Money Plot
Giacomo, Conjuring Hitler : how Britain and America made the Third Reich
Haffner, Defying Hitler
McGovern, From Luther to Hitler
Philosophy
Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy
Wild, Introduction to realistic philosophy
Adler, Ten philosophical mistakes
Fagothey, Right and reason: ethics in theory and practice
John F. McCormick, Scholastic Metaphysics, Part II: Natural Theology
McIntyre, After Virtue
Maritain, The Person and The Common Good and Three Reformers
Ralph McInerney, Ethica Thomistica
Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy
Schall, ‘Natural Law and the Law of Nations’
A. D. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life
Joyce, Principles of Logic
Maher, Psychology: empirical and rational
Braine, The Human Person: Animal and Spirit
Lear, ‘Integrating the non-rational soul’ (paper on Aristotle as a podcast)
Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism
Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love and In Defense of Purity
Religion
At age fifteen, you figured out many of the best philosopher and scientists in the Western history were deluded for being Christians, right? And you haven’t bothered looking at the topic again since then, so you’re stuck with a fifteen-year-old’s intellectual understanding of it. Start here.
Bible: Genesis, Exodus 1-2, Samuel, Isaiah, Four Gospels, 1 Kings 22
Feser, The Last Superstition
Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
Lennox, 'Darwin was a Teleologist'
Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success and God’s Battalions: The Case for The Crusades
Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity
Ruthven, Islam in the World
Eaton, Islam and The Destiny of Man
Viscount de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity
Adam, Spirit of Catholicism
Schmidt, Under The Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilisation
Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education
(Compare Dawson to Dewey here.)
Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane
Cavanuagh, The myth of religious violence : secular ideology and the roots of modern conflict
John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan, Moral Theology: A Complete Course
Geach, Providence and Evil and The Virtues
Military History
The atrophy of military history as a discipline in woke academia is very telling: ‘peace studies’ proliferate. Take this as the strongest signal possible that studying military history is essential. Like literature, it’s ultimately the study of human nature.
Keegan, A History of Warfare and The Mask of Command and The Face of Battle
Keeley, War Before Civilisation
Cohen, Supreme Command
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Sledge, With the Old Breed
Bendiner, The Fall of Fortresses
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman
Patton, War as I Knew It
Solzhenitsyn, August 1914
Kagan, Dangerous Nation and On the origins of war and the preservation of peace
Clausewitz, Principles of War
Gilbert, Finest hour : Winston S. Churchill, 1939-1941
McCullough, Truman
McPherson, Battle cry of freedom : the Civil War era
Tuchman, The Guns of August
Seabury and Codevilla, War: Ends and Means
Peter Paret, Makers of modern strategy : from Machiavelli to the nuclear age
Horne, To lose a battle: France 1940
Moyar, Triumph forsaken : the Vietnam war, 1954-1965
Kershaw, Hitler, 1936-1945 Nemesis
Hanson, The Soul of Battle and War: The Father of Us All
McMaster, Dereliction of Duty
Huntingdon, The soldier and the state; the theory and politics of civil-military relations
Longford, Wellington
Freeman, Lee's lieutenants : a study in command
Bowden, Black Hawk Down
Oren, Six days of war : June 1967 and the making of the modern Middle East
Horne, A savage war of peace : Algeria, 1954-1962
Weinberg, A world at arms : a global history of World War II
Runciman, The fall of Constantinople, 1453
Weigley, The age of battles : the quest for decisive warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo
Delbruck, Medieval Warfare, The Modern Era and his volume on warfare in antiquity
Fuller, A military history of the Western World
Creasy, The fifteen decisive battles of the world
Ryan, Modern War and Basic Ethics
Eppstein, The Catholic tradition of the law of nations
A reader sends this list of books curated by Andrei Fursov.
Totally amazing. Many books I was not even aware of! And so important you included Christianity. It's 50 years since I did 'A' level English but I still recall the mind-expansion I experienced when reading so many literary classics, including most of Shakespeare... the student in me still lives!
YEEEEESS!!.. Exactly what i wanted from you!!