Plutarch's "Parallel Lives".

You will not regret it. ...if you live.

Tom Paine's Agrarian Justice and Age of Reason, Jefferson's Notes on The State of Virginian, The Communist Manifesto (Das Kapital is just too fucking long, so the manifesto is pretty important without all that... fuckin' reading), Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Mein Kampf, Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews to name a few really great pieces. A few easy reads about history, I'd say Mark steel's Vive La revolution: A stand-Up History of The French Revolution, James Loewen's Lies My teacher Told Me: everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography both by Christopher Hitchens, Through A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th century by Barbara Tuchman, and two works that should be read together to balance out their biases- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson.

I'd also recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium by Chris Harman. seeing as these two books are unabashedly left-wing and therefore contain an obvious bias, I wouldn't group them with the works listed above, although mark Steel's book about the french Revolution is written from a pro-revolutionary perspective (while admonishing the indefensible acts of the revolutionaries) it is very much in line with popular views of the revolution and isn't as ideologically ballasted as the two 'People's histories'. Hope you enjoy them!

>>12372

I love Common Sense so I'll have to give Paine's other works a go, also I've heard of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" so I'll check that out too.

You seem to have a lot of suggestions; lately I've been interested in texts that influenced the American Revolution/Constitution, so would you recommend anything by writers like Locke and Smith, etc?

>>12373
Oh yeah, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is a good enlightenment era piece, but didn't have an effect on the constitution, as it was published in 1776 and wasn't readily available to Americans for a few more years, but was very widely read by men like Paine and Jefferson who agreed with Smnith that the freedom of commerce was the instrument through-which men's freedom would be secured (however, I disagree, and apparently as did Jefferson in his later life, with his anti-capitalistic embargoes and inheritance-tax ideas) I'd recommend in that category Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Treatises On Government, Rousseau's On The Social Contract and such. Rousseau is especially interesting as his idea of a virtuous republic inspired such diverse political thinkers are Robespierre, Jefferson and Mussolini. (to which he may be closer, sorry to say, to Mussolini- but not nearly as violent) But you can save a lot of reading and just read the works of Thomas Paine, as Paine read and absorbed so much enlightenment material that he ends up summarizing Voltaire, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and even pre-empts major critiques of The Bible (Age of Reason). Although it was probably best said by jefferson when he said that Paine "thought more than he read" and hadn't read David hume, the first major atheist Philosopher, (or at least Paine said he hadn'hume's new critiquesof miracles and the interruption of natural law. Paine also hadn't read Emmanuel Kant's complete destruction of the argument from design, but this is understandable because Kant's own german wouldn't be available in english for a decade after it's publishing, and unavailable in the U.S. for another 5 years, so Paine was dead in 1809 by the time Kant was available for a man who knew only (broken) french and English. Although off on a tagent, It's strange that Paine would be a deist until his dying breath, but Jefferson died arguable agnostic- having said he went to his death with neither hope for reward nor fear of punishment. But then again, although Jefferson questioned why the sea-shell fossils were so high up on the cliffs where no water could be, both he and Paine lived before darwin, and had no other explanations for the world than a creator. sorry if I'm spieling, but Jefferson and Paine are pretty much my heroes :D But yeah, Library of America has the complete works of Jeffersona d Paine for like 14 bucks a piece, so I'd grab that for reals.

>>12373
Oh yeah, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is a good enlightenment era piece, but didn't have an effect on the constitution, as it was published in 1776 and wasn't readily available to Americans for a few more years, but was very widely read by men like Paine and Jefferson who agreed with Smnith that the freedom of commerce was the instrument through-which men's freedom would be secured (however, I disagree, and apparently as did Jefferson in his later life, with his anti-capitalistic embargoes and inheritance-tax ideas) I'd recommend in that category Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Treatises On Government, Rousseau's On The Social Contract and such. Rousseau is especially interesting as his idea of a virtuous republic inspired such diverse political thinkers are Robespierre, Jefferson and Mussolini. (to which he may be closer, sorry to say, to Mussolini- but not nearly as violent) But you can save a lot of reading and just read the works of Thomas Paine, as Paine read and absorbed so much enlightenment material that he ends up summarizing Voltaire, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and even pre-empts major critiques of The Bible (Age of Reason). Although it was probably best said by jefferson when he said that Paine "thought more than he read" and hadn't read David hume, the first major atheist Philosopher, (or at least Paine said he hadn'hume's new critiquesof miracles and the interruption of natural law. Paine also hadn't read Emmanuel Kant's complete destruction of the argument from design, but this is understandable because Kant's own german wouldn't be available in english for a decade after it's publishing, and unavailable in the U.S. for another 5 years, so Paine was dead in 1809 by the time Kant was available for a man who knew only (broken) french and English. Although off on a tagent, It's strange that Paine would be a deist until his dying breath, but Jefferson died arguable agnostic- having said he went to his death with neither hope for reward nor fear of punishment. But then again, although Jefferson questioned why the sea-shell fossils were so high up on the cliffs where no water could be, both he and Paine lived before Darwin, and had no other explanations for the world than a creator. sorry if I'm spieling, but Jefferson and Paine are pretty much my heroes :D But yeah, Library of America has the complete works of Jefferson and Paine for like 14 bucks a piece, so I'd grab that for reals.

Democracy in America by Alexander de Tocqueville is a great read and it sounds like it is right up your alley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America#Importance

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is essential reading. Please, don't skip it! It is short, brief and is widely influential.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx (yeah, commie guy) is also a very good, brief history of the Paris Commune and Revultionar.

>>12386

poster here, did not mean to say Paris Commune but the coup of 51

Why read the book when you typed it all out for me?

>>12391

File 133749015955.png - (205.42KB , 1312x2307 , hitler_on_italy_and_islam.png )

From ancient times, I can recommend the works of ancient Roman historian Tacitus: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tacitus

And Plato's Republic, although it's quite long and not the easiest to read at times: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

Also, if you haven't read it already, the Bible:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=NIV1984
(I'm an Atheist, but I still think it's a very interesting book with huge historical impact that every westerner should read)

Some interesting, relatively short documents from more recent times are picrelated and this article on the Russian revolution which Winston Churchill wrote in 1920:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zionism_versus_Bolshevism

I'm gonna go ahead and second plato's the republic - it's probably more important than the bible by far

and because I think it would be valuable, one should check out the atlantis aspect of the critias

also, look at the tower of babel as a metaphor for tyranny, when a christian calls obama a nimrod they might mean a different one than "stupid"


atlantis is spectacular as a fable by plato, and I think you guys in the USA could really appreciate his commentary on society on that one

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/atlantis/timaeus_and_critias.html