[homevintner]

The Rhinemann Exchange By Robert Ludlum

[DruulEmpire]

Ahh, not just Ludlum, but early Ludlum, before he began to weird out and insist on elite superspies round about The Holcroft Covenant and The Parsifal Mosaic.  My personal fave from his early period is The Chancellor Manuscript.

[BigEyes]

Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October
4-5 times now.

[pedonbio]

The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Twenty years ago he wrote Liar's Poker as, he tells us, a warning to his peers to avoid investment banking, and do something useful like marine biology or poetry.

Instead, his peers and younger folks found an even scummier way to scam the poor: Sub-prime mortgages. Interestingly, this book is about the dozen or so people who saw the current Depression coming, figured out how to make money from it, screamed to anyone who would listen what was happening, and, when they saw no one listening, went short.

Interestingly, they are almost all social misfits, including one Asberger's sufferer.

And even more interesting, the Asberger's sufferer tipped off Goldman, Sachs to what was happening. He did this in 2002, before Henry Poulson was known outside of Wall Street.

[Shara]

with the risk of sounding like an elitist faggot (Though I don't use mac), I only read the classics

[pedonbio]

with the risk of sounding like an elitist faggot (Though I don't use mac), I only read the classics

So, Spiderman and Batgirl are classics?

[servomoore]

Failed States by Noam Chomsky because I have no problems admitting I am becoming an elitist faggot.

[pedonbio]

Failed States by Noam Chomsky because I have no problems admitting I am becoming an elitist faggot.

I haven't read it yet, but I will. Perhaps we should start a Society of Elitist Faggots!

[DruulEmpire]

I like Chomsky -- but only in rationed doses.  If I read too much of him too consistently I start believing that the United States has pursued only the most evil possible policy in the most evil possible way.  The far left and the far right seem to share an interesting vanity but in opposite ways: the far right says all evil can only be foreign, the far left stops just short of implying that all evil can only be domestic.  I'm not inclined to give America that much credit in either field.

Thus in this way I can remain ruggedly macho while retaining access to my feminine side.

[pedonbio]

Mostly I read Chomsky's work on linguistics. He's the Darwin of linguistics.

[servomoore]

I haven't read it yet, but I will. Perhaps we should start a Society of Elitist Faggots!

Sure! I even have a new avatar for our S.E.F. ready:

[homevintner]

American Lion by Jon Meacham. Andrew Jackson in the White House.
Doughboy War edited by James H. Hallas. Thousands of personal accounts of the war to end all wars, from the lowliest private up to Gen. Pershing.
Patton's Best by Nat Frankle and Larry Smith. An informal history of the 4th armored division. Written by a Sherman tank commander.
Free as a Running Fox by Wing Commander T. D. Calnan. "It is the duty of every P.O.W. to escape..."

[rtpoe]

Last Call by Daniel Okrent

If you ever wanted to know just how Prohibition (the 18th Amendment) happened, this is the book to read. The short version: a group of primarily rural, primarily Anglo-Saxon moralists took advantage of political opportunity (the new Income Tax meant that the gov't didn't need all the revenue from alcoholic beverages, for one thing) and, in part, war hysteria (once the Great War began, no one was going to listen to men with names like Busch and Pabst), among other things.

You'll also find out about the loopholes in the Volstead Act, how they got there, and how they were exploited. How the economy of a little French island off the coast of Newfoundland boomed. How Prohibition was essentially an "unfunded mandate".

And how hypocrisy became entrenched in American political culture....

[pedonbio]

I like Chomsky -- but only in rationed doses.  If I read too much of him too consistently I start believing that the United States has pursued only the most evil possible policy in the most evil possible way. 

I know what you mean. Like, people who believe in government conspiracies have never worked for the government.

[DruulEmpire]

My favorite line from that "X-Files" movie -- Martin Landau saying of FEMA "These people don't make mistakes!"