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Gotta go with The Five People You Meet In Heaven - to think we may have an impact on someone else's life with our actions even though neither of us is aware of it - wow. I pondered on that one a long time. Of course, not being too bright, I pondered the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for a while, too...
"The Secret"(the material emphasis was, I thought, just the carrot dangling to get ones attention to the Laws of Attraction)--"The Infinite Way" by Joel Goldsmith--when I was a child,it was "To kill a Mockingbird"
"Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity" by Samuel P. Huntington. Professor Huntington's previous book "Clash of Civilizations" bascially predicted Sept 11 and the war on terrorism.
Not that its going to change the way I live my life per se, but I'm in the process of reading an AMAZING, very insightful and well-researched book. This really does change the way I see my little cousin and her friends and how out of touch they are with the world I know and I'm only 6 years older than her. The book is about American identity, assimilation and loyalties or immigrants etc etc.
So much of what Huntington writes in this book is true for my parents, my aunt and my youngest cousin, especially about transnational or divided loyalties. See my primary identity is American. My aunt's always puts her Chinese heritage first and my mom considers herself a world citizen/internationalist. I am very Americanized and listen to country music and only watch American movies and follow American sports while my little cousin listens to mostly Asian music and hangs out exclusively with Asian friends. She's also very liberal and sympathizes Cindy Sheehan the crazy leftist nutjob and with the Dixie Chicks, a bunch of treasonous b____ who hate this country and are probably glad our soldiers are dying in Iraq. And she supports the sniveling liberal B___ Hillary Clinton who supports illegal immigration.
So it really pains me to say this but what Dr. Huntington says about assimilation, immigration, and identity is not entirely false because I know from personal experience. A lot of Asian and Hispanic Americans these days are too concerned about connecting with the old country instead of just being American like myself and my older cousins. Also my older two cousins spent most of their lives in Idaho and my youngest one spent a lot of time on the East Coast which is very liberal and ethnic.
I wish my little cousin and my mom would read that book. Racial tolerance and assimilation/patriotism are different things. We cannot judge people differently because of skin color, but its important that all of us put our American identity before any ethnic identity and before universalism or internationalism. For example, my cousin, aunt, and mom disagree with me but I always support an America-first foreign policy and things like missile defense, increased CIA and military power, the Patriot Act and a hardline against enemy countries like Iran and North Korea.
Professor Huntington's books should be required reading for high schools and colleges across the country, instead of liberal propaganda by people like Howard Zinn, whose books read like they were published in Beijing or Havana.
Two books that are not the Bible come to mind. Of course the "Holy Bible" would be Number One for a lot of people.
Yep, but for me it was Thomas Paine's Age of Reason which helped me realize that the Bible is a pack of lies written by man. I felt so liberated after.
Yep, but for me it was Thomas Paine's Age of Reason which helped me realize that the Bible is a pack of lies written by man. I felt so liberated after.
As you may have already heard, you certainly won't go broke or be unpopular telling folks what they want to hear.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Nature, village, family, imagination)
Samuel L. Clemens, "The Autobiography of Mark Twain" (Twain was entirely self-made by his wits. Many funny stories in this book, such as how he courted the young woman whom he would later marry as she nursed him through a faked head injury after he fell off a carriage in front of her home. Tragically, over his long lifetime he witnessed the deaths of many members of his family, including his wife and three of his four children.)
Nicolas Darvas, "How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market" (A true, legitimate story)
R.G. Collingwood, "The Idea of Nature" (Little book by Oxford U. professor that presents a sparkling exposition of the history of Western ideas about nature and science)
Richard Rhodes, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Very informative history, with a devastating epilogue that examines the morality of the existence of nuclear weapons in the context of 20th century "total war")
Morris Kline, "Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty" (How ideas about the foundations of mathematics as practised today became split into three or four camps before 1950.)
Last edited by ParkTwain; 08-15-2007 at 09:53 PM..
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controversial but insightful book
