Monthly Archives: May 2019

This ended up being one of the more serendipitous pickups of the entire challenge.  Having read a bunch of Star Wars novels to pad out a list I was sure I’d easily finish, I decided in 2019 to look for … Continue reading →

A book of many facets, a travelogue and description of modern China, including its various tribulations in coming to grips with Buddhism; an examination of Buddhist doctrine and practice in the face of the modern world; a history of Buddhism … Continue reading →

Irishman battles, insults churchman, goes crazy, acts like a bird, gets killed.   What does it all mean? Buile Suibhne (the Madness of Sweeney) and in particular Heaney’s translation, is essentially a pagan story (the transformation of man into animals … Continue reading →

A well written dramatization of the story of the ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire (actually the sack of Rome by the Goths of Alaric.) I first saw this book years ago, my wife had been at the library and called … Continue reading →

This is Marx’s history of the Paris Commune, one of the earliest attempts to create a government on Communist principles. The book was a source of inspiration for Lenin in his own revolutionary organization, and his name is on the … Continue reading →

A short collection of essays by Cornel West, at the time of publication one of the leading black intellectuals on the left (his star has been diminished by a relentless campaign of marginalization waged by the establishment of the Democratic … Continue reading →

I enjoyed the last Geohegan book I read in this project, and so when I saw this one at the library, I decided to grab it. It’s a combination of a travelogue and social commentary, a trenchant comparison of the … Continue reading →

A response to Hayek, published a year or so after the success of Road to Serfdom. Writing as a mainstream 1940s liberal, from a reformist rather than revolutionary perspective, Finer scores some good points against Hayek.  (And I was just … Continue reading →

To use his own words: As though explaining the idea of dancing Of the idea of some other thing Which everyone has known a little about Since they were children, which children learn themselves With no explaining, but which children … Continue reading →

As the blurb on the back says ‘the standard reference work on the subject.’ In particular two things struck me about this book – the first, and the author comments on it at one point, is that its scope is … Continue reading →