Reading List

25 books I recommend

Last week, I wrote a response to the most common question I’ve got from readers.

The next most common request is for book recommendations, so for subscribers, here are 25 recommendations of books that influenced my own thinking.

POLITICS – Aristotle — The greatest work of political philosophy. Aristotle gives us his teleological account of government rooted in man’s quest for the good life. Monarchy, democracy and oligarchy are considered, but Aristotle settles on a mixed regime as ideal to inculcate virtue in the citizenry and serve the common good. This work represents the peak of classical political philosophy, a repudiation of the liberal “value-neutral” approach to political philosophy which is dominant today.

Listen to our book club on this

RETURN OF THE STRONG GODS – R. R. Reno — Reno’s treatment of the post-war consensus shows how the world-weariness of Europeans after WW2, coupled with the moral imperative “never again” led to the trends of deconstruction and relativism that utterly transformed the intellectual landscape. Western elites and intelligentsia launched a full frontal assault on the “strong gods” of nationalism, religion and the family.

Listen to our book club on this

THE ETHNIC PHENOMENON – Pierre L. van den Berghe — One of a few books that applies the insights of sociobiology to the phenomenon of ethnic nationalism. Van den Berghe contends that ethnic nepotism is rooted in biology, an example of “kin selection”, where organisms evolve to behave altruistically towards their kin to promote the spread of shared genes. Van den Berghe then applies his sociobiological lens to analyse various historical forms of ethnic relations like colonialism, slavery, caste systems, and assimilation.

THE FACES OF JANUS: MARXISM AND FASCISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY — A. James Gregor — Gregor is an underrated scholar who was the preeminent scholar on fascism, and this work best summarises his argument regarding 20th century totalitarian regimes. Gregor is able to break out of the ideological shackles of many historians of these regimes, and show that a left/right interpretive lens is flawed. Communist regimes inevitably morphed into a state form most like fascism, while fascist regimes took on many socialist aspects which undermine the myth of fascist regimes as “capitalism in decay”. Also useful for Gregor’s tracing the origins of (and dismantling) Marxist myths around the rise of fascism.