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The books we read define who we are.  The books we choose inform our world view and how we look at the events in the world.  The dissident viewpoint is not particularly fun or easy to hold as every point must be scrupulously backed up with ample evidence to be even considered in conversations and debate.  This list, as the title says, is not complete nor will it probably ever be as education and learning never stops during a lifetime.

This post serves also to provide insight into the how and why I talk about issues and the positions I take while debating.

The first, and probably most important work to my education as a rational human being would have to be the grand tomb by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky – Manufacturing Consent.  It is an acutely precise documented look at the American Media.  Manufacturing Consent also offers a propaganda model to assist in analyzing and understanding how the media works, the reason for the prevalent rightward bias, and why that bias exists.

MC really started my adult education, as it caused me to become skeptical of what I had been taught in school and question the assumptions and point of view of how most my classes where taught.

I should mention Hegemony or Survival and The Fateful Triangle and Year 501: The Conquest Continues as well.  They all brought clarity to the questions about  how the world works and more importantly the structures in place that work against justice, egalitarianism and freedom.

I have read more Chomsky, particularly to understand the Vietnam War but I would  single out these four works as being particularly important.

Howard Zinn is another major figure in my interpretation of history.  It was his A People’s History of the United States that really reinforced the idea of history being written by the victor and how important alternate narratives are in understanding history.  Out of the rest of his works, I have read War and Terrorism, which I also recommend as it is also very informative and illuminating.

In a similar vein, Major General Smedley Butler‘s work War is a Racket also ranks prominently in my readings of Western History because he simply tells it like it was for him, as a member of the United States Armed forces.  His prescient observations are ever more true today.

I came upon Chris Harman’s book A People’s History of the World, like Zinn’s work it is a depressingly good read.  I have only read it once, but it is coming back into rotation as is a valuable reference and starting point for further historical analysis.

It sits beside my copy of Zinn’s work as part of the spine of my history collection.

A fiery excerpt from one of his speeches.

War Talk, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy, and Taraq Ali’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006),  Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002).  Both Roy and Ali provide external analysis of our situation in the West and how we are viewed by the rest of the world.  Ali is a powerful speaker and I had the opportunity to listen to him when he came to the University in 2008.  His eloquence and arguments made for an evening to remember.  External points of view are necessary, but sometimes a homegrown view is necessary to provide more perspective on the important issues of our time.

The Canadian Naomi Klein and her works fits nicely into the puzzle giving a Canadian view of the world as it.  I did not enjoy NoLogo very much but found The Shock Doctrine to be a necessary and informative read about how the elites do what they must to rule the world.     The Shock Doctrine explains how countries are jolted into submission before neoliberal reforms are forced on them.  Again, file under good but depressing reading.

I almost forgot one of the most important works of history that I have read.  It is called The Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk.  It is a huge work spanning most of Fisk’s journalistic career.  It is history close up, a punch in the nose of a wake up call as for what trouble with Middle East and ‘civilizing influence’ there.

This list is a longer than I first expected, as even after 500 words I have covered only a couple of areas of  the literature that informs my view and opinion on the world (in retrospect, probably a good thing).  I will cover other areas of my interests in future posts.