A Book List

Over at the Weekly Standard blog, M. Continetti wrote a list of his Top Ten Books. This is always fun to think about, and your correspondent couldn't help himself.
In no particular order:

1. Democracy in America. I have the Mayer version, but I guess the Mansfield tome is pretty interesting. So much good stuff in there.... Groundbreaking, groundsmashing work of comparative political science. And still valid for its theoretical insights.

2. The Brothers Karamazov. Long hard slog. But worth it. Not recommended for reading in winter -- I was talking with a friend of mine, we considered the idea that Dostoevsky should be illegal between November and the 1st of March, sort of on the same principle of why alcohol is so highly taxed in Scandinavia. One alternates between the beautiful and sublime to the horrifying in such a brief time, or even at the same time. If ingested by someone weak-willed, the consequences can be disastrous.

3 and 4. Republican Party Reptile and Eat the Rich, by P.J. O'Rourke. Some of the first books I ever read where I truly felt "my goodness, this guy gets it." Unbelievably funny. One of the best writers a conservative can read, especially after reading Dostoevsky. O'Rourke's conservatism, if it can be called that, is not that of policy wonks or some patrician aristocracy. Nor is it populist hell-raising. It only is maybe more like, well, discernment, an insight into what is important, and what can be laughed at, and which is both.

5. Reflections on the Revolution in France. A handy guidebook to unintended consequences, irrational rationalism, and the worthiness of the little platoon.

6. The Road to Serfdom, by Hayek. The dedication alone is worth the price.

7. Talks with T.G. Masaryk, by Karel Čapek. Another democratic heart pumping life into the mind of an aristocrat, and the wisdom to understand the necessity of both.

8. Promised Land, Crusader State, by Walter McDougall. A wonderful rendition of American foreign policy history. The pages turn so quickly one needs a hair tie. And the only serious book on foreign policy that analyzes The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a historical policy context.

9. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Because there isn't room on the list for Leviathan, Locke's Second Treatise of Government and the other great contractian philosophers.

10. Finally, there was a big astronomy picture book in the public library back home. I still remember learning about how wonderful it was to discover that there was a science that contained so many great ancient stories, that demonstrated such amazing human progress, and was just so darn big. In lieu of knowing what this book is, I'll put Pale Blue Dot instead, a text that we students used with Dr. Berendzen. It wasn't bad either.

Continetti writes that "It occurs to me that the books you read between the ages of 13 and 21 turn out to be the most important in your life." I'm not sure that's always the case. There are certainly cases where something so drastically changes in one's life that new springs of ideas well up, and new places in one's mind begin to be mapped out. For these times, one gravitates to new sources for inspiration, though, as a concession, perhaps always filtering them through the books of one's youth.