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Recommended Reading?


Iron Horse

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Are there books that can be recommended to people that can broaden your mind?  Not completely related to Philosophy but for general education?  Books that can be consider essential to a rounded education, fiction or non-fiction, historical or modern or satire.  I ask because everytime I step in to a book store I find myself overwhelmed by the choices there and the endless lists on the internet, in the end I usually cop out and get something simple.

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I would recommend New Rules of Lifting: Supercharged. Never underestimate the mind-body connection. Also, I learned more from it than I did throughout all twelve years of government schooling. I've been applying it for three and a half months now and the results have been amazing.

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Fiction

 

The crypto money trilogy by Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age) and Anathem by the same author.

 

Philosophy

 

The incerto trilogy by Taleb (Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile)

Popper, Conjectures and Refutations.

Science

 

Dartnell, The Knowledge

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I just finished "Tom Mix and Pancho Villa, a romance by Clifford Irving" written in the 1980's, set in the very early 1900's.  Later to be a silent film star, younger Tom Mix apparently had some historical encounter south of the border, details sketchy.  Irving uses known details to then build a very engaging story.

 

Romance is understatement.  I fell in love with this book.  I fell for Pancho Villa.  I would have hugged him but he probably smelled bad.  (No campgrounds with showers for revolutionaries.)  I fell for the parched hell of northern Mexico.  

 

I fell for fictional Rosa, Mexican Indian.  Hannah too, oh yeah, that girl could probably cook food with just a look, but I know why Mix went the (fictional) way he did.   She was a Texas Jew, but it wasn't that.  Just read about Rosa.

 

I also learned quite a bit about the historical situation of Mexico at the time, which is the primary story.  I had no idea.  I understand much better.  The guesswork of insights of Villa's strategy and tactics, his moral thinking, are also fulfilling.

 

Oh, oh, and there's Lt. George Patton -- I love this guy.  And an officer named Pershing.  Stuck on a Texas border post which for a military career was a serious case of boring backwater.  

 

Also a smattering of pointers about cowboys and horses.  Not enough to bother you, but enough to intrigue.

 

Just get this book, maybe from a library, and your book problem is solved while you ponder your next selections.  Let us know what you think about Hannah and Rosa.  And Pancho!

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