en-US Tue, 17 Jul 2018 17:39:18 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 16244134 118 Jeff Maddox 1479382787 Leslie 0 to-read 0.0 2012
author: Jeff Maddox
name: Leslie
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2012
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]]> 5470 328 George Orwell Leslie 5 4.15 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 5
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After reading "Animal Farm" and then this book, I vowed for all eternity to fight the best I can against totalitarianism in all its forms.
]]> 7613
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals � inspired by his philosophy of Animalism � plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]> 129 George Orwell Leslie 0 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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Want to know all about totalitarianism (socialism, fascism, nazism, and communism)? Read "Animal Farm". It is a story of how ALL statist economic regimes lead to total destruction and devastation of life, especially for the more gullible. The workers are worked to death, while the bureaucrats live high on the 'hog'.
]]> 18170291 In his new role as president and CEO of The Heritage Foundation, Jim DeMint has taken on the daunting responsibility of helping to lead Americans themselves to change their country's course, of redirecting us back to our founding principles and restoring and protecting our economy and culture for future generations. He realized that he - and all of us as fellow citizens - must fall in love with America - again.
In this book, DeMint illustrates why Americans must rediscover the power, ingenuity and creativity of our little platoons. He then introduces Americans all across the country whose patriotism was nurtured in exactly the same way, recounting example after example of how they're working together locally in what he calls the "little platoons" - the families, churches, communities and voluntary organizations succeeding on the model that smaller is better. They are the hands-on citizens who make America the exceptional, caring and can-do country it has always been.
DeMint illustrates why each of us - regardless of political party, age, race, religion or ethnicity - must rediscover the power we represent. The country's future is at risk, not just because of constant pressure from "the Bigs" (big government, big banks, big labor, big Wall Street cronies etc.), but because so many of us fear it's too late to solve problems so huge and seemingly intractable. Jim DeMint is here to reassure us that this is not true.
In riveting yet plainspoken style, he tells real-life success stories and educates us via logical, historical and fact-based explanations of the issues (education, taxation, regulation, poverty, labor, health-care, environmentalism, Federalism and more). He affirms the compelling truth that conservative ideas are really American ideas, and they must guide us as we turn our institutions upside-down, taking them from the top-down centrally-controlled bureaucracies they've become back to the bottom-up democratic framework the Constitution intended.
Through this heartfelt, fascinating and inspiring look inside the America of both yesterday and today, and the everyday citizens who are working tirelessly and selflessly to insure its future fulfills the promise of its beginnings, Jim DeMint is beckoning us to join him on one of the most meaningful and momentous journeys we have ever undertaken FALLING IN LOVE WITH AMERICA AGAIN .]]> 320 Jim DeMint 1455549800 Leslie 0 to-read 4.03 2014
author: Jim DeMint
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
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]]> 2564507 Vintage paperback 184 John A. Stormer 0914053035 Leslie 0 currently-reading 3.21 1968
author: John A. Stormer
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.21
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> 2564605
To survive, America must return to her roots, and soon. 

Betrayed by the Bench examines the things courts have done which have people upset. 

To return America to its foundations, citizens must learn again how the Declaration of Independence makes the United States different from any other nation in history. The Declaration says that rights come not from a king, the government or a Constitution, but from God. The Declaration also says that a government was to be formed with the consent of the governed to make God-given rights secure. 

Betrayed by the Bench examines how two academic theories of the 19th Century (Hegel and Darwin) transformed legal education, the courts and the culture.]]> 182 John A. Stormer 0914053175 Leslie 0 to-read 3.50 2005
author: John A. Stormer
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 1407428 207 John A. Stormer 0914053124 Leslie 0 to-read 3.89 1998
author: John A. Stormer
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
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]]> 85793 None dare call it Treason is a careful compilation of facts from hundreds of Congressional investigations of communism and dozens of authoritative books on the communist-socialist conspiracy to enslave America.
It dissects the failures of the Eisenhower Administration just as effectively as it details the blunders of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. It documents the concurrent decay in America's schools, churches, and press which has conditioned the American people to accept 20 years of retreat in the face of the communist enemy. You won't finish None Dare Call It Treason without concluding that America is in serious trouble.]]> 255 John A. Stormer 0848814746 Leslie 0 to-read 3.58 1964
author: John A. Stormer
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1964
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]]> 497179 The Time Machine

When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything had changed. In this unfamiliar, utopian age creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings--unearth their secret and then return to his own time--until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.

H. G. Wells's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction.

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells's science fiction classic, the first novel to explore the possibilities of intelligent life from other planets, is still startling and vivid nearly a century after its appearance, and a half century after Orson Welles's infamous 1938 radio adaptation.

This daring portrayal of aliens landing on English soil, with its themes of interplanetary imperialism, technological holocaust, and chaos, is central to the career of H. G. Wells, who died at the dawn of the atomic age. The survival of mankind in the face of "vast and cool and unsympathetic" scientific powers spinning out of control was a crucial theme throughout his work. Visionary, shocking, and chilling, The War of the Worlds has lost none of its impact since its first publication in 1898.]]> 288 H.G. Wells 0449300439 Leslie 0 4.16 1961
author: H.G. Wells
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1961
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]]> 75162
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.]]> 242 Eldridge Cleaver 038533379X Leslie 0 3.98 1968
author: Eldridge Cleaver
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1968
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]]> 91202 The Eyes of the Sphinx. But here is where it all began--von Daniken's startling theories of our earliest encounters with alien worlds, based upon his lifelong studies of ancient ruins, lost cities, potential spaceports, and a myriad of hard scientific facts that point to extraterrestrial intervention in human history. Most incredible of all, however, is von Daniken's theory that we ourselves are the descendants of these galactic pioneers--and the archeological discoveries that prove it... * An alien astronaut preserved in a pyramid
* Thousand-year-old spaceflight navigation charts
* Computer astronomy from Incan and Egyptian ruins
* A map of the land beneath the ice cap of Antarctica
* A giant spaceport discovered in the Andes
Includes remarkable photos that document mankind's first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization.
]]> 220 Erich von Däniken 0425166805 Leslie 0 3.52 1968
author: Erich von Däniken
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1968
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]]> 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Leslie 0 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
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]]> 4985 Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Alternative cover edition here ]]> 331 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333501 Leslie 0 4.14 1968
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1968
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]]> 734487 256 Donald E. Scott 0977285111 Leslie 0 to-read 4.38 2006
author: Donald E. Scott
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/15
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]]> 168917 192 David Bergland 0975432648 Leslie 0 3.90 2005
author: David Bergland
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/05
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]]> 28862
1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people.
2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him.
3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose.
4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory.
5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression.
6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope.
7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters,
8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure.
9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice
10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.]]> 144 Niccolò Machiavelli 0937832383 Leslie 0 to-read 3.85 1513
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Leslie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
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]]> 853851 The implications are astounding. The theory proposes answers to often-asked questions: Is the deep hot biosphere where life originated, and do Mars and other seemingly barren planets contain deep biospheres? Even more provocatively, is it possible that there is an enormous store of hydrocarbons upwelling from deep within the earth that can provide us with abundant supplies of gas and petroleum?
However far-fetched these ideas seem, they are supported by a growing body of evidence, and by the indisputable stature and seriousness Gold brings to any scientific debate. In this book we see a brilliant and boldly original thinker, increasingly a rarity in modern science, as he develops potentially revolutionary ideas about how our world works.]]> 257 Thomas Gold 0387952535 Leslie 5 4.13 1998
author: Thomas Gold
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/01
date added: 2013/06/06
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This book, being written by a scientist, is excellent. It helped to firm up my thoughts on the world of oil, coal, and gas, and the Earth in general. I highly recommend this book.
]]> 3028 Economics in One Lesson is a classic economic primer. But it is also much more, having become a fundamental influence on modern “libertarian� economics of the type espoused by Ron Paul and others.

Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,� which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication.  Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy.

Many current economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong � and strongly reasoned � anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson, every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.]]> 218 Henry Hazlitt Leslie 0 currently-reading 4.16 1946
author: Henry Hazlitt
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1946
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]]> 738676 504 Andrew M. Allison 0880800011 Leslie 0 to-read 4.33 1982
author: Andrew M. Allison
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1982
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]]> 1241764 The Real Thomas Jefferson: The True Story of America s Philosopher of Freedom

Jefferson is the central figure in American history, and... he may yet prove to be the central figure in modern history. So stated noted historian Henry Steele Commager. And as the English novelist Samuel Butler once wrote, Though God cannot alter the past, historians can. His observation is especially applicable to our changing perceptions of great historical personalities, most of whom are relentlessly reinterpreted by each new generation of biographers. It is doubtful whether many of these renowned characters of yesteryear would even recognize themselves in some of the publications devoted to them today.

There is no better example of this kind of metamorphosis than Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States. Since his death in 1826 he has been alternately vilified and deified in numerous forms by writers of varying motivations. In The Real Thomas Jefferson, by allowing Jefferson to explain his life and ideas in his own words, we have tried to ensure that his spirit, not ours, will breathe in these pages � so that all who read them will become acquainted with Jefferson himself, not another second-hand interpretation of him. His biography appears in Part I, and Part II brings together the most insightful passages from his writings, arranged by subject.]]> 709 Andrew M. Allison 0880800062 Leslie 0 to-read 4.38 1983
author: Andrew M. Allison
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1983
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]]> 178578 928 Jay A. Parry 0880800143 Leslie 0 to-read 4.36 1991
author: Jay A. Parry
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1991
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]]> 13160142 224 Ben Carson 0310330718 Leslie 0 currently-reading 4.14 2011
author: Ben Carson
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 2203
In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot -- "the colossus of independence," as Thomas Jefferson called him -- who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

Like his masterly, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, David McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. It is both a riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time, much of it drawn from an outstanding collection of Adams family letters and diaries. In particular, the more than one thousand surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams, nearly half of which have never been published, provide extraordinary access to their private lives and make it possible to know John Adams as no other major American of his founding era.

As he has with stunning effect in his previous books, McCullough tells the story from within -- from the point of view of the amazing eighteenth century and of those who, caught up in events, had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, the British spy Edward Bancroft, Madame Lafayette and Jefferson's Paris "interest" Maria Cosway, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the scandalmonger James Callender, Sally Hemings, John Marshall, Talleyrand, and Aaron Burr all figure in this panoramic chronicle, as does, importantly, John Quincy Adams, the adored son whom Adams would live to see become President.

Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites -- one a Massachusetts farmer's son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country.

At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day -- their day of days -- July 4, in the year 1826.

Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many readers. His courageous voyage on the frigate Boston in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits that few would have dared and that few readers will ever forget.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc -- Adams lived longer than any president. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James's, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the White House.

This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.]]> 751 David McCullough 0743223136 Leslie 5 4.07 2001
author: David McCullough
name: Leslie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]>