Recommended Books
Politics
- Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. An ideal first book on economics. Gentle but packed with information that will get you thinking like an economist.
- The Marriage Problem by James Q. Wilson. All the research about the relation between poverty, culture, and the breakdown of marriage. Debunks William Julius Wilson’s job mismatch theory of poverty. See my review here.
- Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality by Thomas Sowell. If you just read one book by Sowell, read this. Makes the case for the importance of culture. Some tidbits: West Indian Blacks earn 94% as much as whites, compared to 62% for blacks as a whole. Jews, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants consistently outperform society as a whole, even when they are discriminated against.
- Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple. No statistics or research, this book puts a human face on the self-destructive behaviors of the white underclass in England. Will make you mad.
- Cowboy Capitalism by Olaf Gersemann. A wealth of statistics covering everything from hourly productivity to hidden unemployment which show that the European model is not working.
- Inside American Education by Thomas Sowell. We’ve been spending more money in order to dumb down education for more than forty years.
- An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis by John Hospers. Step one in a two book sequence of philosophy. Light and accessible but with enough rigor to provide a real foundation for further study. Slight bias towards atheism, but well worth it for the Christian.
- Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by JP Moreland. Very rigorous, the ideal next step. Stick to Part II on epistemology and Part III on metaphysics for your first pass through. Obviously a bias towards Christianity, but well worth it for the atheist.
- God and Design.
- Reason for Hope Within by Alvin Plantinga. Christian philosophy and arguments for the existence of God have exploded in the past few decades. This book is an ideal introduction to the subject for the general reader with no philosophy. For the more skeptical, check out Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate for a high quality debate between a leading Christian philosopher and a leading atheist (Antony Flew later gave up atheism for deism).
- Moral Theory by David Oderberg. Explains the machinery of rights-based ethics. Conservatives should learn the Acts/Omissions distinction and the Principle of Double Effect for two reasons. The first is to defend against the thought expirements commonly used to defend abortion, and the second is because many liberals have internalized utilitarian ethics even while professing a belief in inalienable rights. Once you have the mechanics of a rights-based ethics, you can expose these hidden premises.
History
- America: A Narrative History by Robert Tindall. The research article ‘The Selling of Clio’ reviewed the most popular college textbooks on American history, and this was by far the most accurate.
- A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. This wonderful book for “children of all ages” is an ideal first pass through world history.
- Medieval Europe, a Short History by Warren Hollister. The Middle Ages - from the fall of Rome to the Rise of the West - is when our western culture found its identity.
Further Reading
These Amazon lists are more comprehensive than the suggestions above, but also have some overalap.
- World History and the Rise of the West. A well-rounded list of books arguing that the West rose because it developed the concept of freedom and human rights, and that human rights emerged from Christianity.
- Books for the Spiritually and Politically Engaged Christian. Books about everything from modern arguments for the existence of God, Bible difficulties, and books about how Christianity ended slavery and elevated the status of women.
- Philosophy Without Dead Ends. When you want a broader foundation from which to base your political views. Start with the Opinionated Guide to Philosophy.
- Learn Economics. A syllabus that will make you economically literate. Start with the Learn Economics post.
- The Well-Rounded Civic Education You Always Wanted.
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