Over at the main blog, Joe Carter asks:
In all seriousness, though, what books would you recommend the President read during his vacation? Assuming you had to stick to the same 3:1:1 ratio (3 novels, 1 biography, 1 policy-oriented nonfiction) what books would you slip into his travel bag?
Here’s my first crack at some answers. I’ve tried to recommend books that are not only good and worthwhile in their own right, but which would be particularly enjoyable or useful for our President.
Fiction 1: “All the King’s Men”, by Robert Penn Warren.
Far and away the best political novel I’ve read, with heavy emphasis on the “political” part. The Man of Thought and the Man of Action are compared, contrasted, and both found to be lacking. Good intentions lead to the greatest tragedies, and fatalism pervades — somewhat. The book is famous for being a gritty portrait of Depression-era Southern politics, but it should be famous for being a shotgun full of continental philosophy wrapped in breathtakingly beautiful prose and aimed at your brain. Each of the pellets is labelled “Nature of History” or “Personal Responsibility” or “Theodicy”, but they all come out of the barrel simultaneously.
Fiction 2: “Macroscope”, by Piers Anthony.
Like all good sci-fi, Macroscope is a book about human nature encased in a thin crust of technological escapism. Unlike most sci-fi, technology is portrayed as having a moral component that we ignore at our peril. The symbolism gets heavy at times (the final third of the book is a psychedelic romp in which signs of the zodiac and Jungian archetypes literally come to life), but fails to detract from the several core messages. As a bonus, we get a fascinating meditation on the nature of race in a kinda-sorta-post-racial society and a lot of poetry by Sidney Lanier.
Fiction 3: “Foucault’s Pendulum”, by Umberto Eco.
An important reminder that the “crazy tree” grows everywhere and in all times, but especially when it is watered. Also a deeply anti-Gnostic book for a suspiciously Gnostic President. Also a lot of fun to read.
Biography: “Founding Brothers”, by Joseph Ellis.
Perhaps I cheat by including a biography of several men, so be it. What was one of the most important things about the architects of our state? The fact that they disagreed radically about almost everything, of course! My favorite Vermont secessionist blog takes this point and hits it home.
Non-fiction: “After Virtue”, by Alasdair MacIntyre.
Yes, I know, it’s a total cliche to recommend this one these days. Still, I suspect that the President has not read it, and I further suspect that it would do him some good if he got around to it. MacIntyre’s attacks on technocracy are so feisty that one is tempted to start a “Hallelujah”-chorus, and his points about the fracturing effects that differing moral premises have on the structure and consequences of discourse would be thought-provoking for the President who thinks we can always find common ground.
Honorable Mention: “History of the Peloponnesian War”, by Thucydides.
I don’t get to have all the fun. What are your recommendations for the President?
August 25th, 2009 | 11:19 am
I haven’t given much thought to the fiction question, but the non-fiction one is easy: “The Old Regime and the French Revolution” by Alexis de Tocqueville. If every Progressive read this compact book, which details the decline of France from technocracy to anarchy, there would be a lot fewer Progressives.
And Will, since you threw in an honorable mention, I will too: “On Revolution” by Hannah Arendt. “On Revolution” and “The Old Regime,” read together, make a brilliant case for the links between technocracy and social and political revolution, and for the brilliance of the American Founders in avoiding both.
August 25th, 2009 | 1:24 pm
I don’t suppose recommending Raoul Berger would get us anywhere.
August 25th, 2009 | 2:35 pm
[...] Will Wilson at PomoCon Fiction 1: “All the King’s Men”, by Robert Penn Warren. [...]
August 25th, 2009 | 8:19 pm
The Road to Serfdom
I know such a suggestion might seem both trite and overdramatic. I don’t think we are going to have the kind of centrally controlled economy that Hayek feared as a worst case scenario, but I do think that Obama could profit from Hayek discussion of the problems of centralized economic control and apply some of Hayek’s insights to the problem of government-run healthcare. Not that I expect he will.
August 25th, 2009 | 10:47 pm
FICTION
Didn’t Bush have Camus’ The Stranger on his list a couple of summers ago?
More fitting for Obama might be Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles.
If he signs health care into law he may also want to read Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.
NON-FICTION
Bush had McCullough’s John Adams on his list too.
In light of this, Obama should read Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence. It will fit in with his desire to chart new seas as he repeatedly gets compared to the good and the bad in Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, Reagan, etc. let alone Moses, Caesar, Hitler, etc.
August 26th, 2009 | 5:55 pm
1) thomas west: vindicating the founders
2) carey wilson mcwilliams: the yet-to-be-published-collection, for now “Democracy and the Citizen”
3) Wendell Berry “Sex, Politics, Freedom, and Community”
4) Martin Malia: the soviet tragedy
5) raymond aron: dawn of universal history
6) tulis and co: rise of rhetorical presidency
7) not in my house: tamar jacoby
8) of course, Tocqueville
9) of course, Chantal Delsol
10) shelby steele: bound man
August 26th, 2009 | 5:59 pm
oh, I see I ignored the rules…sorry
August 27th, 2009 | 1:43 am
Fiction
1. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
3. Dune by Frank Herbert
Biography
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan (Not a strict biography, but has biographical elements and a fantastic read. I would also recommend her book Nixon in China)
Non-fiction
My first though was After Virtue as well. However, I think I would either switch that with The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, or Technology and Empire by George Grant. I would probably go with Grant’s work since it is especially critical of technocratic imperialism.
August 27th, 2009 | 11:09 am
George Grant is much more feisty than MacIntyre.
And smarter.
And a better writer too.
August 27th, 2009 | 12:40 pm
Wendell Berry’s “Hannah Coulter,” so he can learn about his mother’s people.
August 29th, 2009 | 4:20 pm
“The Roots of American Order” by Russell Kirk
and
“The History of Knowledge” by Charles Van Doren
so that he might dent his technocrat’s bubble a bit and then he can read some Bukowski to rehipify .
August 29th, 2009 | 4:52 pm
And I forgot:
The great books on the American West by Bennie DeVoto, “1846, Year of Decision”, “Across the Wide Missouri” and “The Course of Empire”. Bennie was a prose crank extraordinaire. Everybody should read him
August 29th, 2009 | 8:51 pm
Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression.
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