Plutarch's Lives

All these had a huge impact on me. The descriptions are inadequate, I've just tried to mention the subject matter. Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand - how males and females talk different languages. Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors We Live By - how our language and thoughts are built from a fabric of conceptual metaphors. Philosophy In The Flesh is about the conceptual metaphors that philosophy is built from. Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century - WWI, WWII and other wars, nazism, communism etc Plutarch's Lives - biographies and stories from famous ancient Greeks and Romans. Amazing how little's changed. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding - introduced me to ancient Chinese philosophers. The Importance of Living - introduced me to ancient Chinese writers, poets and the Chinese way of life. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach - read it when I was 14, and I was into music, art and programming, so it blew my mind. Susan Faludi, STIFFED - men, work, jobs, masculinity, 20th C Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion - media, war, propaganda, democracy Noam Chomsky's political books…

Metaphors We Live By - Lakoff/Johnson Philosophy in the Flesh - L/J Rationalism in Politics - Oakeshott Erving Goffman – Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Walter Lippmann – Public Opinion Art as Experience - John Dewey Plutarch's Lives G.K. Chesterton – Heretics (essay) William James - On A Certain Blindness in Human Beings (and its sequel) (essay) R.L. Stevenson - The Lantern-Bearers