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The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements  by Eric Hoffer, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010 (originally published 1951).  A Substitute for a Failed Personal Life The author proposes a theory of why some people join mass movements. Some people are dissatisfied with their personal lives. Hoffer describes them as believing that their self has become “spoiled”. Such people cannot find meaning and happiness in their personal lives, so they try to become par

Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace  by Noa Davenport, Ruth D. Schwartz and Gail Pursell Elliott, Civil Society Publishing, 2005.  Workplace Bullying Mobbing is a workplace group behavior where the victim is emotionally abused until they decide to quit their job. It is also called workplace bullying. A sign that an employee is being mobbed: the employee’s job performance evaluations suddenly plummet. Mobbing differs from the situation of a bad boss, in that the

High Cost of Good Intensions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs   by John F. Cogan, Stanford University Press, 2017.  The author gives a detailed narrative of America’s growth and development social welfare state. It began with providing pensions to soldiers who had served in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). It continued in the provision of pensions for disabled veterans of the War of 1812  (1812-1815), the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Civil War (1861-

The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome  by Harriet Braiker, McGraw-Hill, 2002.  Conflict Avoidancee This book teaches conflict-avoidant people how to say NO! People pleasers are people who try to make everyone like them. People pleasers do not want to hurt the feelings of other people. People pleasers often practice conflict avoidance. People pleasers are disproportionately female Downsides There are downside to people pleasing. Neglecting your own needs.

Desires, Right and Wrong: The Ethics of Enough  by Mortimer J. Adler, Macmillan, 1991.  This book describes one part of the ethical...

Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy  by Mortimer J. Adler, Touchstone, 1997.  In plain language, this book presents the...

Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manilaby James M. Scott, W. W. Norton Company, 2019.  Tomoyukia Yamashita Yamashita defeated British in Malaya and Singapore giving him the name: Tiger of Malaya. When the Japanese took Singapore, they perpetrated a massacre against those residents who were ethnic Chinese: the Sook Ching Massacre. Japanese Invasion of the Philippines (1941) Japan invaded Philippines in December 1941. FDR ordered MacArthur to evacuate Corregidor

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind  by Eric Kandel, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.  Synapse An early Spanish neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, suggested that memories may be stored in the synapses between nerve cells, rather than within individual cells. The ends of the axons usually have multiple terminals. A terminal is a protrusion that forms a contact (synapse) with a dendrite of the receiving neuron. The terminals release neurotransmitter mo

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban  by Malala Yousafzai, Little, Brown and Company, 2013.  Malala Yousafzai and her family were Pashtuns living in the Swat Valley in Pakistan. He father was names Ziauddin Yousafzai, her mother was named Toor Pekai, and Khushal was her younger brother. Punjabis dominate Pakistan’s bureaucracy and army. Malala’s father opened a school in his village. The school admitted both boys and girls. Malala was o

Prisoners of Ritual: An Odyssey into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa  by Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, Harrington Park Press, 1989.  This book describes a cultural practice of the cutting of the female genitalia that is widespread in Africa. The practice predates Islam, but it is more common among Muslims than among Christians. About a hundred million African women have undergone genital cutting. There are several forms of cutting: cutting off the clitoral hood (prepuce), cutt

Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder: An Essential Guide  by Katharine A. Phillips, Oxford University Press, 2009.  Body Dysmorphic Disorder There exists a common mental illness that is not widely known. It is called Body Dysmorphic Disorder. People suffering from it spend several hours a day worrying about their physical appearance, even though they look average. Sufferers rarely believe that they are suffering from a mental illness. Almost always, they believe that they h

Th e Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention  by Guy Deutscher, Metropolitan Books, 2006.  Language appears to have been consciously invented by some prehistoric linguistic genius. But it was not. It evolved. This book describes how gradual changes made by individuals over the course of time can lead to complex language. There are several causes of changes: (a) economy: principle of least effort, (b) expressiveness: increase the range of id

Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People  by Judith Reisman and Edward W. Eichel (authors); J. H. Court and J. Gordon Muir (editors), Huttington House Publishers, 1990.  Agenda-Driven Research This is a book about a scientific fraud named Alfred C. Kinsey, who greatly exaggerated the actual incidence of uncommon sexual practices among the American public. Kinsey engaged in junk science in order to advance his political agenda of making sexual perversion both lega

Infidel  by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Free Press, 2007.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia in 1969. Ayaan’s ancestors were desert nomads of the...

Assassins of the Turquoise Palace  by Roya Hakakian, Grove Press, 2011.  This book is about the assassination of four Kurdish dissidents at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin by agents sent by the leadership of Iran. Khomeini had a hit list of Iranian dissidents who had fled abroad. Prior to the Berlin restaurant massacre, Iranian agents had already attacked dissidents in Paris, Manila, Bombay, Karachi, Istanbul, Vienna, Geneva, Stockholm, and Tokyo. Iranian agents captured and

Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World's Worst Financial Crisis—and Why It Could Happen Again  by Peter J. Wallison,...

The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good  by William Easterly, Penguin...

Why Johnny Can't Read?: And What You Can Do About It  by Rudolf Franz Flesch, William Morrow, 2012 (originally published 1955).  Phonics versus Whole Word The author is an advocate of phonics, and an opponent of the whole-word method.,  In the whole-word method of reading, the reader recognizes the length and overall shape of the word, and guesses which known word it is from that. The whole-word method is similar to the method of Chinese characters. It is also called look-and

The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust  by Jeffrey Herf, Belknap Press, 2008.  Nazi Propaganda The author describes Nazi propaganda against the Jews. It provides an interesting insight as to how Hitler’s mind worked. The Nazis criticized the Jews of Germany for avoiding military service and avoiding manual labor. Hitler blamed the Jews for their loss in World War I, the Bolshevik revolution and the Great Depression. Secret Power The Nazis beli

The Israel Test: Why the World's Most Besieged State is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy  by George Gilder, Richard Vigilante Books, 2009.  Envy Adolf Hitler envied the Jews of Vienna, because they were successful and he was not. When Austrian businesses were subjected to Aryanization after the 1938 Anschluss, they lost most of their value, because the creative talent had fled abroad (or were escorted into concentration camps). Parasites Hitler’s belief that