I would have expected Das Kapital, myself, but I wish that he’d read Hayek, this time for comprehension. Actually, I think that he should have brought along a copy of HR3200, if he’s got that much free time for reading. But as commenters there note, this list is likely more for public consumption than what he’s actually going to be reading.
On a related note, Will Wilkinson asks an interesting question:
Here is a good debate proposition: It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx.
Yes, it ought to be. It’s really quite appalling that being a Marxist remains a sign of prestige in academia, instead of being met with opprobrium.
The most powerful way to argue the affirmative is to compare the number of human beings murdered by the devotees of each.
The Gramscians will say that capitalistic hegemony murders & exploits the entire world over, etc. Perhaps some of our resident ones will elaborate for our pleasure, I mean edification.
He should read LOST RIGHTS, by James Bovard. Of course for “Il Dufe” this book would probably be a kind of porn, each horror story of Big Brother trampling on the peasantry giving Uncle Frank’s favorite nephew a spasm of delight.
As I imagine has been said elsewhere, I really wish he would read THE FORGOTTEN MAN by Amity Shlaes.
As it has been announced that a special anti-terrorist squad will be operating out of the White House, my suggested reading includes “All the President’s Men.”
1632 by Eric Flint.
A West Virginian mining company dumped into the middle of the “Germanies” in 1632 – the Thirty Years War . Totally specious from one standpoint – but it does a solid job of explaining WTH America is (or should be) about.
I’d much prefer it if he was reading the same book Sarah Palin has been photographed holding – “Liberty and Tyranny” by Levin.
Tony, I understand Obama was curious about the book LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, largely because the first word in the title was unfamiliar to him.
I wish he’d read and learn from “Economics for Dummies” or the works of Thomas Sowell.
Al, given his politics, I strongly suspect that Flint voted enthusiastically for Obama. And 1632 was objectively speaking, pulp crap. The sequels are shaking down into something fairly interesting, but that first book? A mediocre knock-off of S. M. Stirling, who can be pretty hackish himself most days.
I’m not sure if comparing a woman who wrote long, turgid politicially-obsessed potboilers with a major (if madly wrong-headed and actively malign) philosopher is apt. There’s something about taking your ideology from novels with embarrassing sex scenes which might be construed as… embarrassing?
Um, on consideration, does that mean that I think that it’s less embarrassing to be judged evil than thought a fool? Hard to say.
Along with the pulp aspects though, is a firm illustration of why-in-the-hell-is-the-Second-Amendment-even-in-there?
Even the most conservative of the founders was a flaming liberal by 1632 standards.
Obama presumably has a -legal- perspective of the limitations the Bill of Rights espouses. But he clearly has no idea why half of them are in there from a historical perspective.
Even the cursory view you get of the Thirty Years War from the slanted viewport is -still- illustrative of several of them. And the use of union miners as the protagonists might let him identify with the good guys.