A ROCK’N’ROLL CONSERVATIVE BOOK LIST: Not the book list, since I’m no Harold Bloom. Just a book list. I know it’s a bit weird to post a reading list, but I think if I were reading this site I might want one. (I loved it when Brink Lindsey would post on what he’s been reading, and it would be very cool if other bloggers would post lists of books that had influenced them, as Zorak did.) And hey, every movement, no matter how weird or embryonic, needs books. Sorry for lack of Amazon links–it would take way too long.

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions. A classic of self-examination, and discovering one’s truest self through submission to God, that feels startlingly contemporary. Augustine’s view of childhood is also a great antidote to both the sickly-sweet Precious Moments stuff and the amoral, feral, jaded adolescents of “YA fiction.” Peter Brown’s biography is also fantastic.

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind. I think this is still the only book I’ve read three times since freshman year. Passionate, if metaphysically unstable. Bloom offers a (light-speed, but still insightful) intellectual history of the West, in which the Left assimilates its old enemy, Friedrich Nietzsche. He also gives a furious personal history of Cornell in the sixties; and defends the view that education is driven by love, that it is a seeking of another rather than an expression of oneself.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Everyone focuses on the “gradual change vs. revolution” distinction here, which is, frankly, not that interesting. I found this book fascinating for its explication of loyalty, especially loyalty to one’s country, and the ways in which a country can foster personal loyalty rather than relying on impersonal force.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov; Notes from Underground. Confrontation with these books can overturn one’s table of values. They’re shattering, ferocious, contemporary–and in TBK, there are passages that will make you fall out of your seat laughing. Before the axe falls. Dostoyevsky intimately knew the ways in which compassion can curdle into fury, or self-doubt spiral into hatred of others.

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Lyrical essays on education, black rural life, and more. Catch Du Bois’s pre-Communist reflections on America.

Maggie Gallagher, Enemies of Eros; The Abolition of Marriage; The Case for Marriage (co-author with Linda Waite). EOE is a white-hot, sometimes scattershot tour of contemporary American sexual mores, with a focus on what the sexual revolution did for (or to) women. The chapter “Abortion and the Children of Choice” is a must-read, but there are great insights throughout the book. AOM is a more solid and coherent book, mixing social-science research with inspiring reflections on the nature of love, loyalty, and marriage. TCFM basically updates the social-science data from AOM; it’s not nearly as philosophically rich as AOM, but it is a useful and painless read. Lingua Franca called Gallagher’s prose “bodice-ripping”; read and learn why.

Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Fat book, but well worth the time it takes. A history of slavery that treats slaves, slaveowners, and everyone else in the slave states as complex, conflicted, and resourceful human beings rather than cardboard-cutout heroes and villains.

Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. The old war-horse. Many good insights on the mechanisms of socialism, the ways in which it develops into oligarchy, and the ways it betrays its initial, idealistic supporters. Applicable to everything from the AFL-CIO to the Supreme Court.

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson. Workaday, but useful in building good economic intuitions.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed; The Screwtape Letters; The Problem of Pain. Compassionate, philosophically astute, imaginative (well, duh), and truly incisive about the lies we tell ourselves and the contortions we get into trying to justify our worst desires. Even if you’re no fan of the Narnia books (I’m not), these are fantastic. They delineate a view of human nature that is neither “optimistic” nor “pessimistic,” a view in which man is neither good nor bad but Fallen. This view has, to my mind, fairly obvious political ramifications, which I’ll maybe blog about later; but if you don’t have an intuitive understanding of this take on human nature, reading Lewis is a great place to start.

Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. This book was not really my thing, but I do acknowledge that MacIntyre’s analyses of why so many political/philosophical arguments seem stuck in a crashing-gears, spinning-wheels stage is brilliant.

Charles Murray, Losing Ground and What It Means to Be a Libertarian. Losing Ground is kind of “welfare reform 101,” with all the intro-level glossing over of nuances that that implies; but it’s a passionate and very useful book, written back when Murray still thought poor people could be the agents of their own destinies. WIMTBAL is mostly a great intro, since Murray focuses on the dispossessed, the needy, and the regular Joe, and shows how libertarian policies would benefit them. In the “sex and drugs” chapter Murray relies on the harm principle in a totally un-nuanced, unsatisfying way (and basically claims that any regulation of sex, drugs, etc. would lead necessarily to tyranny–a standard high school debating move, and unworthy of his abilities), but the rest of the book is really good.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil; The Gay Science; The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music; Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche saw much more of the nature of Christianity (“A creditor sacrificing himself for a debtor?” he cried in baffled rage), promise-making, music, man’s search for meaning, and atheism than most people. The one thing he couldn’t comprehend was love. TGOM, especially, is a must-read.

Marvin Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion. Moves away from the old “state aid vs. private aid” conflict, instead presenting a much deeper critique of impersonal, bureaucratic “compassion.” Awesome book. If you’ve been turned off by his columns (I’ve only read one or two, but they weren’t very good), read this anyway.

P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World; Eat the Rich; Parliament of Whores; Modern Manners; Holidays in Hell. O’Rourke is something like a cocktail of George Orwell and a more scathing Dave Barry, with extra gin. All of these books except Modern Manners feature O’Rourke staggering and swearing his way through the messes of socialism and do-goodery in our country and elsewhere; he’s an acute observer and a hilarious writer. MM is a much darker book (but no less funny), a black-humor look at life in a world where manners have replaced morals. O’Rourke is also a good journalist, and comes across as a mensch; you might also check out his report from the Philippines in Republican Party Reptile to see both of those qualities on display.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; 1984; The Road to Wigan Pier; selected Orwell essays. Do I really need to tell you to read Orwell? Ultimately he was at his best in the essays, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid the other stuff….

Plato, The Symposium. There’s lots more great Plato out there, but this complex, funny, intriguing, and elusive dialogue is the best place to start.

Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern. I’m cheating a bit here, since I’ve only read the first volume (on ancient Greece), but that volume was like a quick plunge into a world that is starkly alien, yet has left recognizable traces throughout our culture. I’m really looking forward to reading the other two books. Rahe is a brisk writer who knows exactly when to generalize and when to drop a telling anecdote. Even the index is fun.

Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater. An antidote to sunny nihilism and contemporary views of sex. Also, of course, a truly brilliant novel.

The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Lots of good snippets, will help you figure out which people you should read in more depth. Very useful reference work.

Antonin Scalia et al., A Matter of Interpretation.

William Shakespeare, King Lear; Hamlet; Macbeth; Henry IV 1&2; Henry V; Richard II; Love’s Labours Lost; Measure for Measure; A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ll try to blog about why these plays in particular later today.

R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages. Fun, quick intro to a crucial and fascinating period of history that, if you were taught in American non-Catholic schools (or probably almost any Catholic school), you were almost certainly not taught about.

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Insightful, if a bit cagey, critiques of modern political philosophy.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History. Stark, terrific book–is there such a thing as philosophical pulp?–about the search for ecstasy and the attempt to return to pre-Christian ways on a modern university campus.