what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

books which made an impact


The painting is so appropriate at the moment - when I am trying to identify the books which have made an impact on me. The storm which was rumbling all night around the mountains has eventually knocked the electricity out - and I am (even at 08.30) having to write this with the aid of a candle. This is what my first list looks like -

Saul Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals (1969)
Stanislaw Andreski’s Social Science as Sorcery (1972)
Peter Berger’s Pyramids of sacrifice – political ethics and social change (1975)
Albert Camus’ Letters to a Friend (1944)
EH Carr’s What is History? (1961)
Bernard Crick’s In Defence of Politics (1962)
Tony Crosland’s The Conservative Enemy (1962)
Ralf Dahrendorf’s Class and Class Conflict in industrial society (1959)
Marlynn Fergusson’s Age of Aquarius (1980)
Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1971)
Leoplod Kohr; The Breakdown of Nations (1957)
Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)
Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its enemies (1945)
JR Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards (1992)
Donald Schon; Beyond the Stable Society (1971)

Doubtless there will be some additions....To save my battery, I shall now have to switch off the PC battery - and work by pencil and notebook two further questions (a) why did they make an impact? and (b) what books would I now recommend to anyone with an open mind who wanted to understand the world better and play a role in improving it?

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