Summer Reading List 2009

Sunday, June 14, 2009

What Is It

Even if you're not going to Biarritz for the summer as usual, you can relax in the sun and read.  There are a lot of readable, beach-friendly classics and non-classics to add philosophical depth to your Summer Reading.  Join Ken and John to share some of the philosophically-minded reading on your list for this summer.

Listening Notes

 

Philosophy & Nonfiction mentioned on the air

Bob Brecher,
Torture and the Ticking Time Bomb.

 

Judith Butler,
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

 

James P. Carse,
Finite and Infinite Games.

 

Simon Critchley,
The Book of Dead Philosophers.

 

Niall Ferguson,
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

Adam Gopnik,
Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.

Alison Gopnik,
The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life.

Stephen Jay Gould,
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin.

David Hume,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Water Kaufmann,
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.

Percy Lubbock, 
Roman Pictures.

John Stuart Mill,
Utilitarianism.

Geoff Nunberg, 
The Years of Talking Dangerously.

Harvey Pekar,
The Beats: A Graphic History.

Jan Pottker,
Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter-in-Law, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Bertrand Russell,
Problems of Philosophy.

Marjorie Taylor,
Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them.

Keith Thomas,
The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England.

Fiction mentioned on the air

Anne Bronte,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Geoff Dyer,
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

Greg Mortensen,
Three Cups of Tea.

John G. Neihardt,
Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, the Premier Edition.

Kamran Pasha,
Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam.

Robert Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Daniel Quinn, 
Ishmael.

Jose Saramago,
Blindness.

Jose Saramago,
History of the Siege of Lisbon.

Jean-Paul Sartre,
No Exit.

Bernhard Schlink,
The Reader.

Bernhard Schlink,
Self's Deception.

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, 
The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Neal Stephenson,
Anathem.

Jonathan Swift,
Gulliver's Travels.

Transcript