Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Politics & Social Sciences (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Mythos

Stephen Fry and Chronicle Books

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Precious Little Sleep: The Complete Baby Sleep Guide for Modern Parents

Alexis Dubief

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

State and Revolution

Vladimir Ilich Lenin

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself

Steve Corbett , Brian Fikkert , et al.

4.6 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality

Michael Talbot

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Technological Slavery

Theodore Kaczynski

4.6 on Amazon

4 HN comments

HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act At a Time

Brad Aronson

4.6 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Your Erroneous Zones: Step-by-Step Advice for Escaping the Trap of Negative Thinking and Taking Control of Your Life

Wayne W Dyer

4.6 on Amazon

4 HN comments

American Pastoral: American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International)

Philip Roth

4.2 on Amazon

4 HN comments

How to Live: Boxed Set of the Mindfulness Essentials Series

Thich Nhat Hanh and Jason DeAntonis

4.8 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Intellectuals and Race

Thomas Sowell

4.9 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

William Deresiewicz

4.5 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (10th Anniversary Edition)

John C. Maxwell and Steven R. Covey

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Live Free Or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink

Sean Hannity

4.8 on Amazon

3 HN comments

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dannylandauonMay 23, 2018

I've read only 3 1/2 of his books: Operation Shylock, Plot against America, Portnoys complaint: and part of American Pastoral -- which I had trouble getting through. I wonder if others found it too dense?

Otherwise, the above 3 books are really great!

HelloNurseonMay 23, 2018

Read all of American Pastoral. After the sad and slightly less interesting middle section, the plot flares up right at the end, as a long prepared payoff.

miobrienonMay 23, 2018

These are early works. He became famous for them, especially Portnoy. But Roth got better as he got older, in my opinion. My favorites are The Counterlife (1985), Sabbath's Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), The Human Stain (2000), The Plot Against America (2004).

Also, as with a lot of (maybe all?) fiction/art, you can't disregard the context in which it was published. Some critics might disagree with this. But when you consider the socio-cultural situation, especially of Jewish Americans, Roth's work -- especially Portnoy -- was radical, earnest, and subversive. For many years, the American Jewish community regarded him with disdain.

He also often got labeled as a misogynist, which I always found strange. Although his writing is overtly sexual, it was also in attempt to make a point about sexuality. Not to glorify it.

woodruffwonJune 12, 2019

There's something awfully tone-deaf about a conservative magazine using John Updike, Sinclair Lewis and Philip Roth to bemoan the decline of country clubs. These men's works (American Pastoral, Rabbit, Run) excoriate the culture of the 50s and 60s rat-race-to-the-country-club.

The fact that the literature of the period employs the country club is not evidence of the country club's positive aspects -- it's frequently evidence of the exact opposite.

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