Books Sorted by Date

I Am I - Sudden Flashes of Self-Awareness in Childhood ... (See the whole review)

Confiscation: Gold as Contraband 1933-1974 by Kenneth R. Ferguson was a pleasure to read. Ferguson writes well. I met Ken Ferguson in person at a coin show here in Austin. He speaks as intelligently as he writes. Our time together was enlightening. ... (See the whole review)

If one person can change the world, four might do 16 times as much.The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World by Laura J. Snyder (Broadway, 2011) is the story of Charles Babbage, William Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones. They met at Cambridge about 1810. By 1860, through their... (See the whole review)

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter by Scott Adams (Penguin, 2017) is a tribute to Donald Trump. It is also a tribute to Scott Adams. The author of Dilbert has been popular online for decades; and he had tens of thousands of readers when, back on August 13, 2015, he began predicting Donald Trump’s victory. Througho... (See the whole review)

How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics by Roger E. Bissell delivers an algorithm for generating Pythagorean Triples. Central to the thesis of the work, Bissell explains how he discovered this by means of induction, not deduction. From there, Bissell takes the reader into number theory in ord... (See the whole review)

Intended for children, The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way by Joy Hakim as many small problems throughout but remains valuable for its sense of life. The author encourages understanding, exploration, discovery, and the integration of knowledge. You can find it remaindered online at prices low enough to gift an entire class of 5th graders,... (See the whole review)

“Again, I am not arguing that reason alone will get us there; we need legislation and laws to enforce civil rights, and a strong police and military to back up the state’s claim to hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force to back up those laws. But those forces are themselves premised on being grounded in reason, and the legislati... (See the whole review)

This is a thoughtful, thought-provoking set of aphorisms and reflections.  As much as I enjoyed it – and believe that I benefited from reading it three times – I have to ask if the author would have written it had Hillary Clinton been elected president. ... (See the whole review)

For decades, Dr. Randell Mills has flummoxed both supporters and detractors with his dogged determination not only to prove the existence of a new state of hydrogen, the hydrino, but also to harness its power for the betterment of the human condition. I have followed the hydrino story since initially encountering it in a Mensa Bulletin letter in th... (See the whole review)

My review of this book is here. If you find it helpful, please click 'yes'. (See the whole review)

I haven't read this, but the review makes it look interesting. I'm probably not the only one who thought that atheism emerged at the time of the Enlightenment. ... (See the whole review)

Here is my review of Paul Johnson's Creators ... (See the whole review)

Edited by Ellen F. Paul, Fred Miller Jr., Jeffrey Paul. One can read most of the Introduction, which gives an overview, using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. So I made my review a short one. (See the whole review)

Toward the end of her deployment, she discovered Atlas Shrugged, and it resonated with her. Focused and detailed, she often ran into brazen incompetence. ... (See the whole review)

A defense of Ayn Rand's ethics. My review is here. (See the whole review)

It is a book about political philosophy published in 2012. I put a review of it on Amazon. It is among the 4-star ones with a date of June 3, 2015. (See the whole review)

Plans to start new communities, and even entire new nations, are iconic to the libertarians who were impassioned by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  Rand's "Utopia of Greed", hidden in the Colorado Rockies, only echoed a long tradition in American history, beginning with America itself.  The City on a Hill, the City of God, drew the leaders of a million... (See the whole review)

Death is Wrong is my new children’s book on indefinite life extension, illustrated by my wife Wendy Stolyarov. It combines child-friendly philosophical arguments for radically lengthening human lifespans with scientific facts about long-lived creatures, recent breakthroughs in extending animal lifespans, and the SENS research program for reve... (See the whole review)

Coming next month: ... (See the whole review)

Bernstein places the origin of capitalism in the mathematics of chance.  For Ayn Rand, capitalism began with the recognition of individual rights in the Enlightenment.  That identification of those rights rested on a largely implicit realization of the individual as such, which began in the Renaissance.  We ascribe the idea of the Re... (See the whole review)

My recap from reading up to page 68: Some good work and some good thought in here, but ... Tuschman shows himself to be part of that new brand of social scientists who are too fascinated with evolutionary and biological psychology to realize that they are in the grips of it (while they presume to be commenting objecti... (See the whole review)

Game theory explorations with 15 "primitive" societies reveals what makes us WEIRD people special. What is it to be "Western Educated Industrialized Rational Democratic"?   The Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies edited by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, et al... (See the whole review)

I have not read it yet and may post a review or comments after reading it.

Zoltan Istvan’s new novel The Transhumanist Wager has been compared to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. (See, for instance, Giulio Prisco’s review.) But to what extent are the books alike, and in what respects? To be sure, the story and the writing style are gripping, the characters are vivid, and the universe created by Istvan gave me an experience high... (See the whole review)

Our most likely future is somewhere between Brave New World and 1984.  It is clean and bright, rather than the post-industrial recycling center of cyberpunk, because an unofficial and unelected power center simply surpassed and usurped the inefficient nation states.  They know what is best.  Memory implants and omnipresent cybernetic personalities ... (See the whole review)

My grandfather's memoir - finally published! I loaded a lot of information into Amazon pages. Also check out Kirkus review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/aleksandr-konstantinovich-sokolenko/keep-forever/

My review of the book is on Amazon. The book does not mention Ayn Rand or her moral defense of capitalism.

The American Pragmatists looks excellent. There is a very informative review of it here. I'm getting this one (re: a, b, c, d, e). (See the whole review)

William W. Beach's back-cover comment (taken from Amazon): ... (See the whole review)

I am an Objectivist and the author of this book. This is a short ebook on how to be happier! It is for Objectivists and Non-Objectivists alike. The advice is centered around a single (but complicated) summary paragraph. The meaning of that paragraph is then explained and explored for the remainer of the book. The book also contains a more usef... (See the whole review)

Since Socrates and Plato, there have been philosophers arguing that morality is a requirement of rationality. Kant made an original and influential pitch for such a thesis. James Sterba, professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, makes his own attempt in From Rationality to Equality (Oxford 2013), hewing closer to Kant’s conception of the way morality ... (See the whole review)

Haven't yet picked up the book, but was impressed by radio interviews of Shapiro.

Ayn Rand Explained From Tyranny to Tea Party Ronald E. Merrill, author Marsha Familaro Enright, editor (2012 Open Court) Description at Amazon Ayn Rand Explained is an engrossing account of the life, work, and influence of Ayn Rand: her career, from youth in Soviet Russia to Hollywood screenwriter and then to ideological g... (See the whole review)

http://atimetobetray.com/ I just finished reading this book by Reza Kahlili, a very compelling book about his life, the tragic downfall of Iran into madness and his time spent as a CIA mole within the Revolutionary Guard.

Here is a related video and short article. ... (See the whole review)

This transcription of lectures from 1983 may prove less satisfying to those who have considered themselves at least "students of Objectivism" for the past 30 years.  ... (See the whole review)

The DIM Hypothesis Leonard Peikoff (2012) The representation of Kant’s philosophy in this book is grossly out of balance, and in this it is like Leonard Peikoff’s earlier representations and those of Ayn Rand. Some errors in intellectual history may not affect Dr. Peikoff’s DIM hypothesis itself. It is easy to imagine that his... (See the whole review)

Bought this yesterday, finished it last night. Was drawn to it because of the interest by my 24 year old son. IMO, one of the most wildly effective political books aimed at modern youth ever. And, this is great, fantastic news for Ayn Rand fans. It's crystal clear depiction of heroic individuals in the face of an oppressive to... (See the whole review)

I have just finished this hot-off-the-press book. I can summarize it in one word, "sneering." He sneers at Objectivism, Rand, libertarianism and the Tea Party from the first page to the last. Weiss's goal is to show how the "cult" of Rand has influenced the Tea Party movement and the resurgence of "extreme" right wing politics. He acknowledges the ... (See the whole review)

Maybe it is only my love for economic and social freedom, but I quickly developed strong interest in Meira Pentermann's characters. Communication, trust, and much more are severely hampered in her vision of America swaying strongly towards socialism. Terrible to be in a such a situation, fortunately so far in history these economically self defeati... (See the whole review)

I just finished reading this book and put my review of it on Amazon. If you find my review helpful, please click on the Yes button below my review.

Shameless self promotion, but just for fun. Last year, I wrote this for my own pleasure, truly as a form of self therapy. It was great fun, nothing else. It is not even remotely political, although, some politics does manage to sneak into the cracks and crevices. It is primarily a story about a young man with a positive attitu... (See the whole review)

Freedom is living your life the way you want to live it. ... (See the whole review)

Dickens pioneered serialization and responded to public demand.  Not our favorite writer, he nonetheless is to be lauded as a capitalist among authors. ... (See the whole review)

Does anyone out there know about this?  It looks interesting, though maybe not worth the price for non-specialists.  Rand gets a few mentions. (See the whole review)

"Dennis Hastert ... had a 104-acre farm in Shipman, Illinois, worth between $50,000 and $100,000. His other assets amounted to no more than $170,000. He remained at a similar level until he became Speaker of the House. (1) But by the time he set down the Speaker's gavel, he was substantially better off than when he entered office, with a reported n... (See the whole review)

The book states, "While healthy, smart, happy, successful, virtuous parents tend to have matching offspring, the reason is largely nature, not nurture." Hopefully, it will help encourage more rationally selfish people to have more kids. World demographics are trending toward a shrinkage in their numbers and huge increases among populations ... (See the whole review)

Kira Peikoff is Leonard Peikoff's daughter. See the endorsement by #1 best selling novelist Lee Child.

Selected quote from the back panel of the book: "Professor Buechner presents a new theory of price in this book. A lifelong admirer of Ayn Rand, he has built his theory on her philosophy of Objectivism and created an original conception of the economy and how it works. His book is written for the economist or noneconomist, particularly for t... (See the whole review)

This was an interesting and though-provoking book.  The book discusses predictions about the future.  Obviously there are religious predictions, but talking heads on TV are constantly making predictions.  There are many books out there that make predictions.  The author brings up several familiar names, like Paul Ehrlich and Peter Schiff.  He descr... (See the whole review)