Book recommendations?

I am about to go on a spending spree and inject my $300 tax rebate on books.

I would really appreciate your suggestions.

The Corporate Sufi: Azim Jamal ($12)
Sayings of the Buddha: William Wray ($8.25 + $3.99)
Progress and Poverty - edited and abridged for modern readers by Bob Drake: Henry George ($12.95)
Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy: Samuel Freeman ($58.80 computer searchable)
A theory of Justice: Original Edition: John Rawls ($22.95)
AS and A Level Sociology Through Diagrams: Tony Lawson ($7.74 + $3.99)
Economics and Reality (Economics As Social Theory): Tony Lawson ($56.50)
Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism: Timur Kuran ($23.95)
Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy and Life Choices: Victor V. Claar ($14.96)
Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (Hardcover): Stephen Innes ($25)
With All Your Possessions: Jewish Ethics and Economic Life (Hardcover): Meir Tamari ($35. + $3.99)
Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics: Martin Calkins (34.95)
Economic Parables: The Monetary Teachings of Jesus Christ: David Cowan ($10.19)
On Ethics and Economics: Amartya Sen ($26.96)
Challenge of Humanistic Economics: Mark A. Lutz ($4.95)
The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers: Robert L. Heilbroner ($12.24)
Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for New Planetary Humanism: Paul Kurtz ($10.20)

Total = ..... $389.55

That pretty much eats up that $300 check from George and provides an addition REAL economics stimulus.

WISH LIST:

Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare Volume 1 (Handbooks in Economics) by Kenneth J. Arrow, A.K. Sen, and K. Suzumura ($140.00)

A History of Indian Economic Thought: Ajit K Dasgupta ($170)

EDIT: formatting. I am an idiot.

EDIT: Adding books

Last comment added: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:54:41 PDT

Comment 1 on Book recommendations?

It's been a long time since I've bought a book. ABE books which is a database for independent booksellers--mostly used books--keeps sending me emails reminding me that I haven't bought a book recently. I save books, which means that most of the books I read are old books.

There is an interesting article at ars technica Online articles lead to rapid scientific consensus, forgotten ideas. Citing a paper in the current edition of Science looking into what the availability of Journal articles online is doing to research, the article states:

Its author's statistical analysis suggests that the ready availability of scientific information has a counterintuitive result: a smaller pool of articles are referenced in the scientific literature.

Here's a bit more in the conclusion:

The results of the explosion of easily available articles, according to Evans, is that "researchers can more easily find prevailing opinion, they are more likely to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles." As a side effect of this, a scientific consensus will typically form more rapidly. The other side of this is that papers containing ideas that don't catch quickly will be forgotten by the scientific world much faster.

Hum, TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood; what are we leaving behind? Maybe there's something in them there old books worth remembering.

I can't write but to get lost in the weeds. But I remembered a blog post where I listed five important books to me when I was in college in the mid-1970's. Here's that list from that post minus the hyperlinks:

Values and Teaching by Louis E. Raths. This 1965 book is still available but isn't in print. The seven criteria of a value helped me to understand a process for valuing.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson.

Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek.

The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander, et al. I eagerly read other books by Alexander, but this was my first and it had a big impact on my thinking about how democracy could function and why democracy so often falls short as a result of structural assumptions.

The Whole Earth Epilog. I didn't find out about Bateson from the Whole Earth Epilog, nor really about Christopher Alexander but the Epilog helped me to make connections with other fields of study and cultural trends.

I am not really recommending these books to you. However I have thought to recommend Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change. Also what got to this thread was seeing that a blog called One Sustainable Block, which is about just that, greening a neighborhood, was referencing Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. I messed up and didn't send you any of his books when your brother visited. I do think that some one of Alexander's books might be worthwhile. A Pattern Language is a very good book.

My recommendation is to think of a book or some books that were once important to you but you haven't read in a while. Get one of those books to read. There are some ideas worth remembering even if they haven't caught on yet.

Comment 2 on Book recommendations?

OK...I have been busy spending my gift from the US government. We are asking for a final call here before I hand this list over to Mark who is doing me a huge favor and ordering, receiving (no postage when shipped to him!) and then repackaging to ship (at considerably less postage than Amazon charges). He is being nominated as a Saint!

Comment 3 on Book recommendations?

LOL I like the thought of stimulating the economy with more books. The book business is very weird. As you know I don't buy many books so the books I have are old ones, but not really all that old. What interests me is looking at paperbacks and wondering whether I could replace them, many very good books are worth less than the postage to send them, but others are fetching far more than the book cost in the first instance.

In the USA the tax system discourages publishers from keeping a back catalog. Essentially they have to pay tax on inventory. This makes me think that when I see books which I want that cost only a buck, I should probably get them. But I'm lazy and cheap.

I see that the book I was going to suggest Our Own Metaphor is in print from a scholarly press but at a high price. I guess I should appreciate publishers like that, thinking as I do that it's good to keep some ideas in circulation longer.

Good heavens, Linda! How come there are no books on your list just because they're fun? Kick a couple books off your list and replace them with guilty pleasures ;-)

Comment 4 on Book recommendations?

Yesterday, for the first time, a twinge of realization that I am getting old hit me. I am 61 now. Working on a PhD. After a year of work and preparation, a monkey wrench has been thrown into things. I have spent the last couple of weeks working through how I can save a major portion of the preparation anyhow and still finish before I am ready to retire.

I have so many thoughts in my mind. I have learned so much over my life. I have been privileged to learn some things from so many different angles and from the perspective of so many different cultures.

This is going to sound arrogant but I know that in all of this I have come to valuable realizations. Realizations that I want to be able to communicate to people in ways that they will see and be motivated to change their lives and see that ultimately change the course of the world.

In the middle of all of this thinking I got my invitation to the 4th Conference on Gross National Happiness to be held in November in Thimphu, Bhutan. I got it because I presented last year at the 3rd conference. I have a few places I still want to go on my list of places to visit before I die. The Himalayas is one. I looked at my bank account and my savings and decided that if I was tight, I could make the trip to the conference. I said something to Aj. Apichai and he called me the other morning and suggested that I prepare a paper to present and that there was money to pay my way.

So I am now preparing a paper for that conference to save myself the money it would have cost me.

I have been re-reading Sen's "Development as Freedom" and a book essentially that is Buddhism for Dummies...though yesterday I saw that there is a real "Buddhism for Dummies" book.

Sen's book talks about how people try to measure development by measuring D. D may or may not be a good proxy. Is money a good proxy for well-being? Sometimes. Not always. And it almost never tells the complete story. As you look more deeply at the story, it turns out that D is dependent on C and C can really be promoted by B but without A it all goes to He|| in a handcart.

I was sitting outside reading and for some reason (maybe insight????) I imagined a dandelion.

Every so beautiful when it is symmetric.

Less so when it is not balanced.

And sometimes it is damaged by its environment.

So I think it is with development. It works best and has its most beautiful results, whether in an individual or a community or a nation, when it is balanced and allowed to thrive and survive in a friendly environment.

I have come to see clearly many mistakes that we (That includes ME!) have made in the west. I am an optimist and believe that things can be turned around but there is so much momentum and inertia behind what IS now. People will not move and change if I scream all of the bad and evil. I have to somehow present an image of what can be so that people make the change by themselves - willingly even passionately.

Aj. Suthida, the woman I share my office with, keeps warning me to keep my thesis small. Not to change the world. But, I am afraid that is precisely what I want to do. Call me old and eccentric. When I am old, I will wear purple AND change the world.

(This image as entitled getting old and wearing purple....it somehow fit in my warped mind!)

I am getting old and don't feel right now that I have time for guilty pleasures until I make my attempt to tell this story in me.

Comment 5 on Book recommendations?

Fair enough about guilty pleasures. But hear what Aj. Suthida is saying about the thesis ;-)

When a favorite nephew was finishing up his dissertation, at about the time when it was complete enough that he was getting fairly specific comments, he was in danger of falling into a kind of weary despair about finishing it. A chance meeting with a well-regarded academic outside his field yielded just the right tonic for my nephew: "Any old shit will do."

After spending so many long hours and notable sacrifice, clearly "any old shit" wasn't what my nephew was after. But the comment helped him to see that indeed he had essentially finished his work. It was limited, but sound and what remained to be done were matters of formatting and formalities.

The dissertation was subsequently published as a book, so there is some interest spanning time and geography about the work. His research also provides ideas for future projects and papers. One small detail of his research led to an archeological dig and a chance to speak more generally about his work.

It's quite possible to create a magnum opus. My sense, however, is that a thesis a peculiar kind of writing that doesn't lend itself to that. In your case there are philosophical or theoretical problems tow work out, which while being the toughest nut to crack will inform your thesis rather than to be the thesis.

But what do I know?! The whole notion of my getting an advanced degree seems preposterous :-)

Comment 6 on Book recommendations?

"I know that in all of this I have come to valuable realizations. Realizations that I want to be able to communicate to people in ways that they will see and be motivated to change their lives and see that ultimately change the course of the world."

Oh boy, and do I ever know that's true Linda.

It's a funny thing when people try to be helpful and really aren't. I guess for me reading that reading stuff I don't have to think very much about seems really necessary. So much so that it easy becomes procrastination.

Danah Boyd is really smart. Right now she's in deep hibernation mode with her dissertation--deadline looming. I was amused by her post delectable brain floss? that she allows herself 50 pages a day for reading stuff that requires no thinking. Like candy, I expect I'd binge if I were in her shoes.

So, no reading trashy novels for you. That's probably for the best. But there is an underlying nugget of truth, which actually intersects with your subject: to think well, sometimes we've got to give it a rest. Meditation maybe the ticket or Scrabble or whatever you do. You've got permission from me to pace yourself and to sustain your whirlwind of activity with a little non-structured time everyday.

Comment 7 on Book recommendations?

Well...about $500 later all of the books and a video arrived today. It was like Christmas in September! Thanks Mark!!!!!!!!