re: Name Your Top 10 Most Influential Books

Huxley. The Perennial philophy

Doris lessing
Briefing for a descent into hell


Faulkner. All of it

LOTR: A baptism of the imagination where the abstractions of good, evil, courage and cowardice are played out in a fantasy world that is recognizable as very similar to the real one we inhabit.

C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy especially the third volume That Hideous Strength: Another exploration of good and evil and the demonic made plausible. Rereading it recently makes Lewis look like a prophet.

Darkness at Noon: Koestler's stark portrayal of life under totalitarianism through the narrow focus of the Stalin show trials.

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk: As foundational to my ideas of government and politics as The Bible is to my Faith.

The Road to Serfdom: A close second to The Conservative Mind.

Kirk's The Roots of American Order: A close third to the previous two.

Green Bay Diary: Best sports Bio ever.


Lanterns on the Levee: W.A. Percy's Delta memoirs with some of the finest prose ever put to paper. His contrast of the locomotive with the Riverboat is timeless and bracing.

Shelby Foote's The Civil War. Has no comparison. By far the finest treatment of the central defining event in our history as a nation.

My personal favorite novel is Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. I laugh at his perceptions of the fallen human condition which, though exaggerated, are embarrassingly familiar.



The Bible: Both covenants. A bunch of books, different types of literature, many authors, one coherent story. Like LOTR but real.

(No particular order)

1.) The Natural--Bernard Malamud. Reading and researching this book made me truly understand that writing is a craft to be worked at. Stories aren't "just shite somebody made up". Oh...and ROY HOBBS STRUCK OUT IN THE END!!!!!

2.) It/The Stand/ 11/22/63--Stephen King. 3 favorite books by my favorite author.

3.)Watership Down--Richard Adams. Simply the best novel I've ever read. Very compelling story. If you don't agree, you're full of hraka.

4.) Carnival of Fury--William Ivy Hair. Very well researched history of the New Orleans race riot of 1900. Written like a suspense/action thriller.

5.) Prehistoric Monsters Did The Strangest Things I'm damn near 50 and I still look at this book I've had since I was 5. I was the only 7 year old who could spell "Tyrannosaurus Rex" and "Archaeopteryx".


6.) Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee--Dee Brown. Unbelievable book about the closing of the frontier and the "Indian Wars" of the post-Civil War era. "I will fight no more forever."

7.) The Aeneid

8.) Bismarck--A.J.P. Taylor. Great biography.

9.) Bearing the Cross: MLK and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--David J. Garrow. Amazingly researched book about one of the finest men of the 20th Century.

10.) Main Men of the Seventies: The Quarterbacks--Jack Clary (1975). Biographies of all the starting NFL quarterbacks of the era: Staubach, Bradshaw, Griese, Jones, Ferguson, and Manning, among others. Great book for a kid just learning about football.