Recommend books in this thread

[Guest]

I haven't read these but I intend to check them out for similar reasons.

hjalmar schacht- highest iq of nuremberg defendants. economist, wrote 26 books total some translated to engl:
The Stabilisation of the Mark (1927) ([1])
The End of Reparations (J. Cape & H. Smith; 1931)
Account Settled/Abrechnung mit Hitler[35] (1949) after his acquittal at the Nuremberg Trials[36]
Confessions of the Old Wizard, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956) ([2])
The Magic of Money, (London: Oldbourne, 1967)
My First Seventy-Six Years (autobiography), (Allan Wingate, 1955; online)[37]

franz von papen, often credited with bringing hitler to power
Appell an das deutsche Gewissen. Reden zur nationalen Revolution, Stalling, Oldenburg, 1933 (OCLC 490719263)
Memoirs (German title: Der Wahrheit eine Gasse), Translated by Brian Connell, Andre Deutsch, London, 1952 (OCLC 86049352)
Europa, was nun? Betrachtungen zur Politik der Westmächte, Göttinger Verlags-Anstalt, Göttingen, 1954 (OCLC 4027794)
Vom Scheitern einer Demokratie. 1930 – 1933, Hase und Koehler, Mainz, 1968 (OCLC 1970844)

[anthony]

I haven't read these but I intend to check them out for similar reasons.

hjalmar schacht- highest iq of nuremberg defendants. economist, wrote 26 books total some translated to engl:

I haven't read Schacht, but I've read Princes of the Yen by Richard Werner. If you want a nice organic introduction to a lot of economics related ideas worked into a broadly interesting subject (modern Japanese history) it's an easy recommendation. Werner devotes a lot of time to explaining Schacht and the beliefs and mechanisms that were used to recover the German economy after WW1. I've been meaning to read Schact himself and may do so soon.

And for my own suggestion today I recommend the plays of Yukio Mishima. I particularly like his 'My Friend Hitler', which in my opinion should be almost mandatory reading for this place.

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/rcgm1yS/image.png]

[oyakodon_khan]

I am an early adopter of audiobooks, the reason for this preference is that I don't know how to read. Or at least I didn't until very recently. 
Girls at around 11 - 13 are excellent at reciting books, even if they don't know the meaning of the words they're reading. The local orphanage has always greatly appreciated my monetary contributions, and besides, that is one less mouth to feed. Of course, this is the only proper way to have books dictated to you. Recorded audiobooks are a useles trite novelty and you cannot absorb any information from them.

[JohnTrent]

And for my own suggestion today I recommend the plays of Yukio Mishima. I particularly like his 'My Friend Hitler', which in my opinion should be almost mandatory reading for this place.

I read the play "My Friend Hitler" around the beginning of July and forgot to make a reply.
On the whole, I enjoyed this greatly. The characterization of Strasser as a sickly man prone to revolution for its own sake has been occupying my mind as of late. There is a temptation that can occur when one seeks to make an antagonist in a play, and it is the Jacobean temptation: the antagonist becomes sublime in their rebellion against an established order, or in their attempt to seat themselves at the head of power. Tamburlaine is possessed by a darksome power that strives for war, Edmund in King Lear is a rational man in contempt of established law, Bussy d'Ambois in Chapman is a brutish type of soldier who does not bend to custom or the control of any higher force. They act alone and are, depending on the reader, admirable for this.
Mishima does well in avoiding this, because Strasser does not ever truly commit to the revolutionary fervor that he speaks of, as his lines are recognized as a maniacal, ill-at-ease blur. It is the embodiment of revolutionary destruction without purpose, where all opposition is a symbol of putrefaction. As an isolated man who has separated himself from the movement, the best that can be done is attempt to convince Roehm and little else. This is a type of revolution that recurs, Georges Bataille had viewed revolution for its own sake in a similar manner (he was allied with French Communists but only because the potential violence of a Communist revolution fascinated him, this is mentioned somewhere in Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography). His attempts against Hitler are as much an attempt at self-preservation as it is a kind of mistaken vision. I can't personally think of any other way to characterize him.

[twenty-seven]

And for my own suggestion today I recommend the plays of Yukio Mishima. I particularly like his 'My Friend Hitler', which in my opinion should be almost mandatory reading for this place.

I second the Mishima reccomendation. I find his solo work to be a mixed bag, but the Sea of Fertility teratology contains some of the most articulate prose I've ever read. Confessions of a Mask is also a perfect underpinning to the rest of his works - it's a great exposition of Mishima's experiences and feelings without being necessarily autobiographical.

[KV55]

And for my own suggestion today I recommend the plays of Yukio Mishima. I particularly like his 'My Friend Hitler', which in my opinion should be almost mandatory reading for this place.

I second the Mishima reccomendation. I find his solo work to be a mixed bag, but the Sea of Fertility teratology contains some of the most articulate prose I've ever read. Confessions of a Mask is also a perfect underpinning to the rest of his works - it's a great exposition of Mishima's experiences and feelings without being necessarily autobiographical.

I have recently been told that there is going to be a twitter space on Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea in a week's time or so. So to those thinking of dipping their toes into Mishima, now is a perfect time. 

This is not a shill post (I literally can't even remember who is the one holding the space), however, I do think quasi reading clubs are a good idea, possibly something that could be explored here if a book were to be agreed on.

[kythustra]

And for my own suggestion today I recommend the plays of Yukio Mishima. I particularly like his 'My Friend Hitler', which in my opinion should be almost mandatory reading for this place.

I second the Mishima reccomendation. I find his solo work to be a mixed bag, but the Sea of Fertility teratology contains some of the most articulate prose I've ever read. Confessions of a Mask is also a perfect underpinning to the rest of his works - it's a great exposition of Mishima's experiences and feelings without being necessarily autobiographical.

I have recently been told that there is going to be a twitter space on Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea in a week's time or so. So to those thinking of dipping their toes into Mishima, now is a perfect time. 

This is not a shill post (I literally can't even remember who is the one holding the space), however, I do think quasi reading clubs are a good idea, possibly something that could be explored here if a book were to be agreed on.

I have a copy of Runaway Horses in the mail coming now. Am I going to miss too much if I don't start with Spring Snow?

[anthony]

I have recently been told that there is going to be a twitter space on Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea in a week's time or so. So to those thinking of dipping their toes into Mishima, now is a perfect time. 

This is not a shill post (I literally can't even remember who is the one holding the space), however, I do think quasi reading clubs are a good idea, possibly something that could be explored here if a book were to be agreed on.

I dislike the "reading club" premise. Directly integrating your reading into a particular social experience. I think better to encounter the thing during leisure and then let it come up in leisure, or not at all. A lack of reading clubs hasn't held me back. But I do have a lot of rather literate general company. I think that's much better.

[kythustra]

I listened to the iliad and the odyssey recently. I think both are good for listening. There's a rhythm that makes it great for audio, and I'm sure when it was being recited in ancient greek it was even better. I preferred the odyssey over the iliad. I found the large scale battle descriptions too repetitive by the end, and I think the odyssey benefitted from more settings. The payoff at the end of the odyssey is grander than the iliad too.

There were moments in the iliad when a character was introduced and then killed in the next few minutes. This fell flat on me. I think for a pre-tech reader/listening these scenes would be fun, but this stimulus is better supplied by watching great action movies, which it honestly resembles at times.

Someone needs to make a good adaptation of the odyssey into a film series. I don't know if there are any directors alive who could pull it off right now. Maybe robert eggers. While the northman was fun, imo the story wasn't compelling enough. Maybe if he did the odyssey it would turn out better. Because he needs only to faithfully recreate the story with his own aesthetic vision.

[Guest]

The Psychopath Code by Hintjens
https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathc...eface.html

Overall theory is some basic evopsych where psychopaths are a sort of intra-species parasite that evolved alongside human eusocial tendencies in a red queen race with human culture, humor, etc which serves as a way to filter them out. He claims quite a bit of hands-on experience. He is approaching "psychopaths" in the sense of uncommon people with a narrow range of emotions and vast range of mimicry, not in the sense of very rare people who kill other people for sport, pleasure or miscalculated financial risk/reward assessment.

The book is stuffed with trivia/anecdote that weaves together in reasonable ways, although not everything is tightly explained and he admits that a lot of his hypothesizing is mixed up in the more broadly accepted facts. (e.g. psychopaths are well established to be food-obsessed, but he doesn't put up a citation to help you know that this is a well-documented tendency not mere anecdote. Do psychopaths actually lack yawn contagion? I'd need to look it up to confirm.) It strikes me that many interesting factoids from this book will stick in my memory until they find plausible application or reinforcement.

Very digestible, not entirely immune to therapy culture and werewolf mysticism but unapologetically analytic. Covers topics like the nurturing relations of psychopaths, analysis of the victim profile, tactics/capabilities, roles in industries/organizations, a relevant snippet of his anti-corporate politics and a bit too much time spent on counter-manipulation. I wish he spent more time covering "secondary psychopaths"

Hintjens appears to be an Elon Musk type, aka a lot of Ian Banks and californian ideology. It is kind of nice to see some old smart guy professing a sort of hacker ethos. I'll probably check out his other books.

[anthony]

The Psychopath Code by Hintjens
https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathc...eface.html

Overall theory is some basic evopsych where psychopaths are a sort of intra-species parasite that evolved alongside human eusocial tendencies in a red queen race with human culture, humor, etc which serves as a way to filter them out. He claims quite a bit of hands-on experience. He is approaching "psychopaths" in the sense of uncommon people with a narrow range of emotions and vast range of mimicry, not in the sense of very rare people who kill other people for sport, pleasure or miscalculated financial risk/reward assessment.

The book is stuffed with trivia/anecdote that weaves together in reasonable ways, although not everything is tightly explained and he admits that a lot of his hypothesizing is mixed up in the more broadly accepted facts. (e.g. psychopaths are well established to be food-obsessed, but he doesn't put up a citation to help you know that this is a well-documented tendency not mere anecdote. Do psychopaths actually lack yawn contagion? I'd need to look it up to confirm.) It strikes me that many interesting factoids from this book will stick in my memory until they find plausible application or reinforcement.

Very digestible, not entirely immune to therapy culture and werewolf mysticism but unapologetically analytic. Covers topics like the nurturing relations of psychopaths, analysis of the victim profile, tactics/capabilities, roles in industries/organizations, a relevant snippet of his anti-corporate politics and a bit too much time spent on counter-manipulation. I wish he spent more time covering "secondary psychopaths"

Hintjens appears to be an Elon Musk type, aka a lot of Ian Banks and californian ideology. It is kind of nice to see some old smart guy professing a sort of hacker ethos. I'll probably check out his other books.

Psychopaths are an interesting question. I've read a couple of books on the subject. I'm generally interested in attempts at practically applying psych for normal people, and I enjoy meta-study of the people who are into this and what they have going on. Psychopath discourse it seems more or less got eaten by narcissist discourse, and now probably just does the rounds in the therapy circles. A thread on Psychopathy and related psych phenomena might be of interest.

My thoughts in short are that I think this behaviour is so readily induced that studying it as an innate phenomena is kind of pointless. Really its origins in general. The "Psychopath" problem is just the anarcho-tyranny and social decay problem. Civility has been defanged, and some people realise this quicker than others. Plenty of people will turn on humanity's better parts at the drop of a hat. The issue is made more interesting by the fact I went to school with a guy who I could believe was actually wired differently to the rest of us. I feel like I've seen people who turned against civility to cope with shit lives, but also at least one case of someone who just seemed incapable of getting it. But what's consistent across both cases is that I seemed to have a particularly easy time spotting these people and couldn't understand why anybody else tolerated them.

[Guest]

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[Muskox]

[Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81M740QqVgL.jpg]
Just finished Early Medieval Europe: 300-1000. Nice book on the transition from Late Antiquity to the Dark Ages up to the formation of the Ottonian HRE. Structured semi-chronologically but the chapters are split up thematically as well: for example in the middle it surveys the new barbarian kingdoms of Visigothic Spain and Merovingian Gaul, then focuses in on Britain after Imp. Honorious' abandonment of it, and then the Lombard acquisition of Italy, before finally focusing on the religio-cultural distinctions between Latin and Greek Europe and the growth of the monastic traditions in the former, all within a general timespan of 400 to 900. It's quite dry and tough, and definitely more of a reference book, but it did inform me of the gradual transformation of the Roman system of governance into the feudal system we all associate with the time period, emphasising the local flavours.
If there were two faults I would mention it would be:

• the constant meandering over the sources available on said topic and why such and such is unreliable or whatever (obviously showing its position as a more academic work),
  
• and the fact that it failed to adequately discuss the more "common day" aspects of the time periods, at least for me, choosing rather to discuss the high politics and religious situations at the time.
  

I read a good book a few years ago that covers the Lombard states in peninsular Southern Italy extensively called Before the Normans by Barbara M. Kreutz, if you're interested in that. It suffers from some of the same things you complain about in this post.

[JohnTrent]

I haven't posted in this thread too much since the books I tend to read are a) likely already read by other posters or b) so commonly known under the category of "The Classics"/"The Canon" that it'd be superfluous to mention. I also get sidetracked and end up leaving books around ~100-200pgs. in, making things far more difficult for myself.

As of now, the condition fulfilled is Option B, because I have recently started reading Walter Pater's study of the Renaissance. I am now at the section "The School of Georgione". There is a strong facility of analysis within Pater, not simply in the lives but in the spirit of ideas that those lives are subject to; there is a strongness of character here which is not imitated in biographies today. There are other works recommended in this manner by others which I cannot vouch for (I can only give secondhand details): Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey and a more obscure work named The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symons. Pater, along with these other authors, had ended up reshaping the minds of their generations; however different their intents may be, and what they respond to, their survey of figures had inspired many. It was through Cyril O'Connolly's Enemies of Promise that I had come to hear about some of these works. The students of Eton (O'Connolly was a part of this student body) had seen "fellow sufferers" in Pater's account of the Renaissance artists, just as like how T.S. Eliot and Yeats would relate to Symon's account of the Symbolists.

I am interested in accounts of the Renaissance for reasons similar to what's displayed in certain J'Accuse substack articles: they are ardent spirits allied against social order, an antinomian character as Pater puts it, striking us today as figures out of time. "They refuse to be classified". When Pater turns to people like Luca Della Robba, it is noticeable that their craft has been changed in its very essence. Pater references this through the Allgemeinheit, a term from Johann Joachim Winckelmann describing how the Greeks strove for permanence and the typical (over the temporary and the specific). Already, Michelangelo has begun to create works of introspection and inward passion, and figures like Luca Della Robba are compelled to follow an intermediate system; the Allgemeinheit that was present in the Greek plastic art must now contend with the utterly personal products of the imagination. Something has occurred within the plastic arts that cannot be reversed, achieved by the efforts of "general culture" — culture of considerable genius, favorable to the sensitive, the isolated toilers of imagined beauty.