Books on Politics

Edited by Atavachron - September 21 2019 at 00:37

I never knew Ann Coulter had turned against Trump so vociferously  until I read that article. Maybe her next book will be titled "Don't Trust Trump"

Heh...Trump wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't such an obnoxious loudmouthed bigoted fill in the blank------------....but plenty of those in the US who elected him.

Edited by dr wu23 - September 21 2019 at 12:04

It's the nature of politics, both here in England and in America, that prime ministers and presidents are going to be loved and loathed in equal measure, whichever party they represent. After all, Donald Trump was as a registered Democrat between 2001 and 2009 and he even donated $100,000 to The Clinton Foundation, and unbelievable as it seems now, Trump supported Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency in 2008!

it is the sad truth that the majority of people have the tendency to fall for the biggest loudmouth, be his name Trump, Johnson or Hitler. not that I want to compare their political goals or methods; I just refer to the fact that they all are or were loudmouths

^Well, we're forced to talk about him because he's involved in a new scandal almost every day. We'll stop talking about him after he's locked up. 

^It was an anomaly...there have been only 5 Presidents elected by the college who actually lost the popular vote. BTW..the last 2 were Republicans...Bush and Trump.

Edited by BaldJean - October 02 2019 at 06:55

Psychedelic Paul wrote: At the beginning of my blog I asked if Prog Archives members have any political books they can recommend but I haven't heard one single recommendation so far.

If the focus is on political books, perhaps you could change the title to a more general one so this doesn't just become yet another Trump focused topic. We don't really need more than one that is Trump-specific (politics is so divisive, especially these days, an multiple such topics will be off-putting to some. There are politics forums that are better suited to such discussion. Here's a forum I posted at for a while, while not politics specific, there are some interesting topics there (you might get some interesting and diverse takes on Trump in this forum): https://forum.samharris.org/forum/viewforum/7055/

In my early online days I was all about political forums, and had some really good debates, but my mind is not as sharp now (it helps to be really aware of logical fallacies, and formal arguing generally.   Used to keep my old school textbook, Attacking Faulty Reasoning, by my side, but such pedantic antics that I would engage in now seems very immature, and would rather have more informal conversations. Really, I'm probably even more immature, and most certainly stupider, than I was then.

As for political books, well I have tended to be interested in that are more political philosophy based, and while I did read various textbooks in political science classes, those would be out of date. I'm mostly interested in ideas/ ideology/ "theory"...

That said, these classics are worth reading as an introduction to some classic political thought (all ones I did early on in university). I feel strongly that the classics make for a good foundation towards a better understanding of modern political thought/ ideology.

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Republic by Plato
The Leviathon by Hobbes
The Social Contract by Rousseau
Politics by Aristotle
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Das Kapital by Karl Marx

I liked Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter.

I love George Orwell, so for me Orwell and Politics was worth reading.

In terms of modern ones, I did find How Democracy Ends by David Runciman interesting, but it lacked as much depth as I would have liked (it seems too short for the amount that it covers), but I haven't read many books focused particularly on politics since studying at university.

One I'd like to pick up is Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases.


Edited by Logan - October 02 2019 at 12:13