Last week I packed up part of my personal library. It's supposed to rain today, so I'll probably pack more of it after I get up. My library is small as you would expect from years of living in apartments...small, but solid. Not much fluff in my library. I don't read mass-market paperbacks in general. Fiction has its place, of course, but I have no use for most of it. (You can keep whatever's popular this month) Some classic 20th-century novels are great...I dig post-apoc fiction, too.
The following is a brief, somewhat random selection mostly from the general & mil history parts of my library. Titles with an asterisk are must-read items:
The Epic of Gilgamesh* – Herbert Mason, trans.
Cradle of Civilization – Samuel Noah Kramer (Time-Life Books)
Ancient China – Edward H. Schafer (Time-Life Books)
Atlas of the Bible – Joseph L. Gardner (ed.)
From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68 – H. H. Scullard
The Great Arab Conquests* – Hugh Kennedy
The Closing of the Western Mind* – Charles Freeman
The Story of Civilization IV: The Age of Faith* – Will Durant
Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages – Mark R. Cohen
Frederick the Great – Gerhard Ritter
American Creation – Joseph J. Ellis
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America* – Nancy Isenberg
The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire – Alan Palmer
Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869-1899 – Dominic Green
Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933-1939 – David Schoenbaum
The Harvest of Sorrow – Robert Conquest
Sacred Causes* – Michael Burleigh
Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History – Robert D. Kaplan
A Dictionary of European Land Battles From the Earliest Times to 1945 – John Sweetman
A History of Warfare – John Keegan
The Anatomy of Error – Barry Strauss, Josiah Ober
Qadesh 1300 BC: Clash of the Warrior Kings – Mark Healy (Osprey Campaign Series 22)
Ancient Israel at War 853-586 BC – Brad E. Kelle
Cannae* – Adrian Goldsworthy
Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265-146 BC – Terence Wise, Richard Hook (Osprey Men-At-Arms Series 121)
The Rise and Fall of the Second Largest Land Empire in History – Thomas J. Craughwell
The Templars – Piers Paul Read
The Civil War – Bruce Catton
The Guns of August* – Barbara W. Tuchman
A Peace to End All Peace – David Fromkin
Warriors of the Rising Sun – Robert B. Edgerton
No Uncle Sam: The Forgotten of Bataan – Tony Bilek, Gene O'Connell
The Six-Day War 1967: Sinai – Simon Dunstan (Osprey Campaign 212)
Operation Paperclip – Annie Jacobsen
Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 – Bob Woodward
Unintended Consequences* – Peter W. Galbraith
Night Draws Near – Anthony Shadid
Where Men Win Glory – Jon Krakauer
88 Days to Kandahar – Robert L. Grenier
The 9/11 Report* – Thomas H. Kean, Chair; Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chair
The Influence of Seapower Upon History – Alfred Thayer Mahan
100 Mistakes That Changed History – Bill Fawcett
Serpent On the Rock – Kurt Eichenwald
If you're wondering whether to read any of the above...yes. You absolutely should.
TheMiamiDeSantos
yo, i wanted to read to the epic of gilgamesh. "White trash" remembers me of a mission in gta iv where you gotta kill a black guy then he says something like "fuck off, white trash". I also like to understand different point of views i even wanted to read hitler mein kampf and the karl marx communist manifesto
Mostly of my books are bible or religion based stuff like book of enoch, mormon, saint augustine, etc. Some time ago i bought a dictionary full of medical words (inspired by carcass). I'm reading david goggins "cant hurt me" book, i'm loving that book, i love david goggins, he is so cool and handsome black dude with nice shape
ShadenLines
It's good to see you're into educating yourself, too. If you ever have sufficient free time to do it, you can find a lot of famous & infamous books in PDF format on the Net, if you don't mind reading from a screen. Even if you do mind it, you can always print the files out somewhere. I don't recall the exact price as I bought it a while back, but my translation of the Epic is not very long...bought it for under $15, if memory serves.
I don't have a physical copy of the Communist Manifesto, but I do have one of Mein Kampf & the sequel...yes, ol' Adolf wrote a second book. I don't think he gave it a final title but it is still in print. He never actually proves any of his statements (particularly about Jews), but his observations about the masses are uncomfortably accurate at times.