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title: Early Retirement Extreme Forums • View topic
date: 2012-05-31T02:53:04Z
source: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/topic.php?id=2432
tags: 

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What are your favorite books?

1\. Make up any category you wish.

2\. Try to add a short description if there is no subtitle.

I'll kick it off:

Best Book About...

Working with Hands: The Case for Working with Your Hands – Or Why Office Work is Bad for You (Matthew Crawford), professor/motorcycle mechanic talks about the loss of manual intelligence.

Travel: Arabian Sands (Wilfred Thesiger), the Oxonian who spent most of his life among rural tribes chronicles his epic journey across the Empty Quarter of Arabia.

Retirement: Early Retirement Extreme (Jacob Lund Fisker), Jacob didn't make me do it!

Spirituality: Sea Without Shore (Nuh Keller), American convert lives among Sufis for 30 years and writes a how-to manual for living.

The Internet: Shallows – What the Internet is Doing to our Brains (Nicholas Carr), the brain atrophies like the body.

Morality: The Rambler (Samuel Johnson), hilarious 18th century polymath holds forth on everything.

God and Science: The Mind of God (Paul Davies), it didn't happen by itself.

The Universe: Just Six Numbers (Martin Rees), how the universe would have been impossible if these six physical realities were off by even a tiny percentage.

Bicycle Training: Cycling Training Bible (Joe Friel), go from back of the peloton to the front in 6 months.

The Tour De France: Lance Armstrong's War (Daniel Coyle), all the weird stuff about the Tour you can't find anywhere else.

Not Obsessing Over What People Think: Fountainhead (Ayn Rand), Roark just doesn't care, how to tell the boss, the Dean, and the rest of the world to take a hike; and Letters of a Sufi Master (Titus Burkhardt), overcome the two greatest fears: poverty and what people think.

Children and Computers: Failure to Connect – How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds (Jane M. Healy), the brain of a child on computers is physically smaller.

Showbiz: Amusing Ourselves to Death – Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Neil Postman), the absurdity of modern "entertainment."

Multinational Corporations: Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Joel Bakan), more rights than most humans, more powerful than most countries, and they get to live forever.

How the World Works: How the World Works (Noam Chomsky), all-in-one for Chomsky fans; and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (John Perkins), not sure how this guy lived to get this published.

Getting Out of a Rut: The Four-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss), mostly shallow chewing gum for the eyes, but a lot of good stuff for someone irrationally hooked onto 9 to 5; and How To Be Free (Tom Hodgkinson), Guardian journalist goes to the countryside and tells about a life of idling and how to live it.

Television: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Jerry Mander), Gerrymander the viewing polls by switching off.

Self-Sufficiency: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It (John Seymour), the complete do-it-yourself classic, now over thirty years old.

Climate Change: The Vanishing Face of Gaia – A Final Warning (James Lovelock), move to Canada and start growing vegetables.

Banking: The Problem With Interest (Tarek El Diwany), how interest-based finance is destroying the world.

Economics: Small is Beautiful – Economics As If People Mattered (E.F. Schumacher), slow, sustainable economics; and Short Circuit – A Practical New Approach to Building More Self-Reliant Communities (Richard Douthwaite)

Nutrition: Healing With Whole Foods – Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition (Paul Pitchford), the only health care book you will need in the house.

Fast Food: Fast Food Nation – The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Eric Schlosser), yes, there is excrement in the meat; and Food Inc., how Monsanto and others operate.

Conventional Healthcare: Confessions of a Medical Heretic (Robert Mendelsohn), how the healthcare industry works from an insider.

Homeschooling: The Well Trained Mind – A Guide to Classical Education at Home (Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise)

Propaganda: Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky), it's not a conspiracy; how money, fear of losing one's job, and centralized power, control the news media.

Permaculture: Permaculture – A Designers' Manual (Bill Mollison); low impact growing.

Shopping: The Wal-Mart Effect (Charles Fishman); how downward pressure on prices at Wal-Mart is destroying the local and global economy.