11
God on Trial
by Peter Irons
I decided to take a break from my lengthy and slow going journey through Judt’s Postwar and check out God on Trial, a book on recent church-state separation cases that’s getting some good reviews. I was not disappointed; this is a fascinating book that deserves to be read by everyone interested [...]

10
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
by Robert Heinlein
The fruit of my post asking for Science Fiction recommendations, I just finished up Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Filled with politics, humor, and irony, the book has made it on my (short) list of favorite novels.
I’m fairly sure most people reading this [...]

9
Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
I somehow missed reading anything by Kurt Vonnegut in high school. I’ve wanted to since then, but my fiction reading is rather lackluster (there’s too much real information to learn to be bothered fake stuff), so I only just now got around to it. Overall, it was a decent book, but nothing too [...]

8
All The Shah’s Men
by Stephen Kinzer
This book tells the story of America’s first coup: overthrowing Mohammed Mossedegh and a struggling democracy and putting into place the autocratic Shah of Iran. The coup has had an undeniable impact on the history of the Middle East and American foreign policy. The book lives up to its subject [...]

7
Why I Am Not a Christian
by Bertrand Russell
I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, but I’ve always put it on the back burner in favor of other books. Not to my surprise, I found it to be an interesting and enlightening read, both for its arguments against certain doctrines held today and as a [...]

6
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins
by Burton Mack
Burton Mack’s The Lost Gospel is a look at the world of Q and its impact on the origin of Christianity. Mack recounts the history leading up to Q’s “discovery,” its content and history of composition, the peculiarities of the group responsible for it, [...]

5
Them: Adventures with Extremists
by Jon Ronson
This is another book about the weird people in our world, written before The Men Who Stare at Goats. Ronson chronicles his travels with extremists of various stripes: Islamic fundamentalists, David Icke, Alex Jones, the KKK, the Weavers, etc. A main theme throughout the book is Ronson’s search for the [...]

4
The Men who Stare at Goats
by Jon Ronson
This is a bizarre book. Well, maybe the book isn’t so bizarre, but the subject matter certainly is. Ronson chronicles his search for those who can, allegedly, kill goats just by staring at them. In the military. Seriously. The goat story always lingers, but his search takes him [...]

3
The Blind Watchmaker
by Richard Dawkins
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages. Since I became an atheist, really. It was recommended to me on Daily Kos after I made a remark about the origin of life being impossibly improbable. I was corrected and I then looked into other information, and here I am. That [...]

2
Good Intentions Corrupted: The Oil for Food Scandal And the Threat to the U.N.
by Mark Califano and Jeffrey Meyer
After reading this book, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like to read the entire Independent Inquiry Committee report. This book is fairly brief summary of the findings of the U.N.’s independent investigation into the oil-for-food scandal. [...]