Book Recommendations from the AFA Video Discussion Group

For 15 weeks, a dedicated group met via Zoom to discuss  Victor Davis Hanson’s Freedom Academy video series.  At the conclusion, we created this list of reading suggestions.

 

Reading suggestions from VDH Discussion Group

 

WWII, before and after

 

In the Garden of the Beast – Erik Larson

Devil In The White City –Erik Larson

The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy – Hiroyuki Agawa

The fall of Berlin 1945 – Antony Beever

Pat Buchanan – Churchill, Hitler And The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire And The West Lost The War

City of Thieves – David Benioff -fiction about the Siege of Leningrad

Winter Garden – Kristin Hannah – also fiction about the Siege of Leningrad

The 900 Days – Harrison Salisbury – the definitive non-fiction work about the siege of Leningrad

 

Socialism/Communism

Robert Conquest – titles to follow but an expert on Russian/Soviet history

Jean-Francois Revel – Last Exit To Utopia: The Survival Of Socialism In A Post-Soviet Era

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn –Gulag Archipelago

The Secrets We Kept – Lara Prescott – the story of getting Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago to the West and published

 

Islam

Queer Sinister things: The Hidden History of Iran – Thomas B Phillios

Catastrophic Failure – Stephen Coughlin

 

Philosophy etc

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith – James H. Billington

Dominion: Making of the Western Mind – Tom Holland

La condition humaine (Man’s Fate) – André Malraux

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment – Amir Levine

Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization –  Scott Barry Kaufman

Jordan Peterson: 12 Rules For Life & Maps Of Meaning

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari

Victor Frankl – Man’s Search For Meaning

Roger Scruton:  Conservatism and many others

Flavius Josephus

 

American Studies

Charlotte Ismay – Deliberate Dumbing-Down Of America

Diana West:  Death of the Grown-Up and American Betrayal: The Secret Assault On Our Nation’s Character

 

War generally/WWI etc

von Clausewitz – On War

Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman

Mahan – Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660- 1783  and Elements of Sea Power

Dreadnought:  Britain, German and the Coming of the Great War – Robert K. Massie

Atheism Kills – Barak Lurie

1. G. Wells – Outline of History

A World Lit Only By Fire – William Manchester  (Middle Ages)

Victor Davis Hanson – anything but esp. Who Killed Homer and The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won

Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot– Adm. James Stockdale

Grant – Ron Chernow

 

Religion

The Chosen – Chaim Potok

Wholly Different: Why I Chose Biblical Values Over Islamic Values – Nonie Darwish

 

Economics

The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek

 

Das Kapital – Karl Marx

 

Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith

Anything by Thomas Sowell especially Conflict of Visions and Vision of the Anointed

 

Other

Lots by David McCollough including The Path Between the seas, John Adams

Caroline Glick – Israel Solution among many others

Natan Sharansky – many including Case for Democracy

A Nervous Splendour – Frederic Morton (late 19^th C Vienna)

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

Anything by Douglas Murray