Best classic american literature books according to redditors
We found 67 Reddit comments discussing the best classic american literature books. We ranked the 14 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 67 Reddit comments discussing the best classic american literature books. We ranked the 14 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Read this book sometime if you want to understand this issue. The first conservation book from a hunter's background (who was hired by ranchers to kill wolves).
More wolves lead to safer livestock and healthier wild game, and the USFWS did not do a sufficient job of analyzing the impact or continuity of the wolves in this case.
The philosophy you are critiquing is not Objectivism. Here is what Rand actually wrote:
>The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics -- the standard by which one judges what is good or evil -- is man's life, or: that which is required for man's survival qua man.
>
>Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes, or destroys it is the evil.
>
>Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.
>
>If some men do not choose to think... their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think...
>
>If some men attempt to survive by brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating, or enslaving the men who produce... their survival is made possible only by... the men who choose to think and to produce the goods..."
...
>The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value -- and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man...
>
>The difference between 'standard' and 'purpose' in this context is as follows: a 'standard' is an abstract principle that serves as a measurement or gauge to guide a man's choices in the achievement of a concrete, specific purpose. 'That which is required for the survival of man qua man' is an abstract principle that applies to every individual man. The task of applying this principle to a concrete, specific purpose -- the purpose of living a life proper to a rational being -- belongs to every individual man, and the life he has to live is his own.
>
>Man must choose his actions, values, and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man -- in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill, and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.
-- Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness. Read the whole thing.
p.s. an even better quote follows:
> The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.
>
> Today, most people hold this premise as an absolute not to be questioned. And when one speaks of man's right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob, or murder others is in man's self-interest -- which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man's self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept 'rational' is omitted from the context of 'values,' 'desires,' 'self-interest,' and ethics.
>
>The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness -- which means: the values required for man's survival qua man -- which means: the values required for human survival -- not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the 'aspirations,' the feelings, the whims, or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society, and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.
>
>The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash -- that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.
She believes selfishness is a virtue, and even wrote a book about it.
http://www.amazon.com/Islandia-Austin-Tappan-Wright/dp/1585678252 <-- obligatory amazon link for those, like myself, who had never heard of it.
Read this and see if you recognize any parallels between the current "our violence is speech, your speech is violence" crowd that have seized control of much of academia.
>And this was the main ideological purpose of the student rebellion's leaders, whoever they were: to condition the country to accept force as the means of settling political controversies.
>...
>To facilitate the acceptance of force, the Berkeley rebels attempted to establish a special distinction between force and violence: force, they claimed explicitly, is a proper for of social action, but violence is not. Their definition of the terms was as follows: coercion by means of a literal physical contact is "violence" and reprehensible; any other way of violating rights is merely "force" and is a legitimate, peaceful method of dealing with opponents.
>For instance, if the rebels occupy the administration building, that is "force"; if policemen drag them out, that is "violence". If Savio seizes a microphone he has no right to use, that is "force"; if a policeman drags him away from it, that is "violence."
>Consider the implications of that distinction as a rule of social conduct: if you come home one evening, find a stranger occupying your house and throw him out bodily, he has merely committed a peaceful act of "force," but you are guilty of violence, and you are to be punished.
>The theoretical purpose of that grotesque absurdity is to establish a moral inversion: to make the initiation of force moral, and resistance to force immoral--and thus to obliterate the right of self-defense.
Her collection of essays on The New Left, written in the 60s, basically has not aged one bit.
George R. Stewart's Earth Abides more or less explores this exact theme. It's kind of like TWD meets Life After People but without zombies. An amazing read if you're interested.
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306
Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart, is one of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend it.
After the Satanic Bible, The Satanic Scriptures by Peter Gilmore or Devil's Notebook by Anton LaVey are great if you want another book directly about Satanism.
If you want to branch out into related philosophical works, I would suggest The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand or The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Dude, stop this. You shouldn't be defending Objectivism until you have read and understood Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and OPAR.
If you're trolling then... well fuck you.
Rand was a very polarizing figure, but if you divorce the philosophy from the individual, she actually did bring something to the table. At the risk of sounding like an ad, if anyone is truly interested, check out Objectivism in One Lesson by Andrew Bernstein. It's a lot easier to follow than The Virtue of Selfishness, which is the closest thing I could find to a manifesto by Rand herself.
Electric cars predate gasoline cars. The fact that oil comes spurting out of the ground for nearly free killed them.
http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Vehicle-Burden-History-Kirsch/dp/0813528097
If you are going to draw conclusions about objectivism from just one of her sci-fi novels, it should be Atlas Shrugged. Just reading Fountainhead gives you no idea what her philosophy was about. Her last book: Philosophy: Who Needs It? would be the best place to start.
If you think her followers are bad, you should check out what people who follow the philosophy laid out in the Christian Bible have done.
These various “desirable” scientific achievements are just one more example of what Frédéric Bastiat called that which is seen. You can always see clearly what the government has created. The fallacy is to not think about the unseen: What would people have done with the resources had they not been confiscated from them in the first place?
Ayn Rand said it very well too:
> “The unanswered and unanswerable question in all of their “desirable” goals is: To whom? Desires and goals presuppose beneficiaries. Is science desirable? To whom? Not to the Soviet serfs who die of epidemics, filth, starvation, terror and firing squads—while some bright young men wave to them from space capsules circling over their human pigsties. And not to the American father who died of heart failure brought on by overwork, struggling to send his son through college—or to the boy who could not afford college—or to the couple killed in an automobile wreck, because they could not afford a new car—or to the mother who lost her child because she could not afford to send him to the best hospital—not to any of those people whose taxes pay for the support of our subsidized science and public research projects.” (The Virtue of Selfishness, Chapter 10: Collectivized Ethics, 1963.)
http://amzn.com/0451163931 ಠ_ಠ
I really enjoyed Earth Abides.
Earth Abides is set in Berkeley, California after a plague apocalypse. The tech is a bit out of date (written in 1949) but the principles of when power and water (aquifers) would fail, when vehicles and guns would lose their viability, etc make a nice starting point. Can probably find it at the library or Half Price books fairly easily.
Science Fiction : Ray Bradbury - His books are classic , also Earth Abides by George R.Steward
Ok, sure, but Rand was definitely talking about the former. She literally wrote a book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931
> Perhaps you'd care to disclose the particulars of the metaphysical pincicples that cash out capitalism, and what the rational/axiomatic justification is for accepting them, then?
This is a start - http://campus.aynrand.org/more/selected-full-essays/
I know I sound like a broken record but it really helps to read and grok before seeking out discussions or debates.
Finally, the ARI offers some decent academic courses on Objectivism.,
These are books which I have read twice or more and would read again and again on the topic of post-collapse:
Alas Babylon
On the Beach
The Postman - not like the movie with Kevin Costner (just based upon and quite different)
One Second After - currently the most realistic and scariest of the bunch I think.
Earth Abides
Lucifer's Hammer - this one I wouldn't read without many years between as the start is sooooo slow but the second half is good.
Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection
Don Roff, Chris Lane
Day by Day Armageddon
J. L. Bourne
Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile
J. L. Bourne
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart
Swan Song
Robert McCammon
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
edit: This covers a good array of subjects on different ways the world might perish. All fiction also.
Those non-perishable food stores would be depleted. 7 billion people aren't going to die over night.
The spread of the virus will be swift. One of the causes of the 1918 epidemic was increased travel. Times that factor by about a thousand, now. Air travel is a virus's best friend. So, it's going to get everywhere, fast.
What will be different from the 1918 epidemic is that less of the world now suffers from contributory factors that existed in 1918. So even though the spread would be more rapid, people would be able to hold on longer before finally succumbing. This extended timeline means you have to provide services to them. Water and food being the top of the list.
The production of necessities would drop to zero or near zero before the final curtain drops. (Workers are sick or dead, or have fled to where they think they will be safe.) Those stocked stores and warehouses would be cleaned out in a matter of a couple of months. Probably weeks.
Lets remember, for the sake of this scenario, the mortality rate is ultimately going to be 98%. No matter what.
Technology: Forget about it. You'll lose electricity within weeks of the final death toll. Those plants need constant attention. Then add in the nuclear plants melting down. All of them going down around the world at the same time is going to create another wave of death, and create uninhabitable lands.
You'll have cars for a little bit, but that will disappear quickly.
If you're sticking to the OP's two year scenario, yes, with the exception of the food, there would be things that would work for awhile. But I said at the outset that I was addressing further down the road. Two years is just everyone still in shock and digging for potatoes. Things are going to change and evolve from the initial few years.
Remember, there are only 140,000,000 people in the entire world. No idea how many people have what skill sets, where they are: widely dispersed, pockets of them highly concentrated in certain areas. That's not very many people. But they're going to be widely distributed around the planet.
We have 326,000,000 people in the U.S. So out of 140,000,000 survivors around the world, how many do you realistically think will be here, or in any country for that matter.
The best book I've ever read on this scenario, and I'm sure most people in this sub have read is, Earth Abides, by John Stewart. It's fiction, but it's a pretty good representation of what this would be like.
I get the feeling you may not be American, but the idea is the same http://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Centennial-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451163931/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426941297&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=virtue+of+selfishness
More of a Bry book but The Earth Abides
Try Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon or Walter John William's Hrdwired for some good cyberpunk. For a good post-apocalypse novel you might like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.
Pnin by Nabokov!
Here's another tan one:
https://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Toms-Cabin-Little-Folks/dp/B000TW9FF0
Man, the woodcut illustrated covers are so much better. Moby Dick and the collection of Poe including the House of Usher were good, too.
I advise folks to skip all her fiction and read Intro to Objectivist Epistemology. Saves many hours and many misconceptions.
Obligatory wiki links: Dystopian Literature. Although, some of the titles listed don't seem to fit (The Dispossessed?). Nuclear holocaust fiction, and your general apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.
Some of the better/more popular ones:
Zombies: World War Z, Raise the Dead, Marvel Zombies, Zombie Survival Guide, Day By Day Armageddon, I Am Legend.
Also, just for kicks, some of my favorite dystopian movies:
Brazil, Soylent Green, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Akira, Children of Men, Dark City, A Boy and His Dog, Logan's Run, Idiocracy, Equillibrium.
Philosophy: Who needs it - Ayn Rand
So... I'm writing up another post in notepad with a lot of Reddit comment formatting code and whatnot as a starter for creating quality stickies. Here's what I'm working with currently. There will be more to come. Feedback is welcome:
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Link to previous Q&A sticky: Sticky 1, Sticky 2
Unlike many other subreddits, we at /r/Satanism enjoy nearly complete freedom of speech. The tradeoff for that free speech is that sometimes you will be exposed to ideas or opinions that you don't agree with. Keep in mind that bad behavior and not bad ideas will get people banned from this subreddit. As Satanists most often believe in stratification, the voting buttons in /r/Satanism can be used to that end. Because of this, moderators like myself likely will not remove links to sites that you would expect to be removed from other subreddits.
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FAQ:
Note: This FAQ is written by moderator of /r/Satanism and member of the Church of Satan, /u/modern_quill. I am trying to remain unbiased and fact-based in these Q&A responses, so if you feel that I have somehow misrepresented your organization or philosophy, please let me know and we can work together to make the appropriate corrections.
Q: What is Satanism?
A: This is a simple question, but it has a complex answer because it depends on who you ask. Satanism as a philosophy and religion was first codified by Anton Szandor LaVey in his 1969 publication of The Satanic Bible. Some people refer to this secular Satanism as "LaVeyan Satanism" as a nod to Anton LaVey. The Satanic Bible borrows from the works of Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard, Ayn Rand's Objectivism, and Frederich Nietzche's Der Wille zur Macht. This is the most widely practiced form of Satanism and is championed by the Church of Satan (CoS) to this day. At its most basic definition, "LaVeyan Satanism" is about living the best life that you want to live, and bending the world around you to your will to achieve that goal. A Satanist sees themselves as their own God. There is, of course, much more to Satanism than that very basic definition, but we expect people to do their own research as well. Most LaVeyan Satanists will simply call it Satanism, as there is only one form of Satanism from the Church of Satan's perspective. Members of the recently formed secular organization called The Satanic Temple (TST), by comparison, see Satanism as political activism. The Satanic Temple often makes news headlines with their efforts to establish a separation of church and state and do not include The Satanic Bible as part of their organization's canon, but rather The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France. There are also theistic Satanists, some believe in a literal Satan and some do not. Ask a theist like /u/Ave_Melchom what they believe and they'll likely share their thoughts with you, but you probably won't find very many theists that share the same philosophy. There are also more esoteric organizations such as the Temple of Set (ToS), which was formed by former Church of Satan member Michael Aquino after infighting within the organization in 1975 caused many theistic members to split away and become Setians. /u/Three_Scarabs and /u/CodeReaper moderate /r/Setianism subreddit and are a wealth of information on the subject. There are also organizations that fall into a more neo-nazi ideology such as the now defunct Order of Nine Angles (ONA or O9A) and self-stylized "Spiritual Satanists" of the Joy of Satan (JoS), which are often not tolerated by other members of this subreddit. The words, "Fuck off, Nazi!" have become somewhat of a meme on /r/Satanism.
Q: If Satanists don't believe in Satan, why call it Satanism at all? Why not Humanism?
LaVeyan A: Modern secular Satanists see humans as just another animal within the greater animal kingdom, no better than our avian, reptilian, or mammalian friends. Our technology and our intellectual advancements may have placed us at the top of the food chain, but it has merely encouraged humans to be the most vicious animals of all. To us, Satan is a metaphor that represents our strength, our pride, our intellect, our carnality, and all of the so-called sins as they lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification. The Hebrew word Satan simply means adversary, and Satanists take that adversarial stance to a great many things in their lives; the way we approach an issue, the way we tackle a problem, the way we overcome an obstacle. While Humanists may try to live like Bill & Ted and be excellent to eachother, a Satanist recognizes that emotions like anger, even hate are natural to the human animal and we shouldn't feel guilty for such natural inclinations. While Christians may turn the other cheek when wronged, you can be sure that a Satanist will have their revenge, with interest.
*
Q: Do you sacrifice or molest children/animals? Do you drink blood?*
LaVeyan A: No. Sacrifice is a Christian concept that was projected on to innocent Satanists during the "Satanic Panic" of the 80's and early 90's by charlatan law enforcement "consultants" and Christian religious "experts". One trait common to Satanists is their love of life as Satanists view life as the greatest of indulgences; children and animals represent the purest forms of life and imagination that there are. In fact, the abuse of children and animals is forbidden by the Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth. Also, why would we want to drink blood? Christians* are the ones that (symbolically) eat the flesh and drink the blood of their savior. I'd rather enjoy a nice scotch.
Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
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More FAQ Below - (10,000 character maximum per post.)
The novel "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart is an excellent example of this scenario:
"A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for."
http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Abides-George-R-Stewart/dp/0345487133
On The Beach by Nevil Shute is probably the closest I've read to that level hopeless apocalyptic scenarios.
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart is another one. It's not as dark, but it has some key things in common that you may like.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood No sci-fi or apocalypse thread is getting very far without me recommending it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345487133/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/179-3482201-3691259
If I see an object that appears as a certain shade of red, it is self-evident that it is that object projecting to me that shade of red. There are no contradictions in perception; whatever I see is what I see. This is the sense in which the Law of Identity--and hence the LNC--is empirically justified.
It is only on the level of conceptual thought that contradictions can arise. So it is a category error to think that contradictions are possible in the external reality we perceive.
And to stress what I implied before, no, I don't think that anything that needs to be empirically justified could have been false or different. Statements about metaphysically given facts need to be empirically justified, and there is no "could have" applicable to them. "Could have" means that someone chose a certain course of action in the face of alternatives, without the prior state of affairs forming a sufficient condition for the occurrence of the course of action.
I recommend 3 things for further insight:
The Axioms of Objectivism
The Proof of Free Will
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Dude, stop being dumb. You're not going to make peace, and you're going to piss her off. And you know what? It doesn't fucking matter.
You are miserable, this is toxic, and you constantly act as if you want it. Dozens of people have told you this many, many times.
Start thinking about yourself, for once. This may be drastic, but you need the kick in the pants. Learn yo' self, fool.
Philosophy: Who Needs It is a better introduction. If that makes sense then move on to The Virtue of Selfishness
Islandia is a great little-known read
I can't think of 3, because most of the authors I love were never really "known" enough to become forgotten. But I will mention two of those:
I didn't say she wasn't collecting S.S benefits. Everyone regardless of income can draw S.S. That said, I supposed you didnt say anything about how much money she died with either.
On the subject of withdrawing S.S, she wrote an entire essay on the morality of accepting government money and scholarships in one of her books:
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Who-Needs-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451138937
She wan't opposed to doing so like many conservatives might be.
That Benjy chapter is by far the hardest. At a certain point you'll be much better off if you say, you know what, I'll piece together all the plot points and character connections later. Just get caught up in the language -- Faulkner has some of the most beautiful writing you'll ever read. Don't ruin that by trying to take apart every line and figure out what it means, you can go back and do that later -- with SparkNotes, online internet guides, and something like this if you really want to get a lot out of it
possibly 'Earth Abides' by George R. Stewart? It starts out much in the way you specify although it does take it's own turn.
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Earth Abides by George Stewart
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Z for Zachariah Robert O'Brien
Deathlands series 116 books so far.
The Last Ranger by Craig Sargent. "Good" is debatable
The Road Cormac McCarthy
The Postman David Brin
The End is Nigh Ed. by John Joseph Adams. This just came out.
Earth Abides it's the book that inspired The Stand and I liked it quite a bit more though that may just be because the second half of The Stand disappointed the hell out of me.
That was Cambodia.
http://i.imgur.com/LmfiYRj.jpg
Again, theory is not reality. Humans are greedy. Humans are out for their own self interests. Given absolute power some can be absolute tyrants. Read some Ayn Rand. The total opposite of what you've been reading. The Virtue of Selfishness is a pretty easy read. Rather idealistic but a good place to start. Always look at both side of an issue. I have a MyYahoo page with a dozen news feeds RSS'd to it, including Peoples World.
If he's from Wisconsin he may already have read it, but if not, get him A Sand County Almanac. Won't quite fill up your budget, though!
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306
Quick bit of googling and i think i found the same edition.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Works-Edgar-Allan-Poe/dp/0681270659
It doesn't look to be worth very much in terms of money. still a nice looking copy though and Poe is well worth the read.
> You can judge people, but you're judging them by your standards (or your group's standards), not an absolute standard.
Such a judgement, absent a reference to reality as you insist it must be, is just irrelevant personal preference. George Washington = Stalin in this paradigm.
>In fact, the only places I've ever seen the idea of an absolute standard being defined is in religious texts.
May I suggest you look into Objectivism then.
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
and
The Virtue of Selfishness
are probably the most relevant.
This is like priests trying to be celibate. It will end badly over time. Go the other way and embrace self completely. Throw out the selflessness and destructive altruism from your life. Read this
Well, the wealthy have never been that enlightened, but I think people just stopped feeling guilty about it after reading Ayn Rand. She tried to rebrand it as a virtue, and I think it caught on due to a lot of anti-Soviet sentiment at the time.