Formative Books & Authors

Some books that have impacted me in profound and enduring ways:
(besides the Bible; it will disturb someone either way, whether I include it or not)

  • The Politics of Jesus, A Pacifist Way of Knowing, and others (John Howard Yoder) (see Cosmik Debris)
  • The Left Hand of Darkness and others (Ursula K. Le Guin)
  • The Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel)
  • The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint Exupéry)
  • Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
  • The Dark Tower Series, and related stories (Stephen King)
  • The Social Construction of Reality (Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann)
  • The Titan Trilogy (John Varley)
  • Modernity on Endless Trial (Leszek Kolakowski)
  • The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
  • The Sociological Tradition and The Quest for Community (Robert Nisbet)
  • The World of Pooh (A. A. Milne)
  • Totality and Infinity and others (Emmanuel Levinas)
  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, and others (Robert A. Heinlein)
  • Phenomenology of Perception and others (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)
  • The Hyperion/Endymion Series ( Dan Simmons)
  • The Politics of Friendship (Jacques Derrida)
  • The Sneetches and Other Stories (Dr. Seuss)
  • The Great Divorce and The Last Battle (C. S. Lewis)
  • Tao Te Ching (favorite translation: Stephen Mitchell)
  • Systematic Theology and God The Problem (Gordon D. Kaufman)
  • Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Richard Rorty)
  • The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
  • Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Peter L. Berger)
  • The Missing Piece and others (Shel Silverstein)
  • The God of Faith and Reason (Robert Sokolowski)
  • Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth (William James)
  • World in Fragments and The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cornelius Castoriadis)
  • The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom)
  • Basic Writings (Martin Heidegger)
  • The Sandman series (Neil Gaiman)

Some Other authors I love to read, but wouldn’t single out particular books at this point:
(This doesn’t include poets. My poetry page includes a list of poets I love to read.)

  • George Santayana
  • Judith Butler
  • Georg Simmel
  • George Herbert Mead
  • Emile Durkheim
  • José Ortega y Gasset
  • Michel Foucault
  • Joel Best
  • Russell Kirk
  • Bruno Latour
  • John Dewey
  • Sigmund Freud
  • John D. Caputo
  • Wendell Berry
  • Josiah Royce
  • Giorgio Agamben
  • Michael Polanyi

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