My go to book rec. A first hand account from a Marxist perspective of the failures and successes of land reform in China. A book about many things from economics, to imperialism, to gender it is ultimately a book about deploying and adapting Praxis rather than theory.

Rousseau at his most poetic and introspective. A absolutely beautifully written account of a broken and weary psyche in its later years. Heartbreaking and Wistful yet hopeful in small amounts.

The cheese and the worms. A tale of a literate miller who develops his own materialist cosmology and faces persecution from the Inquisition. Shows how the inquisition actually worked, shows how a lot of less educated but still literate people understood the world.

Backwoods Utopias. A study of when the center of socialist though was America rather than Europe. Details the stories of Robert Owen's New Harmony, and Fanny Wright's Nashoba project and how the lasting effect they had upon socialism as a whole.

Going Clear. A fascinating history of Scientology from Hubbard until the present day that asks very interesting questions about the nature of belief that caused me as a Catholic to seriously reexamine my beliefs several times.

Marching Home. About Union Veterans after the close of the Civil War and how many of them where abandoned with mental and physical disabilities. Emphasizes lie of reconciliation. Incredibly touching at times (the feeling of racial equality among amputees in particular)

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. The story of George Robert Twelves Hughes a working class man who joined the Tea Party and the Revolution. Its asks the question "why would the average person fight in the revolutionary war?" History from the bottom at its best

Slaves No More. They best book on Emancipation and Slavery. Demonstrates how Emancipation was largely driven by the actions of slaves escaping and joining the union army rather than a top down narrative of Lincoln fleeing the slaves.

Almost Transparent Blue. A novel about a group of Japanese drug addicts in the 70s, bleak and gross, but incredibly well written and moving especially the ending.

Diary of a Mad Men. A short story during Chinas attempt to Modernize. In it a man reading Confucius finds between the margins a message reading "People Eat People." Psychological horror with a social twist.

Vermeers hat. Using the paintings of Vermeer this book explores from many angles the rise of the phenomena of "globalism" through the interactions between the Dutch and the rest of the world.

Chaos, Charles Manson the Cia and the Secret history of the 60s. A well researched though at times unbelievable book reexamining the Helter Skelter narrative put forward by Bugliosi. Also serves as a nice digest of MKultra and other strange happenings of the 60s.

Applied Behavior Analysis first course. A very outdated but informative textbook with a twist: the text is a Socratic dialogue between a teacher and his students. A textbook my dad used in his class that I picked up when i was very young. The first "academic" book i ever read.

Thinking Fast and Slow. A book that explores a theory about how we have 2 different thought processes, one fast and instinctive, and one slow and thoughtful. The implications are fascinating to think about and they convinced me of the necessity of virtue ethics.

No Man Knows my History. One of two major accounts of Joseph Smith, this one in addition to exploring Smith and the intellectual environment he came up in is also a fascinating look at the forgotten era of "Psychohistory" wherein psychoanalytic techniques were applied to history.

Vitoria's writings on politics provide a fascinating look at Second Scholasticism and the origins of the modern world. Vitoria rights a very complicated and thorough defense of the rights Native Americans from Spanish colonialism and in doing so develops modern IR theory.