What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
Sociologist and founder of Bismarck Analysis; writes on live players, institutional decay and why societies lose knowledge.
8 things
How to Read a BookBook Mortimer J. Adler
This book convinced me that while skimming was perhaps useful for mining information, it would never be a viable path to rigor. Adler advocates a disciplined and deep reading of challenging books.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
The RepublicBook Plato
A design for the creation of a new ideal society, the ultimate aim of sociological investigation. Plato’s work is a nice example of both the strengths and the limits of a theory-driven approach.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
History of the Peloponnesian WarBook Thucydides
The ultimate primary source. Thucydides fought as a general during the Peloponnesian war and was ultimately exiled from Athens due to political machination.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
PoliticsBook Aristotle
This marriage of empirical data and philosophy proves hard to beat.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
On WarBook Carl von Clausewitz
This book shows how an essentially philosophical approach can be brought far enough to be practically useful.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
Great Founder TheoryBook Samo Burja
A work in progress, but a decent introduction. This explains my current sociological paradigm.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
The Evolution of CivilizationsBook Carroll Quigley
This book provides a good macro theory of civilization. Much of the pre-historical speculation can be skipped, but the overviews of historical civilizations provide an example of first-rate institutional analysis.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
Persecution and the Art of WritingBook Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss’ work helps you learn improved text interpretation procedures by teaching you to read between the lines, representing a good upgrade on what you learned from Adler.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
samoburja.com ↗·2019-05-14Wrong?
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.