Monday, August 6, 2012

Nonfiction Books that Have Most Inspired and Influenced Me (In No Particular Order)

1) "The True Believer" - Eric Hoffer.......2) "Escape From Freedom" - Erich Fromm.......3) "Man's Search for Meaning" - Viktor Frankl.......3) "The Book" - Alan Watts.......4) "The Nature of Prejudice" - Gordon Allport.......5) "Twilight of the Idols" - Friedrich Nietzsche.......6) "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" - David Hume.......7) "Montgomery Clift, A Biography" - Patricia Bosworth.......8) "On Liberty" - John Stuart Mill.......9) "The Sickness Unto Death" - Soren Kierkegaard.......10) "Being Nobody, Going Nowhere" - Ayya Khema.......11) "The Time Before History" - Colin Tudge.......12) "The Division of Labor in Society" - Emile Durkheim.......13) "Why I am Not a Christian" - Bertrand Russell.......14) "The Social Contract" - Jean Jacques Rousseau.......15) "The Forgotten Man" - Amity Shlaes.......16) "To Jerusalem and Back" - Saul Bellow.......17) "The Leviathan" - Thomas Hobbes.......18) "The Tao of Pooh" - Benjamin Hoff.......19) "Night" - Elie Wiesel.......20) "The Long Death, The Last Days of the Plains Indians" - Ralph K. Andrist.......21) "Irrational Man" - William Barrett.......22) "The Myth of Sisyphus" - Albert Camus.......23) "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" - Erving Goffman.......24) "Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences" - Abraham Maslow.......25) "The Crucial Decade" - Eric F. Goldman.......26) "Eating Animals" - Jonathan Safran Foer.......27) "The Two Faces of Islam" - Stephen Schwartz.......28) "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" - Max Weber.

3 comments:

d nova said...

i need some information that you appear uniquely qualified to give me.

i just read this interview: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10661-stone-cold-sober-an-interview-with-mike-lofgren-author-of-the-party-is-over

in it, mike lofgren says '...increasingly, the GOP's ranks are being filled with what psychologist Erich Fromm called the "true believer."'

now i know eric hoffer wrote a book with that title, so out of curiosity i googled 'erich fromm true believer' and came up with your post indicating familiarity with both 'the true believer' and 'escape from freedom'.

so how about clearing it up for me: did fromm use the concept of the true believer, or was lofgren confusing him with hoffer?

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

The books are very compatible but it was definitely Hoffer who first came up with the term. Now, did Mr. Fromm also use the term? I'd have to go back and check but I doubt it.

d nova said...

i think you're right. thanx.