Recommended Readings from My Reading Rainbow

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I think that it important to read, and read, and did I say read?

Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Since I write about a lot of topics and because I am a historian as well as a stand up theologian, I read a lot and I frequently quote from other people in anything that I write. Sometimes I find that those who have gone before me have said things I want to say much better than I could on my own. Thus I am not afraid or ashamed to give attribution to them, after all, it is only fair.

But today I want to share some of the books that I think are important for anyone seeking to understand our world. In a sense, this is a part of my Reading Rainbow.

Most of my picks deal with history, military, diplomacy, civil rights, politics, as well as baseball, and there are some novels on the list, most of which fall into the categories listed above.

Despite the fact that I am a priest I don’t have many books on theology, religion, or faith on my list, but then the fact is that I don’t see a lot, including many of the so called classics that hold up over time.

In the same manner I do not list any contemporary political biographies or autobiographies, nor books on current events. The fact is that none of them has yet stood the test of history.

So today here are just some of the books that I recommend from my reading rainbow.

They are listed in alphabetical order by author:

Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich

The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Scandal of Christianity by Emil Brunner

War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

The Nanking Massacre by Iris Chang

On War by Carl Von Clausewitz

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Roméo Dallaire

Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD by Roméo Dallaire

The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz

The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall

This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust

Hitler by Joachim Fest

Forever Free: the Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner

Nuremberg Diary by Gustave Gilbert

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant

A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico by Amy S. Greenberg

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman

Fateful Lightening: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

The Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam

October 1964 by David Halberstam

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings

Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 by Max Hastings

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 by Raul Hilberg

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter

A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne

Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious American Civil,War General, Daniel Sickles by Thomas Keneally

Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

Hero: A Life of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda

On Being a Christian by Hans Kung

The Catholic Church a Short History by Hans Kung

Why I am Still a Christian by Hans Kung

The Centurions by Jean Larteguy

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

To Kill an Mockingbird by Harper Lee

In the Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers by Guenter Lewy

Why Don’t We Learn from History? By B.H. Liddell-Hart

The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton

Denial: Holocaust History on Trial by Deborah Lipstadt

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah Lipstadt

The Past that Would Not Die by Walter Lord

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Incredible Victory by Walter Lord

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause” by James Loewen and Edward Sebesta

Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

They Thought they Were Free by Milton Mayer

The Mystery of the Cross by Alister McGrath

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James McPherson

The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters by James McPherson

War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front 1941 by Geoffrey Megargee

Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer

The Crucified God by Juergen Moltmann

Theology of Hope by Juergen Moltmann

The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation by Juergen Moltmann

We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Hal Moore

A Soldier Once… and Always by Hal Moore

The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

1984 by George Orwell

Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph Perisco

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac by Stephen Sears

Gettysburg by Stephen Sears

A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer

The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William L. Shirer

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality by Wolfram Wette

The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy by Russell Weigley

Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaigns of France and Germany, 1944-45 by Russell Weigley

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George Will

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills

Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars by David Wood

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

Sorry, no descriptions or intros included, but trust me. They are all worth the read. Anyway, those are just some of my favorites on from my Reading Rainbow. Yes, there are plenty more, but that’s all for now.

Have a great day and as always,

Peace,

Padre Steve+