These are books I recommend:
I Ching.
The
oldest and greatest divinatory tool. More than an oracle, the I Ching is a map
of
the universe. I've consulted the I Ching since I was sixteen, and its subtle
language
has permeated throughout my perceptions. It's like having a baffling Yoda-like
creature
to bounce your hunches off. It pranks on you if you consult it too often.
The Iliad, by Homer
The Odyssey, by Homer
Especially the translations by Robert Fagles, and by Robert Fitzgerald.
The
greatest two poems ever written. Contrasted with this modern age, where poetry
is largely irrelevant, these poems built an entire civilization, and stood as
the index
of its values. The Iliad is about the obligations of war and the terrible
consequences
of a single man's anger, but it is so much more than that. I have the Iliad
(and the
Odyssey) read on audio tape, and I play them just as I am going to sleep. A
number of
times, I have woken up in the middle of the night weeping because the section
of the
poem playing is so moving. When Hector and Andromache comfort each other on the
tower in Troy, when Odysseus finds so many dead companions in Hades,
Agamemnon's
description of Achilles' funeral, and his comparison with his own death, when
Odysseus
reveals himself to his father, Laertes; all of these scenes are more powerful
than anything
else in literature. Homer created an aesthetic, and nobody else has ever come
near achieving it.
The Elements, by Euclid
Forget
every nitpicking mistake found in here by quibblers over the last two millenia.
The
Elements is a unique human document, and a profound work of Genius. Can you
imagine a contemporary mathematician writing a textbook that will still be in
use in
4000 AD? Read the Elements. Read the Elements. Euclid shows a sophisticated
algebra
of geometric forms a millenium before Al-Khowarizmi invented symbolic algebra.
And, for
those of you who are math-phobic, Euclid doesn't even get to numbers until Book
6 or 7.
Ever visit a public high school and see what passes for Geometry these days? No
wonder
undergrads can't do proofs anymore. A century ago, anyone who wanted to learn
math
began with The Elements. Since then, there have been many changes in what
mathematics
has become, but nobody has come up with an elemental approach that incorporates
the
landscape of modern mathematics the way Euclid has done with the mathematics of
his
time. Let's face it: the current pedagogy of mathematics is fucked. If a
government think
tank were given the task of making math-phobic as many US citizens as possible,
I'm sure
it would decide it didn't need to change the status quo. No wonder I'm so
nostalgiac for
Euclid, now more than ever. And, for those of you who have heard the term
without
knowing fully what itmeans: Non-Euclidean Geometry doesn't refute the Geometry
of The
Elements, but takes a beautiful system and makes it even more beautiful.
Non-Euclidean
Geometry takes nothing away from Euclid, but complements it.
Any Stories about Mullah
Nasrudin, especially
Exploits
of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin,
Pleasantries
of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, both by Idries Shah
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Aligheri
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
Al-Muqaddimah, by Abd-ar-Rahman Abˆª Zayd ibn
Khaldˆªn
The
first work of historiography ever written. ibn Khaldˆªn is the sanest kind of
Aristotelian,
a Sufi, and a very unique rationalist in that for him, men and djinn coexist.
His theory of
history is fascinating, and greatly informs my view of the 21st century. For
him, the human
world is divided into wild people, and civilized people; for him, the Bedouin
and the medieval
urban Muslim are the two polar extremes. The city people generate wealth,
culture, technology,
and reason. They lose their moral fiber through decadent living, and become
fat, weak, lazy,
and sinful. Meanwhile, the wild people are hungry, wiry and pious. They are
closer to God
because they do not have the distractions the city people do. Eventually, the
wild people sack
the cities. Their genetic stock fortifies the indolent urban gene pool, their
piety reinvigorates
the religious life of the city, and their austerity reforms the city. On the
other hand, the town
people teach reason, science, technology and culture to the wild people, and
get them to be
less savage and cruel. After a few generations, the invaders and the urbans are
indistinguishable
from each other, and a new crop of wild people come and sack the cities. This
is the cycle of
history. Very compelling.
The Prince, by Niccolˆ¾ Machiavelli
The New Science of Giambattista Vico, by
Giambattista Vico
The Manuscript Found in
Saragossa, by Jan Potocki
Let
us praise the Great Sheikh of the Gomelez, upon whose mention may there be
peace. We are
We are all in his service, so let us
succeed in our Great Work. The highest of the sciences is
mathematics, and the highest mathematics
is analysis. Thus saith Diego Hervas.
The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, by William
Blake
The Narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket , by Edgar Allan Poe: The Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel
in the Antarctic Ocean; Her Capture, and of the Massacre of Her Crew, among a
Group of Islands in the 84th Parallel of the Southern Lattitude, together with
the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries still further South, to which that
Distressing Calamity gave Rise. influential Comprising the Details of a Mutiny
and Atrocious Butchery on Board of the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the
South Seas-- with an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivors;
Their Shipwreck, and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings, from Famine; Their
Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; 1838
The Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 , by Karl Marx
The Marx-Engels
Reader, by Karl
Marx, and Friedrich Engels.
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
Personal Narrative of
a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Capt. Sir Richard F. Burton,
Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire
Paris Spleen, by Charles Baudelaire
Curve Tracing, by Percival Frost
Maldoror, and the
Complete Works, by
le Comte de Lautrˆ©amont, Isidore Ducasse (real name of Lautrˆ©amont). Alexis
Lykiard translation.
The Pearl, A Journal
of Facetiˆ¶ and Voluptuous Reading
Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand
Algebra : An Elementary Textbook for
the Higher Classes of Secondary Schools and for Colleges, by George Chrystal
Compare
this to your
high school algebra textbook, and weep for mankind.
The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
A Course of Modern Analysis, by E. T. Whittaker and G. N. Watson
Answer any of the old Tripos questions
successfully, and win a dream date with Moly.
Email me for details.
The Law is for All, by Aleister Crowley
Book Four, by Aleister Crowley
777, by Aleister Crowley
Magick in Theory
and Practice, by
Aleister Crowley
The Wind in the
Willows, by
Kenneth Grahame
1905, by Leon Davidovich Trotsky
Poems, by Wilfred Owen
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
Journey to the
East, by Hermann
Hesse
You Can’Äôt Win, by Jack Black
Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne
House at Pooh
Corner, by A. A.
Milne
Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced
Standpoint (2 vols.), by Felix Klein
The Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
This
book, a work of Surrealist pornography, taught me more about sexual fantasies
than
anything else I've ever read. No sexual fantasy is criminal. Our fantasies are
limited only by
our imaginations, and Bataille's imagination is unbounded. Mentioning the
specifics of this
book, separated from Bataille's hallucinatory prose, would kill the power that
his book
unleashes. Read it. You can read the whole thing in one sitting. Then make your
own sexual
fantasies into a similarly thrilling adventure.
The Complete Books of Charles Fort
The Book of the Damned
New Lands
Lo!
Wild Talents
The first time I
read The Book of the Damned, I got a little over 100 pages into the book,
when a voice from my subconscious mind told me that, if I read any more of the
book, I
would go stark raving mad. I put it away. A year later, I picked it up again,
and read it in
full. The only other book that has had that effect on me is VALIS, by Philip K.
Dick. Fort
is fully aware of what he is doing to his reader, and he enjoys twisting the
knife. Imagine
that fully real things are red, and that fully imaginary things are yellow.
Fort asks us at
what shade of orange are we going to reject things, because they are all
orange, none red,
and none yellow. Follow him if you can.
The Theory of Groups
and Quantum Mechanics,
by Hermann Weyl
The
Principles of Quantum Mechanics, by Paul A. M. Dirac
Dirac
won the Nobel Prize for a book. This is the book. Dirac shared the prize with
Schrodinger. The Nobel Committee felt this book was on par with the
Schrodinger
equation as a contribution to physics.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Doors of
Perception, by
Aldous Huxley
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
Tropic of
Capricorn , by
Henry Miller
The World of Sex, by Henry Miller
ABC of Reading, by Ezra Pound
Geometry
and the Imagination, by David Hilbert and Stefan Cohn-Vossen
One hundred pages on Differential Geometry without the
assumption that the reader knows
any calculus. Who does exposition like this anymore? Who
writes with this much faith in the
intelligence of the reader? Where is the Hilbert of the 21st
century? We need him.
Anything by H. P.
Lovecraft, escpecially:
At
the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels
The Dunwich Horror and Others
Best of H. P. Lovecraft, The: Bloodcurling Tales of Horror and the Macabre
Anything by Clark Ashton
Smith, especially:
Tales of Zothique
Genius Loci
The Book of Hyperborea
Rendezvous in Averoigne
Dark
Eidolon
The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell
Animal Farm,
by George Orwell
Nineteen
Eighty-four, by
George Orwell
Sexual Revolution, by Wilhelm Reich
Mass Psychology of
Fascism, by
Wilhelm Reich
Character Analysis, by Wilhelm Reich
The Psychology of Man’Äôs
Possible Evolution
, by Petr D. Ouspensky
IG Farben, by Richard Sasuly
The Dada Painters and
Poets, edited by
Robert Motherwell
Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
Nine Stories, by J. D. Salinger
How to Lie With
Statistics, by
Darrell Huff
The Story of O, by Pauline Rˆ©age
Anything by J. R. R.
Tolkien, especially:
The
Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Silmarillion
Unfinished Tales
Howl, and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
A Coney Island of the
Mind, by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Synchronicity, by Carl Gustav Jung
Flying Saucers: A
Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, by Carl Gustav Jung
Mandala Symbolism, by Carl Gustav Jung
Classical Mechanics,
by Herbert
Goldstein
Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi
The Banquet Years, by Roger Shattuck
Anything by William S.
Burroughs, especially:
Naked Lunch
Ticket That Exploded
The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques
Bergier
Stranger in a Strange
Land, by Robert
A. Heinlein, unabridged 1991 version
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’Äôs Nest, by
Ken Kesey
Kesey's Garage
Sale, by Ken
Kesey
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine l’ÄôEngle
Anything by Thomas
Pynchon, especially:
V.
Slow Learner
Crying of Lot 49
Gravity’Äôs Rainbow
Anything by Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr., especially:
Cat’Äôs
Cradle
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’Äôs Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death
Breakfast of Champions
In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in
America, by
Richard Brautigan
The Pill Versus
the Springhill Mine Disaster , by Richard Brautigan
The Berkeley Student
Revolt: Facts and Interpretations
The Autobiography of
Malcolm X, by
Malcolm X and Alex Haley
The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll
Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen
Been Down So Long It
Looks Like Up To Me,
by Richard Fariˆ±a
Society of the
Spectacle, by Guy
Debord
Kolyma Tales, by Varlam Shalamov
The Men in the Jungle, by Norman Spinrad
Bug Jack Barron, by Norman Spinrad
The Revolution of
Everyday Life, by
Raoul Vaneigem
Anything by Carlos
Castaneda, especially:
The
Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge
A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
Tales of Power
The Second Ring of Power
The Eagle’Äôs Gift
The Fire From Within
The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don Juan
The Art of Dreaming
The Politics of War, by Gabriel Kolko
The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test, by Tom
Wolfe
The Atrocity
Exhibition, by J.
G. Ballard
Crash, by J. G. Ballard
Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, by Hunter S. Thompson
Situationist
International Anthology
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Ringolevio, by Emmett Grogan
The Center of the
Cyclone, by John
C. Lilly
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, 3 volumes, by Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn
Anything by Samuel R.
Delany, especially:
Dhalgren
The Motion of Light in Water
The Mad Man
Hogg
I am obsessed with
Delany, and I probably always will be. I still bite my fingernails because of
him. I first read Dhalgren at 19, while living in Philadelphia, living in a
city for the first time, no
plans, no goals, no ambitions. I was in my own Bellona, squatting with
fellow scorpions, having
the magical edges of my reality dictated to me by this incredible book.
Dhalgren is real in a way
that most of my life hasn't been, and when I feel nostalgia, what I miss is the
psychotopographies
of Bellona as laid out in Dhalgren. It is the greatest novel about a city ever
written; any one of the
Surrealists (Breton especially) would slit his throat to write a book half as
good, but wouldn't have
the balls to stomach the finished result. The Motion of Light in Water
taught me as much about
sex as Henry Miller has, but in a totally different direction. And The Mad Man
took what I'd learned
so far to fascinating extremes. The Mad Man is a dare; a gauntlet thrown down
in the age of AIDS,
guaranteed to scare the shit out of just about everyone. And Hogg? Someday I
will go to jail for
owning a copy of Hogg, but it will be worth it. If all of my friends read Hogg
on my recommendation,
90% would stop being my friend, and I wouldn't need them anyway.
Strange Unsolved
Mysteries, by
Margaret Ronan
House of Evil and
Other Strange Unsolved Mysteries , by Margaret Ronan
The Great War and
Modern Memory, by
Paul Fussell
Wartime, by Paul Fussell
The Illuminatus!
trilogy, by
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
The
Eye in the Pyramid
The Golden Apple
Leviathan
Prometheus Rising, by Robert Anton Wilson
The Wonderful Story of
Henry Sugar, and Six More , by Roald Dahl
The Hitch Hiker’Äôs
Guide to the Galaxy,
by Douglas Adams
The Restaurant at
the End of the Universe,
by Douglas Adams
A Course in
Mathematics for Students of Physics , by Paul Bamberg and Shlomo Sternberg
Symplectic Techniques in Physics, by Victor Guillemin and Shlomo Sternberg
Group Theory and Physics, by Shlomo Sternberg
UBIK, by Philip
K. Dick
Three Stigmata of
Palmer Eldritch,
by Philip K. Dick
A Scanner, Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
VALIS, by Philip K. Dick
The Book of the
SubGenius, by J.
R. ’ÄúBob’Äù Dobbs
Revelation X: The
’ÄúBob’Äù Apocryphon,
by J. R. ’ÄúBob’Äù Dobbs
Acid Dreams: The CIA,
LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion , by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain
Blood Meridian; or The
Evening Redness in the West , by Cormac McCarthy
To Win a Nuclear War:
The Pentagon’Äôs Secret Plans , by Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Speaker for the Dead,
Seventh Son
Red Prophet
A Little Book on the
Human Shadow, by
Robert Bly
Scandal: Essays in
Islamic Heresy,
by Peter Lamborn Wilson
Sacred Drift:
Essays on the Margins of Islam , by Peter Lamborn Wilson
Tales of Beatnik Glory, by Ed Sanders
T.A.Z. The Temporary
Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, by Hakim Bey
Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh
Archaic Revival, The:
Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs,
Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History, by Terence McKenna
True
Hallucinations,
by Terence McKenna
Deterring Democracy, by Noam Chomsky
The Making of the
Atomic Bomb, by
Richard Rhodes
Dark Sun: The
Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes
If You really Loved
Me..., by Toby
Green
The Men's Room, by Toby Green
Visual Complex
Analysis, by
Tristan Needham
The
best undergraduate math book ever written. I get very emotional when I think
about this book.
If you understand first-year calculus, this book will make sense, and you are
morally obliged to
read it!! The sad thing about mathematics is it takes a lot of drudgery to get
to the good parts.
Complex Analysis is the good part. This is what you've been waiting for all of
your life. Here it is!
This book represents everything I love about mathematics. If Professor Needham
were in charge of
math pedagogy for the USA, we'd all like math.
Elementary Real and
Complex Analysis,
by Georgi Shilov
Mathematical Thought
From Ancient to Modern Times , by Morris Kline
The Exact Sciences in
Antiquity, by
Otto Neugebauer
Mathematics: Its
Content, Methods, and Meaning (an anthology)
A Tour of the Calculus, by David Berlinski
Anything by Richard P.
Feynman, especially:
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
What Do You Care What Other People Think: Further Adventures of a Curious
Character
Six Easy Pieces
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces
Lectures on Physics
Last Train to Memphis, by Peter Guralnick
Careless Love, by Peter Guralnick
Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus
Invisible Republic, by Greil Marcus
Invisible Republic is the greatest description of the mystery of rock and roll ever put into prose.
Rock is an ancient
mystery religion-- insight, gnosis
emerges when the terror and strangeness has been absorbed and transmogrified.
Lead
into gold, the wound of Amfortas
healed, the mountain rooted down by the mole. The first time I heard Bob
Dylan's
Basement Tapes , I felt that terror. I was afraid of
Tiny Montgomery, of Silly Nilly, of the Coachman. I knew that
there was no relief for me until the
world of the Basement Tapes was as real as the four walls of my bedroom. Now
that it has become that familiar,
there still is no relief. Rock and roll means never shaking the hell hound on
your
trail, no relief from the
exasperated humiliation of begging Mrs. Henry to look your way and pump you a
few. The
ironic, elusive fantasy of the
Million Dollar Bash always somewhere in the near future, with Rosemary waiting
there
to put it to you plain as day, and
give it to you for a song.
Country: The Twisted
Roots of Rock 'n' Roll
, by Nick Tosches
Peacemaking Among
Primates, by
Frans de Waal
A Treatise on Plane
and Advanced Trigonometry, by E. W. Hobson
Snow Crash
The
Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson