What are YOU reading?

Cover via Amazon

But enough about you.  [Let me know anyway.  🙂 ]  I am far from the most avid reader one can find on the blog pages these days.  However…

With the aim of tempering my non-fiction reading (current events, economics, politics, Ayn Rand) I have absorbed a lot of fiction in the past few months.  (The “Girl/Dragon Tattoo” trilogy by Stieg Larsson, the novelette “DeLuca Trilogy” by Carlo Lucarelli, fiction authors David Baldacci, Daniel Silva, China Mieville, Gene Kerrigan, Shaffer and Barrows (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society), to name a few, or nearly all.)

I’m now steering back to more non-fiction.  I’m ALWAYS reading, or intending to read, something by Ayn Rand.  (I cannot recommend enough the superb Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged I read this autumn.)  I’m currently working on her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.  Sorry skeptics, but she NAILS this capitalism, lassez-faire thing, and she states upfront that it’s a philosophical work, not an economic treatise.

The immediate Rand backlog for me after CUI is Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto and Objectivism: the Principles of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff (often referred to as OPAR)

I recently bought Thomas Sowell’s Dismantling America.  Sowell, IMO, is one of the great thinkers and essayists of our modern times.  I’ll be reading this along with Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

I just finished The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton C. Folsom Jr. (non-fiction).  This short book is a great overview of some of the 19th Century CAPITALISTS that built America and contributed to raising the standard of living.  Contrary to popular opinion, many of them came from humble roots and WORKED to build their business, without climbing over the backs of the poor, oppressed common people.

A few things I’ve learned from Robber Barons:  There were Political Entrepreneurs and Market Entrepreneurs.  The Political types relied on government support and subsidies, the Market types used “free-market” business tactics.  Market entrepreneurs like Cornelius Vanderbilt (steamships) and John D. Rockefeller succeeded by cutting costs. This greatly reduced consumer prices.

Andrew Mellon, of the Mellon banking family, and Secretary of the Treasury during the 1920’s, advocated and put into practice reduced federal taxes in order to increase federal revenues.  What a novel idea!  It’s what modern-day Republicans propose and Democrats oppose.  Myth of the Robber Barons is a excellent, short read.  I recommend it.

I do have one fiction book on hand, should I need to temper the non-fiction again soon.  It is THE CONFESSION by John Grisham.  I don’t know what it’s about but I’ve been told it’s one of those “chilling, if such a thing were ever true”.

…But enough about me.  What are YOU reading?