What to read...

I don't think that anyone reads enough Chesterton, and that includes me. You can get his Orthodoxy via Kindle for 99 cents. Then there are a few zillion of his books available for free at the Online Books Page. And you can start and go anywhere in Orthodoxy and you'll find something good if it take's too much for an end to end read.

Annie Jacobsen has written some good books. I've now read four of them. The Pentagon's Brain, about DARPA, is enlightening. I infer from it that we do not know the half of U.S. defense capability or who controls it.

Charles McCarry is the greatest American novelist. I've read all fourteen of his novels. Old Boys, one of the later ones, was where I started. Second Sight is brilliant. Christopher's Ghosts is stunning.

Diana West is a great writer. American Betrayal will change your view of American history since 1933. One of my (former) friends called her a "Bircher c___," because she actually found that there were Communists under the bed.

Greater even than Diana, if earlier, was Claire Sterling. The Terror Network, The Time of the Assassins, and The Mafia are three books that have such impact that my life is divided into before I read them and after I read them.

I think I'm up to nine Nelson DeMille novels now. He has been a popular novelist, but if you want a quick course in anti-Communism, read these four as fast as you can: The Charm School (set in Soviet Russia), The Quest (in Marxist Revolution era Ethiopia), The Deserter (post-Chavez Venezuela), and The Cuban Affair (late stage Communist Cuba). And add in a fifth, Up Country (a Vietnam War vet returns to Vietnam twenty-five years later).

Robert Crais is a crime novelist. His two recurring characters are Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Pike is especially compelling. Set in Los Angeles, most of the time. I got to about nine of those books.

For some theory, denser reads, Eric Voegelin. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism and then The New Science of Politics. He takes things apart and puts them back together again.