Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1964

By Lerone Bennett, Lerone Bennett, Jr.

Published by Penguin Books, 1966

ISBN 0140208569, 9780140208566

435 pages

This book was written as a series of magazine (Ebony) articles in the early 1960s when the word Negro was still accepted. Now, of course, one would say African-American. Very well written, it describes this history of Africans in the Americas, mostly in the USA.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Bantam S2807. I've had this book for years, but I never read it. Lots of people read it in school, but it was never assigned to me and so I never got around to reading it. It doesn't seem very realistic to me. New York in the 1940's must have been a crazy place.

The History of Hell by Alice K. Turner. ISBN 0-15-140934-X. I got my copy of this book at Powells at the same time that I got the Biography of Satan (they were in the same section.) This book was easier to read than the Satan one, a bit less academic, but still very well written. The book covers the concept of Hell mostly from the view point of Western Civ. She includes stuff at the beginning about Middle Eastern and Mediterranean sources (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Jewish, etc.) but then mostly focuses in on the idea of Hell in Christian Europe, both in religious thought and in art and literature . The book contains many pictures of paintings of Hell done over the centuries. I learned a lot from this book and will be exploring some of the subjects she discusses in more detail. This book is not a religious book.

Anthem by Ayn Rand. Signet 451-W7846. My copy of this book is much older than the one I linked to. I am guessing that I bought it sometime in the late 80's, but it was probably used. It doesn't have an ISBN. Probably dates to the 60s. I have four other books by her, maybe I'll get around to reading them someday. The story in this book is not very believable. It is contrived to allow the author to make the point of how great is individualism. It was written at a time when the Soviet Union was considered a success by some people. Clearly, those days are gone. This book is a poor example of a genre (dystopian science-fiction) that I would say includes books like Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm. Read them before you read this.

Screwed, The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class, by Thom Hartman. ISBN 1-57675-414-6. I got this book at Powells for cheap. My copy is the first edition (2006.) There is a more recent second edition. The book is easy to read and well written. It appears to me to be well researched, many stated facts are sourced with notes/references. The book is a bit of a downer, because Hartmann paints a pretty bleak picture. He does end it with recommended actions that the reader can pursue.

Satan A Biography, by Henry Ansgar Kelly. ISBN 0-521-60402-8. This book provides a discussion of the character Satan as it occurs in (mainly) Christian literature. Jewish and Muslim ideas are considered only briefly. The main thrust is the "Old" vs. the "New" Satan. The Old Satan is found in the Old Testament and New Testament books while the New Satan is developed later by Christian writers like Justin Martyr. I found this book very interesting and was especially interested in the wide variety of books the author consulted to make his case concerning the Old vs. New Satan.

What Would Jefferson Do? by Thom Hartmann. ISBN 1-4000-5209-2. This book discusses democracy in general and democracy in the USA. It describes the founding fathers and what their writings and actions indicate they believed concerning democracy and other subjects, e.g., religion. The book further discusses problems with the government in the USA and some things that the author thinks should be done to correct them. Well written and easy to read. One of the main themes is the evils of uncontrolled corporations and how they try to push the government towards fascism.

"The Stories and Fables of Ambrose Bierce" by Ambrose Bierce. ISBN 0-916144-20-8. My main reason for reading this was a memory of a film of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". It was a short black and white film. Many of the stories have military (civil war) related scenes. The Fables are mostly very short little bits that are supposed to be funny.

"In The Beginning, A New Interpretation of Genesis" by Karen Armstrong.
ISBN 0-345-40604-4. This book is an excellent read. Well written, clear and concise. The Genesis commentary is high level, covering the main ideas and themes as well as discussing the nature of the text. This is not a word for word discussion of Genesis. Also, contains the text of the New Revised Standard Version.

The Gospel of St. Matthew, By John C. Fenton. ISBN 9780140204889. This book was interesting to read because it yielded much information about the Book of Matthew. It uses the text from the Revised Standard Version. It has a short introduction and then goes through the book verse by verse. It restates each verse in plain english and explains how the verse relates to other Gospels or to the old testament.

Muhammad, The Prophet by Gabriel Mandel Khan. ISBN 1-59223-401-1. This book is well written and illustrated with many photographs. The author is clearly pro-Islam. In fact after reading this book one would think that everything good in the world was created by the Islamic peoples (and conversely everything bad by the non-Islamic peoples, especially the Europeans.) Since this is not the case, this book can be viewed as biased in favor of Islam. Still it might be worth reading, you just need to remember that the point of view is tilted towards Islam. Ironically, it appears that the author lives in Italy. You would assume that someone who is so pro-Islam would prefer to live in an Islamic country.

A Daily Dose of Torah. This is a series of 14 volumes. Author is Yosaif Asher Weiss. Each volume covers four weeks of torah study. The books are probably best used by Orthodox Jews as there is a great deal of discussion about the Mishnah and how the various rules are to be observed, etc. To non-jews these books might be of interest as they provide some insight to what Judaism is all about. I have read only volumes one through six. ISBN 1422601390.

50 Philosophy Ideas by Ben Dupre. ISBN 978-1847240064. This book presents 50 short discussions on various philosophical topics. Wikipedia has many good discussions like those in this book.

Book of Matthew, this was the New King James Version. (I wonder what they are going to call the next King James Version, New New King James Version, Newer King James Version???) The copy I read was a Gideons (orange cover) that I found on the sidewalk. It was in perfect condition so I decided to read it. I will be reading the rest of the New Testament and Psalms and Proverbs as time permits. I have read other translations before. This one is like King James, but with a slightly more modern vocabulary.

The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. ISBN 978-0-380-01539-9. This is a funny little book. When it was written in 1969 it probably seemed very outrageous . Now it just seems silly. There are four sections: Fire (Book of Satan), Air (Book of Lucifer), Earth (Book ofBelial) and Water (Book of Leviathan). The first section is described as a version of "Might is Right". The second section is some philosophic discussions similar to the first section. The third and fourth sections describe rituals. The end of the fourth section has various "Enochian" calls that have been retranslated to be "satanic."

The Man Who Counted by Malba Tahan. ISBN 0 86241 883 6. The is a great little book. It is about a Persian man Beremiz Samir (the man who counted) and an Arab and some of the adventures they have. Each adventure involves some sort of mathematical problem,which Beremiz cleverly solves. This was an interesting book to read, especially if you are interested in mathematical puzzles.

Reading the book of Genesis. Seven different translations. I read the weekly Torah portion, a different translation every day. The translations I used were: (1) JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, ISBN 978-0-8276-0766-8. (2) The Sapirstein Edition, Bereishis/Genesis, The TORAH with Rashi's commentary, ISBN 1-57819-325-7.
(3) The Five Books of Moses, Everett Fox, ISBN 0-8052-1119-5.
(4,5,6,7) The Layman's Parallel Bible (King James Version KJV/Modern Language/Living Bible/Revised Standard Version RSV).

50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need To Know, by Tony Crilly.
ISBN 978-1-84724-147-4. This book as the title implies covers 50 mathematical ideas. It has a four page section for each idea. Each section is just a basic overview of the topic, but they are fun to read if you are interested in this subject. The only thing I would have liked to have seen was a reference section at the end that would point the reader to additional information about the various topics. On the other hand, the reader can easily look these topics up in wikipedia to get more info and further references. Some of the topics covered are zero, number systems (numeral systems), fractions, squares and square roots. Other subjects include pi, e, infinity, imaginary numbers, primes.

The Bible, A Biography (Books that changed the World series), by Karen Armstrong. ISBN 978-0-87113-969-6. This book is about the history of the bible, old and new testament. I found it interesting and easy to read.

Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World by Karen Armstrong, ISBN 0-385-72140-4. This books is about the European attempt to gain control over the Jerusalem. She discusses the reasons this was done and the effects it has had on the people of Europe and the Middle East since. In particular she discusses how the current Israeli-Arab conflict is affected by this history.

Biography and Mission of Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab by Jalal Abualrub. First edition June 2003, ISBN 0-9703766-5-0. This book is the opposite of the "Moon-o-theism" book. This author is very much a true believer in Islam, in particular, the brand endorsed by the subject of the book. At least that is the impression I got while reading this book. This book is a bit difficult to read because of the extensive footnotes. Almost all pages have footnotes and about half the time the footnotes are more than half the page. These footnotes contains much of the actual text of the book, not just the usual references. The author spends a great deal of time quoting from other books and then, generally, describing why those other authors are incorrect. The subject of the book is the founder of the Wahhabi movement. Followers prefer to be called Salafi or Muwahid.

Moon-o-theism is a two volume 1100+ page book by Yoel Natan. ISBN 1-4116-0106-8 and ISBN 1-4116-1765-7. The full text of this book is available on books.google.com (see the links above.) The main idea of this book is that the god of Islam is a moon and war god of ancient Arabia. This is not the generally accepted idea that most Muslims would have about their faith. The book appears to be the result of a massive amount of research as there are 4800+ footnotes and references to other books. The author finds it difficult to contain his sarcasm, however, frequently referring to academics that he disagrees with as "acaDhimmis". (See wikipedia for a description of a dhimmi.)

The Koran, translated with notes by N. J. Dawood. I purchased this many years ago, but just recently got around to reading it. It is plain prose and the chapters are not in traditional order, but it is fairly easy to read. There is an index at the back that you can use to find chapters according to their traditional order. The verses are marked, but only every few paragraphs, e.g., it has 15:49 and 15:64, if you wanted to look up an exact verse, this would not be the best book for that. This book is the 1974 printing of ISBN 0-14-044052-6. There are other editions of this book. ISBN 0-14-044542-0 is a revised edition with the text in the traditional order and also has the arabic text.