Giants and Dwarfs by Allan Bloom

Collection of essays by Bloom. Excellent.

A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind by JJ Rousseau

I'm trying to read some Rousseau after reading Allan Bloom.

Die a Stranger by Steve Hamilton

Alex McKnight novel.

What We Can't Not Know by J. Budziszewski

An excellent defense of the natural law.

C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea by Victor Reppert

The title is a riff on Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea. It is a defense and development of Lewis's argument for reason against naturalism. Well-argued.

Laches by Plato

Periodic re-read of Plato....

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris

I'll be blogging about this one on my main page.

Charmides by Plato

It is always good to periodically re-read the Platonic dialogs.

Free Will by Sam Harris

I'll probably write something about this book on my main blog.

Blood Red Snow by Gunter Koschorrek

Memoirs of a German soldier who served on the Eastern Front from the Battle of Stalingrad to the end of the war. Maybe the best of this type of book and the most intense first-person account of war I've ever read.

The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters

Next in the Cadfael series

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

14 year old girl wakes up one morning to discover the rest of her family has simply disappeared. Twenty years later, she begins to find out why.... decent thriller.

The Leper of St. Giles by Ellis Peters

Next in the Cadfael series. Probably the best I have read in the series so far, not so much for the mystery, but for the sensitive and Christian manner of acting of some of the principal characters, in particular Cadfael and the leper of the title.

Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

Douthat is among the more Chestertonian voices writing today. In this work, his claim is that the dominant religious culture in America today is not unbelief or indifference, but various forms of Christian heresy. His answer is a call to the historical Christian witness of individual sanctity rather than political mobilization.

The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy by Etienne Gilson

Re-read of a classic.

Monk's Hood by Ellis Peters

#3 in the Cadfael series.

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

#2 in the Cadfael series.

Night Work by Steve Hamilton

By the author of the Alex McKnight novels.

Body of a Crime by Michael Eberhardt

Decent legal thriller.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

I'm not generally a science fiction fan, but I stumbled across this in a used book store and thought I would give it a chance as a recognized classic. And it is very good...

The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters by Anthony Pagden

A history and defense of the Enlightenment, well-written and fascination, although I ultimately disagree with Pagden's interpretation of the Enlightenment.

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas Woods

Excellent account of the Catholic Church's influence on the development of Western civilization.

Breaking Point by CJ Box

And now I'm caught up with the Joe Pickett series.

Force of Nature by CJ Box

Another Joe Pickett novel... one more and I will be caught up with the series.

Cold Wind by CJ Box

Joe Pickett novel.

A Stolen Season by Steve Hamilton

Another Alex McKnight novel. One of the better in the series.

Nowhere to Run by CJ Box

Next in the Joe Pickett series.

Currency Wars by James Rickards

A good history of money over the last 100 years and an explanation of the dangerous times we live in.

Below Zero by CJ Box

The Joe Pickett series is not yet worn out....

Blood Trail by CJ Box

Next in the Pickett series.

The Hunting Wind by Steve Hamilton

If you like those old 1940's detective stories by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, you will like Steve Hamilton. Alex McKnight, the central character of this series, is a contemporary version of the tough, principled, yet flawed detective of  yore. Like them, he has a hard crust but a soft interior, and it is often his sentimental side that gets him into trouble, which he then must get out of with guts, guile and some luck. He's not a superhero like Jack Reacher, but gets the hell beat out of him at least once per novel. He just wants to be left alone to tend his cabins in the Michigan hinterlands, but as they say, trouble has a way of finding a guy.

River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins

When he's not foaming at the mouth about religion, Dawkins is a very good writer.

Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel

Nagel's argument is that Darwinian evolution cannot account for the mind.

Red Alert by Steven Leeb

Leeb is in the China is going to bury us camp.

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Account of the crucial contributions of Christianity to the development of Western Civilization in terms of science, politics and culture.

Tigers in the Mud by Otto Carius

War memoirs by German Tiger tank ace and Knight's Cross winner.

Ice Run by Steve Hamilton

Another Alex McKnight novel.

Cotton Kingdom by Frederick Law Olmstead

Chronicle of Olmstead's tour through the antebellum South, as he takes the measure of the slave culture. Some of the fascinating things that come out: Just how much poor whites hated slavery, seeing it (rightly) as impoverishing them by displacing their labor; the number of Southerners who frankly acknowledge the immorality of slavery, but are at a loss at how to end it due to the practicalities involved; the differences in the attitudes toward slavery among the states (fireeaters in South Carolina vs a skeptical North Carolina). Olmstead had a keen eye for detail and his descriptions of slave life are well worth the effort. There are also a few very disturbing episodes, none more so than when Olmstead witnesses the savage beating of an 18 year old slave girl by an overseer.

Blood is the Sky by Steve Hamilton

Alex McKnight novel.

The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin

Been meaning to get to this one for years...