Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 12.26.22
I hope you all had a great holiday! This week I finished 3 books, and each one was fantastic. The first is about the political framing of morals and values. Then, I read one of my all-time favorite books about the death of expertise. Then, there’s a great book on the downfalls of capitalism. Enjoy!
Each of the links to the books are affiliate links, so if you use my link to purchase any of these books, some comes back to support what I do (and it also helps fund my reading habit).
The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff
Goerge Lakoff is phenomenal, and I wish more people read his work. I loved his other book Moral Politics and was about to reread it but then remember I haven’t read his other books. I wouldn’t say this book is better, but it’s just as good. For those who don’t know, Lakoff is a cognitive scientist who studies how we think about values, morals and politics. This book focuses on how we frame issues and try to sway others. Basically, he explains why the right is amazing at this and the left sucks at it.
If the left hopes to consistently win elections, we need to learn how to frame things and talk to people. So, for the love of all that is holy, read this damn book.
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols
This is a must-read book. I read it a couple years ago, and I think about it all the time, so I decided to read it again. Not only is this book still relevant, but going through the pandemic, it’s more relevant than ever. As the title suggests, Nichols writes about how with the rise of the internet, we’ve also had a rise in this insane narcissism where everyday people think they know as much or more than experts. He breaks down how people believe their ability to Google something makes them just as qualified as those who have spent a lifetime researching a subject and working in a specific field.
With as many people who have read this book, I don’t understand why this is still such a massive problem. More people need to read it, and I also think we need a lot of people to stop living in naive realism like they aren’t thinking they’re smarter than experts on a daily basis.
The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin
This is another book about the issues with capitalism, but Joel Kotkin takes a different angle by framing it as a new type of feudalism. He blends the past with the present and shows how things aren’t much different even though we’re supposedly living in a democracy where everyone’s vote counts the same and we’re “all equal”. This is a good book if you want to learn more about how capitalism creates terrible hierarchies and many of us suffer because of it.
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