Early and Most recent books I have read

*EARLIER BOOKS THAT HAVE HAD THE MOST INFLUENCE ON MY LIFE

** 6/29/10 It came to mind, that although I may list the most influential books in my life, all of these were read and internalized during time time and amidst the prevailing influence of the scientific age.

- The Catholic Catechism - Roman Catholic Church
(At the youngest and most influential age of my life, when I first began to read, this book was introduced to me, and for better or worse [mostly better] ingrained the morals of most Christian thinking - About 1956)

- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas

( This fictional work is an example, there are others, but this is one I can recall that taught me one of the greatest joys I have known in life, the joy of reading. 1957)

- The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightingale

(This is not actually a book but a motivational recording on living a successful life , explaining what a successful life is. Testimony to its greatness, is that it was produced in 1956, is still available and sold today. I will be forever indebted to Lee A Struck, my friend from Dunseith High School for introducing me to this recording. At a young and influential age (16), it provided the first real direction in life that I internalized, believed and made my own - 1964)

- The Magic of Believing, Claude Bristol, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carniege

( This are 4 books of several that I read when I was a teenager. They taught me the importance of focus, of doing something with my life. They were all follow-ups to "The Strangest Secret." These books are actually the forerunners of most if not all of the motivational genre of today - in a sense, from the first on this list to "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)

-Mans Search for Himself - Rollo May

(This book, more than any other to the day I read it, forced me to a higher level of self awareness, it helped me see myself through my own experiences. I did not know at the time the great affect it was having on me and inevitably, took me down the road to existentialism, which carried my life for many,many years 1968)

- Introduction to Sociology - Textbooks

( These introductory books and many other Sociology books that followed, would likely not have had the influence they did had it not been for Arthur Wilke, sociology professor at the University of ND. In teaching sociology he brought in Jean Jacque Rousseau, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and all the other social and political philosophers who wrote about human liberty)

- Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl

(Frankl was a survivor of the Holocaust. A psychologist, he found meaning in life after experiencing about every loss a human could know - except for his life. This meaning lives in the fact that everything can be taken away from you, except for your own thinking and belief in yourself 1973 - re-read in 1991 and 2004).

- Personality Theories, Basic Assumptions, Research and Applications, Larry Hjelle and Daniel Ziegler

( All about those scientific theories of human personality, Freud, Skinner, Maslow, Erikson, Rogers and others. This would probably not be on the "most influential list" except that often, I find myself thinking about life and the human condition in terms of these theories. So it is a necessary entry)


- Cosmos - Carl Sagan

( Began reading this book and listening to this popular astrophysist in the 1980's. My only mistake was that I did not follow through, life got in the way. This book (and the video series "Cosmos" - excerpts which can be viewed through YTube as an entry in this blog - "The Pale Blue Dot". If you are not aware of it - just a quick summary, in the words of Carl Sagan "The earth is but a small stage in a vast, cosmic universe."

Revisted in 2005-06-07, it changed my life in realizing that comparatively, although existentialism is one of the worlds great philosophies, how really insignificant it and all the other philosophies and ideologies of the world are. Although interesting, these philosophies are all vain and are destined to repose on the trash heap of the history of the world).



RECENTLY READ

- On The Road, Jack Kerouc
- On Writing, Stephen King (in progress, this book might make the list of the most influential).
-The Future of Freedom -Democracy and Freedom at Home and Abroad, by Fareed Zakaria
-The Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw
-Don Quixote, by Cervantes

(Originally posted Oct. 26, 2006, on former MySpace blog)


-Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risk of the World's Most Popular Form of Government- by Michael Mandelbaum
-(Presently Reading - 'The Struggle for Significance")
-Catch Me If You Can, by Frank Abagnale
-How to Write About Yourself, by Chilsom and Courtie
-The Sociopath Next Door,
-Genesis (Joseph, Christian and Hebrew Bible)
-Gig, edited by Bowe, Bowe, and Streeter
-Events That Made America
-Quotations of Thomas Jefferson
-The Procrastinators Handbook
-How to Survive the Loss of a Love
-Positville, by Stephan Bloom
-Ecclesiates, (the Bible)
-Mans Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
-The New, New Thing, by Jim Clark
-Of Paradise and Power, by Robert Kagan
-Office Warfare, Marilyn Moats Kennedy
-Message on the Wind/A Spiritual Odessy on the Northern Plains, Clay Jenkinson
-Prisoners of our Thoughts, Alex Petakos