Reading List

Snow – Orhan Pamuk
“Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.`
`But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife.
`That`s true. But in a brutal country like ours, where human life is cheap, it`s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.`
`Actually, it`s the other way round. In a poor country, people`s sole consolation comes from their beliefs.”
Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa – Katherine A. Dettwyler
“Human life, instead of being well-regulated and subject to secure human care, is generally more exposed to chance and to the mercies of the natural and the supernatural…As a result, ultimate control and responsibility are neither the privilege nor the burden of humans, who are thereby relieved of guilt.” (qt. by Emelie A. Olson)
The Joys of Motherhood – Buchi Emecheta
“This life is very unfair for us men. We do all the work, you women take all the glory. You even live longer to reap the rewards. A son in America? You must be very rich, and I’m sure your husband is dead long ago…” She did not think it worth her while to reply to this driver, who preferred to live in his world of dreams rather than face reality.”
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life – Jon Lee Anderson
“Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.”
Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire
“But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation–the process of humanization–is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.”
The Mystery of Capital – Hernando de Soto
“The way law stays alive is by remaining in touch with social contracts pieced together among real people on the ground.”
The White Man’s Burden – William Easterly
“…It points instead to the Searchers with knowledge of local conditions, experimental results from interventions, and some way to get feedback from the poor, who will find out (and are already finding out) all the variable and complicated answers of how to make aid work.”
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
“And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.’”
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance – Noam Chomsky
“Those at the center of power relentlessly pursue their own agendas, understanding that they can exploit the fears and anguish of the moment. They may even institute measures that deepen the abyss and may march resolutely toward it, if that advances the goals of power and privilege. They declare that it is unpatriotic and disruptive to question the workings of authority–but patriotic to institute harsh and regressive policies that benefit the wealthy, undermine social programs that serve the needs of the great majority, and subordinate a frightened population to increase state control…”
Black Garden: Armenian and Azerbaijan through Peace and War – Thomas de Waal
“The history of Shusha contains the best and worst of Nagorny Karabakh. It is a story of joint prosperity and dynamism. But it has ended with the gene of nihilism in both communities triumphant, destroying both each other’s achievements and their own. In a sense, the ruins of Shusha are a testament to both sides’ refusal to accommodate each other’s histories.”
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
“Believe: another word. What does it mean, to believe? I believe in the body on the pavement below. I believe in the blood and the bones. To gather up the broken body and embrace it: that is what it means to believe. To believe and to love – the same thing.”
The Best of All Possible Worlds – Karen Lord
“‘Ever wonder if you’ve done the right thing?’ I asked him finally. ‘Frequently,’ he replied. ‘Legalities notwithstanding, to not wonder indicates a dangerous lack of awareness of the near infinite array of choices presented by life. More tea?'”
Փոքրիկ իշխանը – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“…Բայց նրանց բոլորի աստղերից լուռ են։ Իսկ դու այնպիսի աստղեր կունենաս, որոնց նմանը ոչ ոք չունի…”
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia – Peter Hopkirk
“Men such as these, of either side, had few doubts about what they were doing. For those were the days of supreme imperial confidence, unashamed patriotism, and an unswerving belief in the superiority of Christian civilization over all others…As for the Indians themselves, they were neither consulted nor considered in any of this. Yet, like their Muslim neighbors across the frontier, it was largely their blood which was spilt during the imperial struggle.”
Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
“I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.”
American Taboo: Murder in the Peace Corps – Philip Weiss
“What a few self-important American officials did in the Priven case was indefensible. They manipulated the Tongan justice system to get the verdict they wanted. They lied to the King and Privy Council to free a vicious murderer, and they deceived the head of their parent agency about the case, they deceived the vice president. Paul Magid said Peace Corps had a legal duty to tell the Gardners that Dennis had walked–they misled Deb’s family. And one former official told me there had been an order from above to do that. They had covered the case up. They did so to preserve their own careers, to preserve the American presence in the South Pacific, to preserve the churchly image of the Peace Corps.”
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe – Miguel Algarin (Editor), Bob Holman (Editor), Nicole Blackman
Choices by Jimmy Santiago Baca
“An acquaintance at Los Alamos Labs
who engineers weapons
black x’d a mark where I live
on his office map.
Star-wars humor…
He exchanged muddy boots
and patched jeans
for a white intern’s coat
and black polished shoes.
A month ago, after butchering a gouged bull,
we stood on a pasture hill,
and he wondered with pained features
where money would come from
to finish his shed, plant alfalfa,
and fix his tractor.
now his fingers
yank horsetail grass,
he crimps herringbone tail-seed
between teeth, and grits out words,
“I’m gonna buy another tractor
next week. More land too.”
Silence between us is gray water
let down in a tin pail
in a deep, deep well,
a silence
milled in continental grindings
millions of years ago.
I throw my heart
into the well, and it falls
a shimmering pebble to the bottom.
Words are hard
to come by. “Would have lost everything
I’ve worked for, not takin’ the job.”
His words try to
retrieve
my heart
from the deep well.
We walk on in silence,
our friendship
rippling away.
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies – Bryan Caplan
“The belief gap on foreign aid is larger than on any other, and remains almost as large after correcting for bias. The public sees foreign aid spending as a serious problem. Economists virtually to a man believe it is not worth mentioning, and the Enlightened Public is nearly as extreme. Given may economists’ strong criticisms of foreign aid, this is surprising at first. But economists normally criticize the effects of foreign aid on the countries that receive it. It is one thing to assert that foreign aid subsidizes foolish policies in the Third World and props up corrupt regimes. It is another to insist that foreign aid is bankrupting the United States. It is the latter claim that the public whole-heartedly endorses.”
Milk and Honey – Rupi Kaur
“what is stronger
than the human heart
which shatters over and over
and still lives”
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis – J.D. Vance
“Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers.”
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
“You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. … How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.”
Peter the Great: His Life and World – Robert K. Massie
“Impelled by the will of this strange sea-dreamer, the huge landlocked nation stumbled toward the oceans. It was strange and yet it was also partly inevitable. No great nation has survived and flourished without access to the sea. What is remarkable is that the drive sprang from the dreams of an adolescent boy.”
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America -Erik Larson
“The thing that entranced me about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city’s willingness to take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early drafts of this book wondered why Chicago was so avid to win the world’s fair in the first place. The juxtaposition of pride and unfathomed evil struck me as offering powerful insights into the nature of men and their ambitions.”
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1 – Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman
“Human rights have tended to stand in the way of the satisfactory pursuit of U.S. economic interests-and they have , accordingly, been brushed aside, systematically. U.S. economic interests in the Third World have dictated a policy of containing revolution, preserving an open door for U.S. investment, and assuring favorable conditions of investment. Reformist efforts to improve the lot of the poor and oppressed, including the encouragement of independent trade unions, are not conducive to a favorable climate of investment. Democracy is clearly not conducive to a favorable business climate.”
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam – Gilles Kepel
“For the pious middle class and the intellectuals closest to them, shifting from Islamism to the search for a common ground with secular groups and democratic ideologues was rather easy. But the failure of the Islamist utopia as an ideology has not had the same consequences for the young urban poor and the radicalized thinkers and activists, and the challenge has been much harsher. The young urban poor had nothing to gain from any kind of alliance between the devout and secular middle classes. They could not identify with them, and did not care for their language and political or economic agendas. On the road to prosperity, their former allies passed them by without so much as a backward glance. Within this disenchanted mass, volatile feelings could quickly catch fire if ignited by the right spark.”
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – Jared Diamond
“Thus, an observer transported back in time to 11,000 B.C. could not have predicted on which continent human societies would develop most quickly, but could have made a strong case for any of the continents. With hindsight, of course, we know that Eurasia was the one. But it turns out that the actual reasons behind the more rapid development of Eurasian societies were not at all the straightforward ones that our imaginary archaeologists of 11,000 B.C. guessed…”
Consider Phlebas – Iain M. Banks
“The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines they had (at however great a remove) brought into being: the urge not to feel useless. The Culture’s sole justification for the relatively unworried, hedonistic life its population enjoyed was its good works; the secular evangelism of the Contact Section, not simply finding, cataloguing, investigating and analyzing other less advanced civilizations but–where the circumstances appeared to Contact to justify so doing–actually interfering (overtly or covertly) in the historical process of those other cultures. With a sort of apologetic smugness, Contact–and therefore the Culture–could prove statistically that such careful and benign use of “the technology of compassion” (to use a phrase in vogue at the time) did work, in the sense that the techniques it had developed to influence a civilization’s progress did significantly improve the quality of life of its members, without harming that society as a whole by its very contact with a more advanced culture.”
Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money – Saskia Sassen
“The new urban economy not only strengthens existing inequalities but sets in motion a whole series of new dynamics of inequality. The new growth sectors-specialized services and finance-contain capabilities for profit-making vastly superior to those of more traditional economic sectors. Many of the latter are essential to the operation of the urban economy and the daily needs of residents, but their profitable survival is threatened in a situation where finance and specialized services can earn superprofits.”
The Autobiography of Malcom X as told to Alex Haley
“I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being–neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being. I may say, though, that I don’t think it should ever be put upon a black, I don’t think the burden to defend any position should ever be put upon the black man, because it is the white man collectively who has shown that he is hostile toward integration and toward intermarriage and toward these other strides toward oneness. So as a black man and especially as as a black American, any stand that I formerly took, I don’t think that I would have to defend it because it’s still a reaction to the society, and it’s a reaction that was produced by the society, and it’s a reaction that was produced by the society; and I think that it is the society that produced this that should be attacked, not the reaction that develops among the people who are the victims of that negative society.”
Women, Race, and Class – Angela Davis
“If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war.”
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”
Three Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) – Liu Cixin
“Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.” & “In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.”
The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum o life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”
Healing the Heart of Democracy – Parker J. Palmer
“We suffer, ironically, from our indifference to those among us who suffer.”
The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future – Joseph E. Stiglitz
“Growing inequality, combined with a flawed system of campaign finance, risks turning America’s legal system into a travesty of justice. Some may still call it the “rule of law,” but in today’s America the proud claim of “justice for all” is being replaced by the more modest claim of “justice for those who can afford it.””
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
“You are wise.”
“No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
“Perhaps that is wisdom.”
“It is a very unattractive wisdom.” …
“What do you think of the war really?” I asked.
“I think it is stupid.”
“Who will win it?”
“Italy.”
“Why?”
“They are a younger nation.”
“Do younger nations always win wars?”
“They are apt to for a time.”
“Then what happens?”
“They become older nations.”
“You said you were not wise.”
“Dear boy, that is not wisdom. That is cynicism.”
War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft – Jennifer Harris, Robert Blackwill
“What, as a practical matter, would such a geoeconomic-centric U.S. foreign policy agenda specifically entail? What would it require? We believe it would be animated by the following presidential and congressional vision: U.S. foreign policy must be reshaped to address a world in which economic concerns often outweigh traditional military imperatives and where geoeconomic approaches are often the surest means of advancing American national interests. It must also systematically address the domestic economic sources of American power projection.”
Like Water on Stone – Dana Walrath
“We eagles sing no soothing songs.
Our throats can only whistle.
Instead, we hunt them down,
take them from others.”
Common Ground: A Global Poetry Anthology
“…that we will never float past each other
like oil and water, or space-men.
instead, our passion will burn of embers –
despite this dark starless circumstance.
and when I cannot stand your absence any longer, I shall throw
these embers into the sky so that they may stick there and
turn into starts to give you the light that will guide you back to
me.”
Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – Christine Caldwell Ames
“But, as we see in that passage, heresy had also become often attached to collective groupings that appear to be increasingly important in the late Middle Ages: nation, language, and even race. This doesn’t mean, as some historians used to argue, that many heresies were at heart social or national movements. It does mean that from the perspective of those people who defined heresy, or accused others of it, the groups to which people “naturally ” belonged – the language they spoke, the land in which they lived, the blood in their veins -intersected more often than they previously had with an identity as heretics…it’s clear that who people were replaced what people believed.”
The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World of Decline – Jonathan Tepperman
“In each case, such forbearance proved politically controversial. In some instances, taking the high road was emotionally traumatic; in others, it was merely unsatisfying. And in all of them, it made policymaking more difficult: it’s a lot easier to simply kill, incarcerate, or ignore your opponents than it is to deal with them in a just and open manner. But by refusing to respond to past crimes or to present problems through repressive means, these leaders helped entrench new sets of values, thereby contributing greatly to their countries’ subsequent stability and success.”
The Paradox of American Power – Joseph S. Nye Jr.
“Then there’s the connection between cultural divisions and our soft power. A decline in the quality of American cultural life could reduce our soft power if the bitterness of our family fights disgusted others, or if the overdramatization of our faults lead others to lower their respect for our national example…Even though we are doing better than in the past, we are not doing as well as we could or as some others are. Such comparisons can be costly for American soft power, but doubly so if they are exaggerated and amplified by American politicians and intellectuals seeking to score points in domestic battles.”
Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
“It occurred to her then that life was conical in shape, the past broadening beyond the sharp point of the lived moment. The more life you had, the more the base expanded, so that the wounds and treasons that were nearly imperceptible when they happened stretched like tiny dots on a balloon slowly blown up. A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges.”
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia – Pankaj Mishra
“White men, conscious of their burden, changed the world for ever, subjecting its great diversity to their own singular outlook and in the process reducing potentially rich encounters with other peoples and countries to monologues about the unassailable superiority of modern Western politics, economy, and culture. Successfully exporting its ideas to the remotest corners of the world, the West also destroyed native self-confidence, causing a political, economic and social desolation that can perhaps never by relieved by modernity alone.”
The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) – Liu Cixin
“The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers.”
Annihilation – Jeff VanderMeer
“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
Gilead -Marilynne Robinson
“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance – for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light …. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? …. Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
No Is Not Enough-Naomi Klein
“It means that, while our branded world can exploit the unmet need to be part of something larger than ourselves, it can’t fill it in any sustained way: you make a purchase to be part of a tribe, a big idea, a revolution, and it feels good for a moment, but the satisfaction wears off almost before you’ve thrown out the packaging for that new pair of sneakers, that latest model iPhone, or whatever the surrogate is. Then you have to find a way to fill the void again. It’s the perfect formula for endless consumption and perpetual self-commodification through social media, and it’s a disaster for the planet, which cannot sustain these levels of consumption.”
The Man Who Ended History-Ken Lui
“Yet, my grandfather was not a monster. He was simply a man of ordinary moral courage whose capacity for great evil was revealed to his and my everlasting shame. Labeling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one which has nothing to do with us. It cuts off the bonds of affection and fear, assures us of our own superiority, but there’s nothing learned, nothing gained. It’s simple, but it’s cowardly. I know now that only by empathizing with a man like my grandfather can we understand the depth of the suffering he caused. There are no monsters. The monster is us.”
Kindred-Octavia Butler
“Better to stay alive,” I said. “At least while there’s a chance to get free.” I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”
Humanity – Jonathan Glover
“Instead of attention being directed to people and what war would do to their lives, it was turned to the abstraction of the nation. The survival of the nation in the evolutionary struggle, the refusal to accept an insult to the nation, the avoidance of the nation being humiliated or dishonored, seemed of supreme importance. Nations as imaginary people were put before the real people who made them up.”
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
“I came,” she said, “hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.”Cherish it!” cried Hilarious, fiercely. “What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it’s little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”
Stories of Mr. Keuner – Bertolt Brecht
“What are you working on?” Mr. K. was asked. Mr. K. replied: “I’m having a hard time; I’m preparing my next mistake.”
Always Coming Home – Ursula K. Le Guin
“Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.”
Water Ceremony – Devin Choudhury
“When my mom was alive she told me that love works best when it’s like a railroad and each person is a rail, two people who run next to each other and occasionally support some huge weight that pushes them both down but they keep running and eventually end, together the whole time but never leaning on each other, never cutting in front of each other, the end coming at the same time and in the same breath.”
Upstream – Mary Oliver
“And this is also true. In creative work–creative work of all kinds–those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook–a different set of priorities. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tryant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.”
Devotion – Patty Smith
“Why do I write? My finger, as a stylus, traces the question in the blank air. A familiar riddle posed since youth, withdrawing from play, comrades and the valley of love, girded with words, a beat outside. Why do we write? A chorus erupts. Because we cannot simply live.”

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