Rather than recreate or try to re-import a ton of the old book reviews, I’ll use this page to create a list of favorites with some brief reasoning. The list probably won’t even be all CS Lewis, and will grow with time.
Like the reviews, links may lead to a small commission, which, in turn, may lead to better reviews, recommendations, and perhaps even better life choices.
In no particular order. Except the first one.
Pilgrim’s Regress, CS Lewis. His first book after his conversion. Intensely allegorical. One of those few books that has some deeper meaning to a section every time you read it.
Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan. Link is to an updated/modernized version (because the original was from 1678) of the book and author that inspired CS Lewis for the above book.
Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang. Memoir about the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So, so many parallels to many of today’s social movements. Should be a mandated read along with the following Orwell books.
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell. A dystopian about a government that will go to any lengths to control a narrative? Sounds familiar.
Animal Farm, George Orwell. Society’s march toward totalitarianism, where all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Also oddly familiar, no?
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, multiple authors and translators. This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres.
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Written by Soviet dissident who constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner. The proof of communism’s effects, directly.
How to Lie with Statistics, Darrell Huff. Not a guide on how to, but a guide to help you detect and see how statistics are very often misused and abused…on purpose. Written in the 50s, but could just have easily been written last year…but probably not written as well.
Unoffendable, Brant Hansen. A radical, provocative idea: We’re not entitled to get offended or stay angry. Turns out that giving up your “right” to be offended can be one of the most freeing things you can do.
In honor of Charlie Kirk
The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth