Often I am asked for recommendations on books to read, and usually, I tailor them to the person asking. But there are some books I recommend repeatedly, so here we are: about to talk about reading some non-fiction books.

My first suggestion with non-fiction is to throw self-help books out the window. They prey on our desire to feel productive but often achieve little more than being entertaining. Regardless of the advice, they leave the reader feeling good about themselves for completing the book and excited to improve their lives. But usually, that's where "progress" stops.

Furthermore, rereading is a normal part of learning. If you find yourself rereading sentences, paragraphs, pages, or entire chapters to better understand what the author is saying, there's nothing wrong with you. It sure as hell isn't because you're too "stupid" to understand the book or have a learning difficulty. You're simply engaging in this thing called learning, and it can be challenging.

Similarly, it's up to the reader to engage themselves in the book. A book's quality has nothing to do with whether it can suck you in like a TikTok compilation binge. Books that are written to entertain you are going to be more fluff than substance almost every time. These books spend a lot of time making you feel good about what you're doing and taking you on an emotional journey more than teaching you something. More often than not, they could have gotten their point across with 20% of the words but don't.

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

The Dictator's Handbook is an excellent introduction to thinking about politics and politicians beyond the black-and-white framing of good and evil. These are essential insights because the media sensationalises politics to distract us from the consequences of political decisions and uses our tendency to think individually to convince us who is right and wrong for their own benefit.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita also wrote the more general Prediction: How to See and Shape the Future with Game Theory which is also an excellent read. But I'm recommending The Dictator's Handbook for its focus on politics and despite the writing being more engaging than one might expect for such content.

Debt: The First 5000 Years

David Graeber is more well-known for Bullshit Jobs, which is definitely worth a read. But if we want to question what we already know, look no further than Debt: The First 5000 Years.

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media

Did I mention that the media sensationalises politics? Well, that's just getting started with the media. But I defer to my betters yet again with a recommendation for this book by Parenti.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky is another good book on the topic. However, Inventing Reality is much more explicit and unforgiving in the best way possible.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I enjoy discussing political economy and how the currently dominant economic system affects us individually. However, it's not an easy topic to get into. So before we dive into the heavy stuff, I recommend entering the "let's critically view capitalism" zone with Capitalist Realism. It's an extremely short book but serves as an excellent contemporary primer regarding where we're at, pointing out where the problems truly lie, and so on.

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy

Capital is one of the best examples of a series of incredibly lengthy books, but where each sentence is exceptionally dense in content, without the fluff seen in many other books. It builds on what Marx talked about in Value, Price and Profit, which itself is part of his work in improving the economic analyses of those such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo a century earlier.

It goes without saying that if you get through volume 1, it's worth picking up 2 and 3. Of particular note is how Marx addresses the finance sector in the third volume, which tends to be a gotcha for those who argue against his analysis.

Please, sir, I want some more

The Lie Behind the Lie Detector by George W. Maschke and Gino J. Scalabrini is thought-provoking whether or not you've put much thought into whether or not lie detectors actually achieve what they're supposed to.

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson is an entertaining look into the absurdity of some of the more family-friendly experiments by the US Army. His other books vibe similarly in a fun fashion, such as The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry.

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror by Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong is arguably necessary reading, even if it doesn't go as far as it easily could. The paper Unmaking an exception: A critical genealogy of US exceptionalism by David Hughes is worth tracking down for more on this topic.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels is as the title describes: a concise walk through history for some of the necessary context for understanding modern political economy.

Towards a New Socialism and How the World Works: The Story of Human Labor from Prehistory to the Modern Day by Paul Cockshott are two more books for continuing down the political economic path. He also has a YouTube channel where you'll find his relatively unique programmer-based perspective.

And there we have it: an incomplete list of some books I recommend reading.