JON'S WINTER READING LIST

I was sitting around my sister's kitchen table, with one of my nieces and a nephew, late this summer.  Somewhere in a discussion, I mentioned how a friend, decades ago, had made me a list of ten books to read, labeled Jimmy's Summer Reading List.  My nephew sat up and said, "I'd like to have a 'Jimmy's Summer Reading list!"  OK, Jon, several months late, but here you go. 
 
Jon's request was to keep it short and to lean toward non-fiction.  But, where to start?  Where to stop?  And I love fiction.  Also, I like historical fiction and believe sometimes you learn more there than from volumes of dry scholarship.  I made two lists, one fiction and one non-fiction.  So, as Rod Serling would have said, "presented, for your consideration...  "
 
FICTION

1. 1984   George Orwell
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin     Harriet Beecher Stowe
3. Lincoln      Gore Vidal
4. Watership Down     Richard Adams
5. A Tale of Two Cities     Charles Dickens
6. Johnny Got His Gun     Dalton Trumbo
7. Cat's Cradle     Kurt Vonnegut
8. Grapes of Wrath     John Steinbeck
9. Trinity     Leon Uris
10. The Fountainhead     Ayn Rand

NON-FICTION
 

1. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee     Dee Brown
2. Roots     Alex Haley
3. Saving Capitalism     Robert Reich
4. Gulag Archipelago     Alexander Solzhenitzen
5. Hitler:  A Study in Tyranny     Allan Bullock
6. The Story of the World's Great Thinkers     Ernest R. Trattner
7. The Brethren     Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong
8. The Mainspring of Human Progress     Henry Grady Weaver
9. A People's History of the United States     Howard Zinn
10. Silent Spring     Rachel Carson

Well, this should start some arguments.  I've read thousands of books, and was surprised how hard it was to just pull 10-20 to the fore.  These are not presented in any order.  They are not lists of my favorite books, nor of what I think are the "best" books.  Jon asked for books he "should read".  I attempted to list books I thought everybody should have as general knowledge.  Also, that I could think of, on a Saturday afternoon!  Some probably need some explanation.
 
I didn't read Uncle Tom's Cabin until I was several decades into adulthood.  The term "Uncle Tom" has taken on such negative connotations in the last 50 years, that I was surprised at what a powerful story it is.  I was angry reading it.  No wonder Abe Lincoln, and others, referred to it as the book that started the war.  It paints a searing picture of terrorism and of courage under seige.
 
I have read, and re-read, Lincoln many times.  I love Gore Vidal.  I read this years before Doris Kearnes Goodman published her non-fiction Team of Rivals.  I  was startled to realize that I knew the entire story in detail.  I learned nothing from her book, that I did not already know from Vidal's novel.  And his is more fun!
 
Watership Down is still my favorite book, of all time.  Period.
 
Leon Uris sometimes gets knocked but I think Trinity is a great introduction to Irish history and the background to The Troubles. 
 
The Fountainhead is not great literature.  But, I think Atlas Shrugged is wretched.  So, given Ayn Rand's influence over our current ruling party's ideology, this is a window into her philosophy/ideology of Objectivism.  At least it's a novel, with a story, as opposed to her non-fiction propaganda. 
 
I haven't read the Trattner book, since I was in grade school.  My father had it on our bookshelf.  It was my introduction to Copernicus, Malthus, Darwin, Marx and others.
 
The Mainspring of Human Progress was included with a folder of pamphlets and booklets, that one of my uncles sent me.  I never met him.  Our only communication, that I remember, was this one mailing that I received, when I was about ten.  A folder of free market/capitalist propaganda, from the American Enterprise Institute!
 
Silent Spring is the one book on the lists I have not read.  It's on my winter reading list.