Introductory

The convention is to write a post introducing yourself. I've been struggling with an approach to doing that. I could write about my life - where I've been, what I've done, but that's a long way around to ultimately communicating very little of substance. For what I've been and done is largely conditioned by how I've been educated, and the most important parts of that education consists of what I've read on my own, and not what I've learned in school. So herewith is simply a list of the most significant books I've read. There are many others that mean much to me, but in the interests of brevity I will only list the top:

A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher. I found this on the discard table at the college bookstore when I was a freshman and bought it for 10 cents. It really was a life changing read. Schumacher's opening chapter described my situation perfectly, and I realized for the first time I wasn't alone:

It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Soren Kierkegaard. Schumacher gave me the courage to think for myself, but I really didn't know how to think for myself until I read Kierkegaard.

Philosophical Fragments by Soren Kierkegaard. Finally I began to understand what Christianity was really about.

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. Penetrating analysis of contemporary culture.

Collected Dialogues of Plato by Plato. Regular reading of Plato is the best way to keep a sharp mind.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. Reading this book made me permanently hooked on Chesterton. His analysis of the significance of fairy tales helped give me the determination to consistently read the tales to my children when they were small. This book also formed the foundation for my visceral revulsion to the Harry Potter books, but that's a larger story.

Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. If you want to understand the modern world, Kant is a necessity. We are all Kantians by cultural osmosis.

Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James. I'm not a big fiction reader.  I've read some Agatha Christie and, when I want light reading, some contemporary mystery novels by the likes of Michael Connelly. But I love the classic ghost stories, and M.R. James is unsurpassed. 

The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. I became a Civil War buff after visiting Gettysburg at age 8. This book has been on my bedside table ever since.

The City of Man by Pierre Manent. Penetrating insight into the philosophical condition of modern man.

The New Testament. I am convinced of its truth because the story has such a depth of revolutionary meaning that I don't think anyone could have made it up.