Michael Malice booklist

Easily my favourite rat bastard among many is Michael Malice (no relation).

On Episodes 11 and 16 [and, later, 27] of his chat show “YOUR WELCOME” (sic), Malice provided a list of variously his “favourite” books or books one ought to read.

(RSS [or just of those episodes].)

1. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

2. Not Robert Caro’s books on Lyndon Johnson, as suggested by a caller and summarily rejected

3. “If you are right of centre, this is downright pornography”: Thatcher: The Downing Street Years (YouTubé)

4. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; Gulag: A History; Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

5. “I would say this trio are the redpill trio”:

   1. The Blank Slate

   2. The Righteous Mind

   3. The Idea of Decline in Western History

6. Within the Frederick Copleston nine-volume history of philosophy, Volume 7: The Germans (not its actual title); also From Luther to Hitler; Max Sterner, The Ego and Its Own (“you like his tone because it’s very fuck-you and, you know, just very fuck-everybody”).

   “God, I have a lot of German books on this list. That’s interesting”

7. “This is a must”: John Patrick Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America

8. Albert Camus, The Rebel and The Myth of Sisyphus (also his biography [“I’m blanking on the author”]): “how intensely he believed in doing the right thing no matter what the costs are”

9. Auschwitz (mentioned on both episodes, complete with the same anecdote)

10. Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy

11. A Government of Our Own and An Hono[u]rable Defeat

12. The Illusion of Victory: The True Costs of War

13. Tokyo Vice: “A lot of people I know who might or might not be on the spectrum just don’t like fiction. So a good nonfiction book reads like a novel. And this is one”

14. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Thurston (“A very admirable human being”): Her era “was when downtown whites – leftists – found black people interesting, and as soon as the Depression hit they threw them in the garbage. So it’s a fascinating look at that time”

15. Intellectuals and Society by “the best conservative writer, in my view,” Thomas Sowell. (“Isn’t that a terrible cover?”)

16. Mapplethorpe: A Biography “because at different points he’s super-racist.” “At the time, photography was not regarded as something that could be art. It was regarded as… I dunno”

17. What a Plant Knows

18. Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship: “yet you never hear about Regan and Thatcher winning the Cold War and liberating half the world peacefully, which I would say may be the greatest achievement ever.” (Two citations of Thatcher, but none of Claire Berlinski on Thatcher)

19. David Pietrusza, 1948

20. Luc Santé, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York: “he talks about all these people who, if conservatives had their way, wouldn’t even be mentioned at all”

21. The Death and Life of Great American Cities

22. A Renegade History of the United States and A History of the American People (Paul Johnson)

23. Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers

24. Steven Goldberg, Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance

25. Camille Paglia: “She doesn’t have any really accessible books. She’s a great, great talker” (but cf. her disco-classics list)

26. Rise of the Warrior Cop

27. The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism

28. The Closing of the Western Mind

29. Henry Mayer, All on Fire

30. The Liberal Reformers (“and the second half is terrible”); not apparently the exact title

31. Amy Borkowsky, Statements: “a ‘humour’ book – in form, it is ‘humorous.’ But as you read it, there is no humour there. It is perfectly humourless even though it is purporting to be a humour book”

32. Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son (“and this book is beautifully written”)

33. Ayn Rand: “you have to read her books in order or you are going to be a very bad person” (Anthem, The Fountainhead, then Atlas Shrugged), all of which you can easily look up yourself

34. Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 “goes through every environmental claim ever, using government data, and shows they’re all bullshit”

35. (UPDATE) On Episode 27, Malice interviewed Edward Stringham, whose books Anarchy and the Law and Private Governance Malice also recommended

See also

• Harvey Pekar and illustrator Gary Dumm documented Malice’s early life in Ego & Hubris – itself now a collector’s item, though easily borrowed from the library.

• Are Michael Malice better than other people? (Yes.)