I've Been Tagged!

by Liberty and Power

As Aeon Skoble pointed out (thank you Aeon), I completely missed the point of what it meant to be tagged! John Moser over at No Left Turns awarded me that honor. Let me answer in kind.

How many books do I own? I have no idea. Probably three thousand, divided about equally between home and work.

2. What’s the last book I bought? Myrlie Evers, The Autobiography of Medgar Evers . Actually, the publisher sent it to me because of my bio (co-authored with Linda Royster Beito) of Evers’ mentor, T.R.M. Howard.

3. What’s the last book I read? Thomas Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy.

4. What are the five books that mean the most to me? This is a tough one.

Some of these books are currently are on mind as important...so my answer may be quite different a year from now. I am including For A New Liberty because of the tremendous influence it had on my political development.

Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of the Great American Cities .

Jeffrey Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men .

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .

Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty .

David E. Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress .

I will tag Tom G. Palmer , David Hart , Jeffrey Hummel , Matt Barganier , and John Majewski .

More Comments:

Tom G Palmer - 6/14/2005

At http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/021721.php

So far, Christoph Sprich (http://www.sprich.net/ABOUT/CURRICULUM/TAGGED/tagged.html) has responded. (Scott Campbell of Blithering Bunny [http://www.blitheringbunny.com/] declined on principle, but was happy for the publicity.)

Matt Barganier - 6/13/2005

1. How many books do you own? I'm not much of a collector, and I've always made good use of libraries. Around 400.

2. Last book I bought: The People’s Pottage by Garet Garrett. I had read these essays online, but I came across an old copy last week on sale for a few bucks.

3. Last book you read: Lapsing Into a Comma : A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print – and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: These are not “bests” or favorites. In order to make the selection more manageable, I decided to choose five books that significantly altered my way of thinking or that presented issues I had not much pondered before. As a result, they're all books I first read before the age of 21. I'll probably kick myself later for forgetting something obvious.

Will by G. Gordon Liddy. Some of my other picks may be common, but I'm absolutely certain this one's unique. I read this autobiography by the talk radio host and Watergate conspirator when I was 12, shortly after finishing 1984. What a page-turner! Liddy proudly recounts animal-torture, self-electrocution, self-burning, assassination-plotting, and a thousand more crimes and perversions than you'd find in a dozen Hollywood memoirs. And this wasn't just some goon Nixon found on skid row, but an attorney and "civil servant" who almost won a seat in Congress. Anarchism, here I come.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins

5. Tag 5 people: I tag my fellow bloggers at Antiwar.com who haven't yet been tagged, plus Justin Logan, if he hasn't answered this already.