Gerard Manley Hopkins | Article
A poem that says everything about why mashed-up things are more beautiful than straightforward things. Exactly what I think about culture …
Bob Marley | Listen
If I started a new country, this would be our national anthem.
Jeremy Rifkin | TarcherPerigee, 2009 | Book
To cheer you up when you’re wondering why the whole world seems so selfish these days: it’s not true. Human beings are fundamentally empathic, and this book proves it.
Bob Altemeyer | Book
A fascinating but very readable study of the personality type that tends to produce despotic governments. And it’s a free download.
Kwame Anthony Appiah | W. W. Norton & Company, 2007 | Book
This is a truly refreshing read in the current climate of inward-looking, backward-looking, put-up-a-wall-and-keep-out-the-foreigners selfishness. A wonderful guide to the ethical and practical issues of living in a multicultural world.
Henri Troyat | Grove Press, 2001 | Book
The only biography I’ve read that’s not only as good as a novel but actually as good as its subject’s novels.
Karl Marx | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010 | Book
I’m proud to say that my politics are neither left-wing, right-wing nor centrist, and I’m certainly no socialist, but you can’t fail to be touched by the goodness of the human spirit when you read this – and equally dismayed when you think about what it all led to.
Lafcadio Hearn | Dodo Press, 2007 | Book
A largely forgotten author, Hearn has always seemed to me to be the perfect model of cultural sensitivity and unprejudiced openness to new cultural experiences.
Oliver Sacks | Book
A fascinating journey into the overlap between neuroscience and music.
Tove Jansson | Book
If you have children, don’t deny them Moomins. It’s gentle Nordic madness that will kindle their sense of magic.
Martin Wolfe | Yale University Press, 2005 | Book
Not a quick or easy read, but a masterful summary of the processes of globalization. Angry anti-globalists will find it makes them angrier, but they can always put it down.