Two years later, “List-mus Test: How Well-Read Are You?” remains one of the most frequently visited posts out of the nearly 200 on this blog. So when a recent article in the Guardian entitled “The 100 greatest non-fiction books” came to my attention, I couldn’t help but think, “hey, it worked once.”

All I’m going to do here is chip in my variously silly reactions to selected items on the list. There’s no reason for me to re-post the entire list — you can peruse it on the Guardian’s site easily enough. To count up how many on the list you’ve read is a natural curiosity, but the tally doesn’t mean anything. The article contains no hint whatsoever that anyone might be expected to have read all 100 titles; on the contrary, the books’ categorization by subject accounts for readers’ varying areas of interest.

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari (1550). Biography mixes with anecdote in this Florentine-inflected portrait of the painters and sculptors who shaped the Renaissance.

“Most excellent,” huh? Maybe Bill and Ted really did go back in time.

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (1976). Argues that the darkness of fairy tales offers a means for children to grapple with their fears.

Doesn’t seem like it’s caught on, when you consider that a mere 15 years later we were all the way to those precious “Baby on Board” signs in car windows. Thank God those are over, because even the memory of them makes me want to yell “read Bettelheim, you fucking yuppies!”

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782). Rousseau establishes the template for modern autobiography with this intimate account of his own life.

Ooh, the first scandalous tell-all. Even the title sounds ready for a cover story in People and a sober-but-softsoapy sit-down on Oprah.

The Symposium by Plato (ca 380 BC). A lively dinner-party debate on the nature of love.

They make Ancient Greek philosophy sound like a new comedy by Nora Ephron. It’s Ancient Greece, though, so it must have been all dudes… not so much a dinner party as a sausage-fest. OK then, take two: they make Ancient Greek philosophy sound like a new play by Terrence McNally.

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621). An examination of all human culture through the lens of melancholy.

Just the thing for anyone looking for a nice little put-me-down after the froth of Plato’s “Symposium.”

Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes (1641). Doubting everything but his own existence, Descartes tries to construct God and the universe.

Wow. Just when I thought we’d become the most self-centered people in history, Descartes exposes us as mere dilettantes. In other news, I just realized that the Guardian’s format for the list items — title, name (year) & one sentence summation — is making their canon of great non-fiction remind me of an on-screen TV guide.

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859). Mill argues that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

Aw, shit — Mill is a definitively liberal philosopher, but their little out-of-context quote makes him sound like Rand Paul! How dare they abuse my man Mill like that. Now I’m in a bad mood.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1883). The invalid Nietzsche proclaims the death of God and the triumph of the Ubermensch.

Well, good thing no one in Germany took this one the wrong w-… uh, never mind.

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532). Machiavelli injects realism into the study of power, arguing that rulers should be prepared to abandon virtue to defend stability.

Fuck you, Machiavelli — you’re wronger than wrong (unless you meant it as a satire, which I don’t think you did). As long as we’re on the subject, when the hell are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bybee, Yoo et al. going to get prosecuted? (Bad mood: sustaining)

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791). A hugely influential defence of the French revolution, which points out the illegitimacy of governments that do not defend the rights of citizens.

Okay, now we’re talking. (Bad mood: waning)

The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan (1967). This bestselling graphic popularisation of McLuhan’s ideas about technology and culture was cocreated with Quentin Fiore.

If you know me well, then you know there’s only one place my mind could go with this.

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988). Chomsky argues that corporate media present a distorted picture of the world, so as to maximise their profits.

With all due respect to Chomsky: DUH! By “duh” I specifically mean, does anybody deny the truth of this by now? Anyone? Because anyone who does is either 1) selling something, or 2) an imbecile.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859). Darwin’s account of the evolution of species by natural selection transformed biology and our place in the universe.

If the Guardian were an American newspaper, it would have had to be prepared to take a lot of shit for its perceived endorsement of Darwin. That fact makes me profoundly sad and even bitter. The willful ignorance of a portion of conservatives — and worse yet, the mostly-tacit condoning thereof by principle-free politicians — encapsulates the menace of creeping idiocracy.

Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus (1511). This satirical encomium to the foolishness of man helped spark the Reformation with its skewering of abuses and corruption in the Catholic church.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: satire may well be our only salvation.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966). A novelistic account of a brutal murder [near] Kansas City, which propelled Capote to fame and fortune.

Hey — one I’ve actually read!

In 2010 The Daily Show also continued to do one of the things it has done brilliantly for several years: point out and mock people who claim to be oppressed, but clearly aren’t. Examples of such people might include certain investment bankers, Christian mega-churches, professional athletes, or many others that generally have it pretty good. In the case of my number six video of 2010, this treatment is given to a richly deserving group: middle-aged white men.²

Samantha Bee, the Daily Show correspodent in this segment, has long been one of my favorites. She had a few things of her own going on in 2010, most notably the publication of her memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You? Her promotion of the book included a wide-ranging interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and a cute feature piece in the New York Times Magazine. Daily Show video clips featuring her are here; among those that especially crack my shit up are “Shame Parade,” “John McCain’s Air Quotes” (start at about 2:03 into the clip), and “Long Island Wants to Secede.”

photo: Aude/Wikimedia Commons

He was later made Special Adviser to the President on cybersecurity, but resigned from the G.W. Bush administration in 2003. A year later Clarke testified before the 9/11 Commission; the Bush White House, knowing that his testimony would reveal their fuck-ups, undertook one of their trademark Karl Rove-style campaigns of character assassination. Some would disagree, but I believe an objective eye would conclude that the smear tactics damaged the Bush administration’s credibility far more than Clarke’s.

These days, Clarke runs a security consulting firm and serves as an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. This past Monday he was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, principally about his new book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.¹ After describing the serious threat posed by internet-based attacks, Clarke had this to say about the present state of our defenses against such attacks:

CLARKE: …Now, who’s defending us? Who’s defending those pipelines and those railroads and the banks? The Obama Administration’s answer pretty much is, “You’re on your own.” [The Pentagon's] Cyber Command will defend our military. Homeland Security will someday have the capability to defend the rest of the civilian government — it doesn’t today. But everybody else will have to do their own defense.

That is a formula that will not work in the face of sophisticated threats.

GROSS: When you’re saying everybody else is on their own, does that include the electricity grid, the power grid, banking…?

CLARKE: Yes. What the Obama Administration is saying, and what the Bush people said before that, is, “The private sector doesn’t want the government defending it. The private sector doesn’t want the government telling it what to do. Therefore we will have, sort of, vague guidelines that suggest what the electric power grid should do, but we won’t really go out and do anything.” And if an attack happens, the government has no ability to stand up and do anything about saving the power grid.

GROSS: Why not?

CLARKE: Because of this philosophy that the government shouldn’t be defending the private sector, and a belief that the private sector doesn’t want to be defended by the government. Now, I think that belief is wrong. When I talk to CEO’s in the private sector, they say, “Heck, this is why I pay my taxes!” No one would have said in World War II, to U.S. Steel, “You’ve got some big steel factories in Pittsburgh. If the Nazi bombers come over, you’d better have some of your own guns to shoot them down.”

Sure, the CEO’s want their systems to be protected by the government — hell, I want our infrastructure protected by the government. Clarke’s only mistake here is to whom he ascribes the belief in this ludicrous no-defense philosophy: that mindset comes from the knee-jerk conservative teabaggers and the politicians on that bandwagon. The Obama White House is apparently too scared of being called “Big Government” or being accused of “taking over” private industry by crowds of morons carrying misspelled signs with Lipton teabags stapled to them.

photo: Flickr/Pargon

Terry Gross finished out the interview with a further query to Clarke regarding the current foaming-at-the-mouth political atmosphere. She pointed out that the day they were taping the interview (April 19) was the anniversary of the starting of the American Revolution with the battles of Lexington and Concord, but more ominously, also the anniversary of the end of the siege at Waco and of the Oklahoma City bombing. She asked Clarke what his feelings were about there being, as they spoke, several well-publicized anti-government rallies taking place, including one in Virginia with a pro-second-amendment emphasis to which attendees were urged to bring their guns.

CLARKE: Most of us who own guns are perfectly normal human beings who have those guns for legitimate reasons. But there is a small percentage of people who own guns that I find very scary, and they are the ideological remnants of the Ku Klux Klan, and the ideological remnants of the John Birch Society.

Throughout our history we’ve had right-wing people who say they don’t like the U.S. Government, they want to take down the U.S. Government, they think violence against the U.S. Government is OK. Since the election of Barack Obama these people have grown in volume, and I think they’ve grown in number. We have to remember, when we worry about Al-Qaida and foreign threats, that the second-largest and second-most destructive terrorist attack in our history, inside our borders, was done by these people. American, extreme right-wing, anti-government, violent people.

I think the United States has a serious threat today from those people, because legitimate public officials are egging them on. Legitimate public officials who are conservative, and who are Republican, aren’t criticizing them, or aren’t criticizing them enough. We need to de-legitimize these people, or we will have another Oklahoma City.

Storm Large’s recordings are available at Amazon and CDBaby. Her Facebook fan page is here, her YouTube channel is here, and the one-stop destination for all things Storm is stormlarge.com. Coolest of all, check her out at iheartgretchenlowell.com where she appears as the visual embodiment of the “Beauty Killer” Gretchen Lowell, the character at the center of a series of best-selling thrillers by my friend Chelsea Cain.

Since it’s my number one video of the year, including the “8 Miles Wide” credits seems only proper.

1. Curious George and Daddy’s Browser History
2. Little House on the Auction Block
3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. When Are You Going to Get a Fucking Cell Phone?
   
4. Freaky Friday the 13th: Jason Learns to Appreciate His Mother
5. Frog and Toad Are Friends With Benefits
6. Island of the Blue Dog Democrats
7. Everybody Poops (But only Rush Limbaugh Does It Into a Microphone and Calls It Political Discourse)

If I come up with more that I like, I’ll add them here (and on my Twitter page, of course).

How about it? You guys got any good ones burning a hole in your keyboard?