As a kid, I remember staring at the detailed battle illustrations in Catton’s “Golden Book” for hours. When I was eight years old, my family drove from California to the East Coast and visited Gettysburg and other Civil War battlegrounds – I remember wanting to chat constantly during one battleground visit and my Dad, a Navy veteran from a career Navy family, telling me to be silent and listen with reverence . . . a transformational moment in my life.

The next one was Nicolo Machiavelli’s Discourses which was part of the Modern Library edition of the The Prince and the Discourses. My maternal grandfather turned me on to that one.

In high school I discovered Walter Langland’s The Vision of Piers the Plowman which led me to the fourteen century English mystics, especially the anonomyous The Cloud of Unknowing and Hilton’s The Ladder of Perfection. These led to Wakeman’s The History of the Church of England. This lead to reading John Jewel’s Apology for the Church of England, Richard Hooker’s The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and the works of Andrewes, Donne and Laud. But the best was George Herbert’s A Priest to the Temple.

All of the above brought me to C. S. Lewis, and while I appreciate his Mere Christianity, my favorites are his novels, That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces. The latter is particularly powerful. But Lewis leads you to the Inklings, i.e., Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien, but also to Dorothy Sayers whose translation of Dante’s Comedia and the Song of Roland are among my all time favorites. Her mystery novels and plays, especially the radio play, The Man Born To Be King, are excellent.

When it comes to American political works, I prefer the writings of the anti-federalists to those of the federalists, but believe that all of both should be required reading in school.

I am a great fan of Madilene L’Engle’s childrens books and was lucky enough to be at the breakfast table when John Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux took it f rom her hands to publish it. I have given them with Lewis’s Narnia books to all of my grandchildren. But even more is Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons with its sequels. They are wonderful.

From time to time my dad told us stories he had heard, the cruelty of which was incomprehensible.

The Diary Of Anne Frank was published when I was about 10 or 12. This was another eye opening book that most of my classmates and myself read without being told to.

you are raising a prodigy…

I asked him once why he liked to read an atlas more than other books. He just looked at me like I had six heads and said “it’s a good idea to know where the road goes.”

Everything else is just drek and I had to stop a couple books from where they are now. I couldn’t stomach anymore.

The entire Dune series, including the three prequels are wonderful.

I now consider it the MUST READ book of our time.

and, let me say, i am happy to see watership down on several lists here….every day, i am tempted to shout “silflay hraka, u embleer rah!” at the television…..

i would like to add a few strange ones now….here they are:

the last unicorn – peter s beagle

the book of the dun cow – walter wangerin jr

jane eyre – charlotte bronte

and finally…. terry pratchett’s disc world series…..the early ones are just silly, but the later ones ROCK…..

also, i am one of at least four people i know who are currently re-reading, or re-re-reading etc atlas shrugged….why, i do not know, it’s not like i need help getting aggravated these days……

………………:)

Another powerful book of his was Mila 18 about the Warsaw ghetto during WWII… like Exodus that made an impact on my thinking.