Mike's recommended reading list

So I'm trolling the images section and come across this meme:

And then it hits me, its time to write a post on recommended books

You've got to read!

Something I'm very guilty of is trying to figure things out on my own. There have been billions of humans through history, of which many thousands have written a lot of great books, and so many of the answers you are looking for have great starting solutions that have already been written down! In the case of the meme, John Taylor Gatto has exhaustively detailed the players behind modern schooling, and where they discuss the agenda in their own writing. You could spend years trying to figure it out, but if you read the Underground History of American Education, you can have the first years of basic understanding knocked out in a day.

These books are the "starter pack" I encourage everyone to read, and by "encourage" I mean that I have bought and given out 5-10 copies each. I recommend these because some are the "cheat sheet" to much of life, some are inspiring, and some are great just for a different perspective on life. I go through these by author - usually you "read authors."

John Taylor Gatto

Weapons of Mass Instruction
A Different Kind of Teacher

I would say the first book is Gatto describing the "problem," and the second is him describing the "solution" in regards to learning how to self-educate. What always strikes me about these books is how he goes around the curriculum and instead explains how the school environment itself is the main influence in schooling. Few or no windows, different topics every hour whether you like it or not, isolation from people of other ages... all of these factors come together to create a spiritually isolating environment. He nails every bit of it, how to spot in yourself, and how to "unschool" your way out.

The Underground History of American Education

This one is the "academic read," but the level of detail and the sourcing he does is incredible. We talk about "corporations" wanting to train students to only love to work, but he finds the exact industrialists and philosophers, their clubs and organizations, and in some cases he even explains where to find the meeting minutes where they discussed the creation of the modern public schooling system. This one is a true case of falling down the rabbit hole.

Christopher Alexander

The Timeless Way of Building

Gatto deals specifically with schools and how educational environments affect you, but Alexander, an architect, shows how every building and landscape affects your daily living. He also goes into great detail about living and dead design, and "dead" spaces are the reason why, for example, one edge of your dining room table seems to always have a pile of stuff on it, your neighbors never seem to talk to each other, or why certain buildings or streets just look ugly, whereas you also find older parts of a town or city that are absolutely beautiful.

He also lays out the basic thinking that is necessary to create living space on your own property, and when combining this with the natural building crowd, I think we can achieve "environmental friendliness" with almost no cost by just letting people live naturally, and teaching them to build life-giving environments.

John T Reed

How to Get Started in Real Estate Investing

While the title says "real estate," this decidedly expensive book's value comes from the section on goals. This guy has coached real estate investors for decades, some people get into the market for the stupidest reasons, and his discussion of those reasons apply way beyond real estate. Also, the reading is at times hilarious.

Succeeding
How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Own How-To Book

Reed has an incredibly strong no-nonsense, do what works attitude in all of his writing, and these two books are great reads because of it. In the first, he talks about something present in every book, "little old me-ism," and how to first overcome it, and then using the alternative, "all they can say is no-ism," to do such feats as sneaking kids into Ivy league school programs by skipping admission and going through athletics, ditching publishers and Amazon and making more money with more freedom, among many other things.

In the second book, he gives practical means of taking something you know and turning into an income stream that will pay some of your bills. I applied the concepts to my software business, and it went from hobby to part-time work in a year, and with the next project I might have full-time income without the 9-to-5. Maybe I'll be coding out of the back of a short bus while hanging with @AnonFPV or one of the other great #vanlife #digitalnomads on Minds.

Fun fact, my blog writing structure comes directly from the second book listed. The numerous headers and shortened paragraphs have a purpose: buy the book and find out why.

What books do you like?

This blog covers my "starter education" books I like to recommend, and I might follow up with some more books on other topics. I'd love to see what books you like, and I might just check a few of them out.

Books really are the shortcut to wisdom - you get to have conversations with authors from many times and places, and the the moment they most wanted to speak (write), and at the moment you most want to engage.