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Ancients/primary sources: Augustine's City of God, Plutarch's Lives, Herodotus, Justin Martyr's apology, Vergil's Aeneid.
Current/secondary sources: the Weigel canon, Thomas Woods's How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Henri Daniel-Rops bookshelf-length history of the Church, Philip Hughes three-volume history of the Church, the essays of Theodore Dalrymple, an issue of The New Criterion, Wheelock's Latin, Butler's Lives of the Saints, David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Salt of the Earth.
Lots of stuff between those epochs that I've missed, e.g., Dante's Divine Comedy, the U.S. Constitution, The Federalist Papers, etc.
Rich Leonardi |
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05.31.06 - 7:40 pm | #
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What a coincidence! I read Canticle for the (third?) time on the flight home. It may well be my favorite novel. Of course, DTF is on that short list. Hmm, seems like a disturbing trend. Any other novels of the fall of civilzation you can recommend?
And, hello all from Florida!
Marcvs The Bard |
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06.01.06 - 8:04 am | #
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Marcvs:
Congrats again--hope you can stand a non-dry heat. 
Oh, the recommendations:
I strongly recommend "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank. Especially since you now reside in Florida--Good post-nuke story set in the FL.
If you can find it (long out of print), "Down To A Sunless Sea" is a gripping nuclear war novel told from the perspective of a pilot on an airliner over the Atlantic. Especially daunting as the captain and crew hear about the death of civilization via radio.
"The Last Ship" is a similar tale, only told by the captain of an American guided missile destroyer. A little verbose about Men And The Sea, but good.
Jerry Pournelle's There Will Be War anthologies have two volumes devoted to the Apocalypse and post-apoc respectively (IIRC). Some real gems there.
Not a full blown end of civilization, but "Resurrection Day" (by Brendan....gah--can't remember) is a great yarn about the world following a Cuban Missile Crisis gone nuclear. It's actually not very accurate--the Russians were so far behind they wouldn't have been able to do anywhere near the damage depicted, but it's still good. If you want a really chilling read about the Cuban Missile Crisis that turned into WW3, check out "Second Holocaust" in "What Ifs of American History." In a word, the Soviets would have been obliterated.
Dale Price |
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06.01.06 - 9:55 am | #
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Dale:
Well Poetry by Camoes, Tirant lo Blanc, Ramon Llull, the works of Miguel Cervantes, the Chason de Roland, Summa theologica, the early Church fathers, John Paul II's encycicals, Lope de la Vega plays and poetry, Quevedo's books, Pio de Baroja's works, Imitation of Christ, Herotodus, Thuycides, Cicero, The Justinian code, Books by Gregorio de Maronon, Salvador de Madriaga's books,
le Livre d'heures du Duc de Berry, Book of Kells, Aristotle, La Celestina,Italo Calvo, the Eastern European authours, Dr Zhivago, Miloz's poetry, Kundera, the magical realism and o realismo maravheloso literature
That's my preliminary list
xavier |
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06.02.06 - 2:45 pm | #
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Hmm...so many to choose from...I'd start with Latin and Greek self-teaching texts and grammars, as well as a good English Grammar.
Without those, a lot of the best primary sources are lost.
Flambeaux |
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06.02.06 - 3:19 pm | #
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The complete works of Shakespeare.
I'm taking it that Scripture is a given.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
And I suppose some Inklings will have to make a cameo on this list somewhere...
Before you know it, this list could get very long.
Richard |
06.02.06 - 6:46 pm | #
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Well, in the spirit of apocalyptic remnant scenarios, we need a little Walker Percy--Lost in the Cosmos or The Moviegoer?
scriblerus |
06.05.06 - 6:10 pm | #
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Leave it to the engineer/farmer wannabe: I saw "classics" and thought Five Acres and Independance, Farmers of Forty Centuries, and the poetry of Wendell Berry.
Zach Frey |
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06.06.06 - 10:49 am | #
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Since 'Canticle' is such a downer of a book, I'd include that and 'The Complete Beavis and Butthead' just to hasten the End Times for any future civilization. Serves 'em right... and tell those kids to get off my lawn!
Clayton Barnett |
06.09.06 - 10:26 pm | #
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In the spirit of St. Leibowitz, we must of course preserve The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
michael i |
06.20.06 - 5:36 am | #
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Selected Lincoln and Churchill speeches. Shelby Foote's history of the Civil War. Lord of the Rings. A Canticle for Liebowitz (seriously. Perhaps the best SF book, from a literature standpoint, I've ever read). A transcript of the first moon landing and a drawing of that first step.
BTW, the commenter above is right about Alas, Babylon. Picking that title (and that passage of scripture) was brilliant.
Osvaldo Mandias |
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10.16.06 - 6:50 pm | #
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