 Hi, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel. Now what I want to do in this video is show you five books that I came across on my bookshelf that I thought were worth the read. Basically what I'm doing right now is I'm in the process of putting together a short discussion, short if you can call it short, a short discussion on economics, which is directly going to tie us into mathematics, some of the stuff that we're doing regarding the mathematics of economics. And as I mentioned before, in a couple of previous videos I guess, that economics is directly related to politics. You can't really talk about economics without talking about politics and you can't talk about politics without talking about economics. So what I do when I try to organize my books, I try to organize them on my bookshelf, try to organize on my category or by author. And what I ended up doing was, I was looking in the economics section, some of the economics books just for reference for some little bit of research and the politics stuff was there so I started browsing the politics books. And I found five books that have stuck with me, that I read over the years, that have sort of provided additional information to me or gave me a perspective on politics which I may not have had. And I thought it'd be fun to share these five books with you guys. And what I'm going to do in no particular order of which one's more important than the other one, I'm just going to go in the order that, from oldest to the most recent that I've read. And the most recent obviously I know more, I know better. What I want to do is show you the oldest one that sort of gave me a perspective on politics in large part and in life to a certain degree. And the book is called Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Krift. And I read this in the 80s, I was in high school. So I've known politics, I've been involved in politics for a long time, followed politics for a long time, early days in high school. So this is one of the reasons I ended up reading this, which is the book is described as a dialogue somewhere beyond death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. And I've mentioned before that I've read a lot of C. S. Lewis, right? So I knew about Kennedy through politics, some stuff about Kennedy, whatever you could obtain, not even all of it in the 1980s regarding Kennedy and what took place with the assassination and stuff like this. And I've read a lot of C. S. Lewis by that time when I picked up this book. I'd read a lot of C. S. Lewis. So I knew about Kennedy, I knew about C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley's name had blown in the wind in my direction, right? So I didn't know too much about Aldous Huxley. And after reading this, you know, it got the juices flowing. It got me thinking. And it was a very good book for the time. I hadn't read it. I don't know what the dialogue was. I don't, you know, I don't know if I'll like it now, but it did influence me when I was in high school. And the description for this is, and I didn't know this, it didn't really trigger anything for me back then. But here's the sort of little write up at the back. And it says, on November 22, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other. C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. Wow. Three huge men, right? Through three icons, really. All three believed in different ways that death is not the end of human life. Suppose they were right. And suppose they met after death. How might the conversation go? So this is basically all three of these people, Kennedy, Lewis and Huxley, sitting down and talking to each other after they have died. And this is sort of a dialogue put together by Peter Krift. Interesting at the time for me. It stayed with me. You know, it's followed me around for 30 plus years, right? So it's probably overdue for reread. Another book that I read, and I don't know if I read this one before the next one or the other one before this one, but they came out of around the, I'm going to go by the date that they came out on. So the other book is Robert Anton Wilson's Wilhelm Reich in Hell. Wow. What a great book. And I knew about Robert Anton Wilson. I've read some of his essays, some of his articles and stuff like this. And I've listened to a lot of his lectures and discussions and conversations. And if you don't know Robert Anton Wilson, this might be a okay place to start. I don't know. The place that really got me hooked on Robert Anton Wilson is sort of a 13 hour or seven hour audio interview with Robert Anton Wilson and it's called Raw Explained. Robert Anton Wilson explains everything. Raw show was ignorant. I think it's a double title like certain things, right? And this book was fantastic really. And there's actually a musical of this available online, sort of along the lines of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I think I've watched the musical once all the way through, but I enjoyed reading it instead of watching the musical. I was being distracted by the extravagance of it, right? And this is basically sort of a play Robert Anton Wilson wrote about Wilhelm Reich's persecution. And if you don't know Wilhelm Reich, it's worth looking into. Okay, very much worth looking into. He's one of the few people, actually one of the only people that I know of, and I went through and I highlighted some of the stuff in this book. But Wilhelm Reich is the only person that I know of that both Nazi Germany and the US government have burned his books, right? And that's a serious title to have. And the US government basically threw him in jail for whatever reason, you can look that up if you want. For basically, well, whatever reason you might think they threw him in jail for, whoever you choose to believe. But basically a week before he was due to be released, he died of a heart attack in jail. So that really intrigued me about this book. And I read this book and it's fantastic. Okay, has a lot to do with our society, persecution, our perspective of the powers that be and whatnot, right? So Robert Anton Wilson's Wilhelm Reich in hell. And you can follow that up if you're interested because it's along the same theme is the third book is Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. This book was fantastic. It revealed a lot about what happened in Oklahoma City with Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City bombing, right? A lot of stuff. There's no way you would have got from mainstream media. You won't even get it now from the mainstream media, right? And it's very good. It doesn't give you everything that I believe that took place in my opinion. I did a little research into this. Oklahoma City bombing and Waco were two huge events in the 1990s. They, in large part, really shaped the present day United States. Huge, huge events. The Waco, what happened in Waco, I was in a comic book store at the time when that went down, the final fire and murder of multiple people, right? And multiple families. It was insane. It was incredible. And as you can imagine, the conversation, the comic book show when this went down was absolutely brilliant in an analytical kind of a way, right? I stayed in the comic shop for a few hours talking with people and browsing call max and checking out the news at the time. That's all we had on the internet, right? So this is a very good book if you want to get a good feel of the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh and one of the main events that has sort of shaped the United States. Okay, Gore Vidal's perpetual war for perpetual peace. How we got to be so hated. Very important book. Should be in curriculum, in schools, right? Now, another book that I read, it was a gift from some friends and it's a tourist book, really. But it's Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places. I read most of this. It was a good read. It took me a while to read it. I would read sections and stuff like that. So it's broken down. Which edition is this actually? This is the fifth edition. So I don't know when it came out. It came out early 2000s, I believe. It came out early 2000s because this is talking about, it's got September 11th forward in it. Okay, and the table of contents. Let me just read some of the stuff. The table of contents, just the main sections and it's broken down like an index, right? All the grays or the basically different sections. So it provides a list of maps, the author, what is dangerous, what is danger, what danger awaits the weary traveler, making the best of nasty situations, business travelers, tourist bribes, dangerous jobs, dangerous diseases, drugs, getting arrested, guns, intelligence, kidnapping, landmines, mercenaries, terrorism, adventure calls. So those are that's sort of the first section of the book, right? And then it goes to dangerous places and it covers a few different locations, right? So it gives dangerous places, dangerous places, short and sweet, sort of a summary description. And then it lists the places that they consider to be rated based on their rating system, the most dangerous places in the world. And this is in the early 2000s, right? Early mid 2000s. Afghanistan, Algeria, the Balkans, Chechnya, Colombia, Georgia, Great Lakes, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, so Central Africa, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, South America, Sudan, the United States of America, Yemen, Zimbabwe. Those are the most dangerous places in the world based on this book, certain locations. I didn't agree with, by the way, I didn't agree with everything that was written here, obviously. But I found the information informative, right? And there's a lot of stuff that I didn't know that had happened. And some stuff that was, in my opinion, could be looked at as misinformation or disinformation. I don't know, this up to you, however, when you want to think about it. A little back, save the world, save yourself, what the pack index, photo credits. So, you know, it's got a little bit at the end of how to protect yourself, save the world, save yourself and whatnot. It was a good book, informative, good, I don't want to say a little summary about what's going on in the world, but good little perspective of some of the stuff that's going on in the world. Worth having, anyway. I don't know what edition it's in now. The internet provides everything you need to know that's in here, really, now. But at the time, it was worth having. And at the time, there's a lot of stuff available online as well, of course. To a certain degree, more so than now, because there's less sensors in play. The fifth book I want to show you is a more recent book that I read. And I read this basically when it first came out within a few months, so it's first coming out, I believe. And it came out in 2012. And you would have, if you watched my videos, you would have seen this book, me mention this book multiple times. We've read a little bit about this with Josako. But Days of Destruction, Days of Revolts by Chris Hedges and Josako. And it's basically, you know, text with comic pages, Josako being sort of the pioneer of comic book journalism and articles, essays written by Chris Hedges, where he travels around the United States and talks about basically sacrifice zones. Sacrifice zones being places that we've sacrificed for the economy, for our current economic system, right? And, you know, he categorizes these. Chapter one is Days of Theft, Pine Ridge, South Dakota. If you don't know anything about Pine Ridge, look into it. Wow, wow, wow. And it's got Days of Siege, Camden, New Jersey. Chapter three is Days of Devastation, Welch, Virginia, West Virginia. Days of Slavery, Emokoli, Florida, I can't pronounce the names. Days of Revolt, Liberty Square, New York City. And that was Occupy Wall Street, right? During those times when they interviewed some of the people. And it's a very good book to read if you want to know what's going on presently in the United States, the present politics and geopolitics, foreign policy in the United States, and how it's played out in other parts of the world and come back to Ruse at home, I guess, is that the saying? Very good book if you want to know the mindset, the general theme, the feel of what's going on in the streets in the United States. Highly recommended, highly recommended. Lots of information, there are lots of statistics. And so those are the five books. And one other thing I'll mention is, as I mentioned before, I've read a lot of C.S. Lewis and I've read a lot of essays, not just by C.S. Lewis but multiple people. I've read a huge amount of essays. I love reading essays, which are basically sort of summaries of books to a certain degree if you want to think about it. That's why I love watching lectures and interviews and stuff like this, right? And there's been a lot of essays that have stuck with me and have influenced me. And there's been a lot of books that have stuck with me and influenced me. These are the five that have stayed with me this long. There have been others. There have been others that I wish I still had throughout the years, the moves, they didn't make it. But let me tell you about one essay that I read by C.S. Lewis that I read a few times in the 80s and 90s. I haven't read it since the 90s, early 90s, but it stuck with me and it influenced me and I liked it a lot. And it's a title of sort of a compilation of essays that book they put together and is Fern, Seed, and Elephants by C.S. Lewis and other essays. And this is sort of a paperback I picked up in 80s. And I think it's in the 80s, pretty sure it's in the 80s. And it's got multiple essays on here. It's got essays on membership, learning in wartime, on forgiveness, historicism, the world's last night religion and rocketry, deficiency of prayer. And the last essay is Fern, Seed, and Elephants and it's an address that he made. I forget where he made it. Might have been to a graduating class in a certain year or something like this. Okay. So that's five books and one essay that have stuck with me, that have influenced my political perspective on the world. And I like the way they modified or they amplified, improved, provided additional information to what I thought I knew or what I didn't know. Okay. Other than that, in the next few videos, we're going to talk a little bit about economics. I'm still putting this stuff together, going through my notebooks and condensing, compiling, and sort of organizing stuff that try to make it coherent and make it relevant to what we're going to do with ASMR math, some of the mathematics stuff that we're going to do, which is going to directly follow the economic stuff, which is a short little discussion on percentages. Okay. That's it for now. I'll see you guys in the next video.