-Bibliography

This is a current and far-from-complete draft bibliography for a “book” that I’m trying to write about my life story including advice for my children as well as my various philosophies, which are not yet integrated and may even conflict.

Update 15.Dec.2025: I now maintain a much longer bibliography here:

• https://www.jpw3.com/bibliography.html

Each of us is a bit like an Large Language Model (LLM, such as ChatGPT), absorbing information from countless sources and regurgitating it with our modifications and hallucinations. This bibliography lists some media that has influenced me and that I recommend to others.

I list these in no particular order, although some of the books towards the top of each list may feel most relevent to me.

Philosophical Books

• Becoming Nobody, by Ram Dass: Great thoughts by a psychologist, spiritualist, and pschedelicist.
• Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius: Pithy stoic wisdom.
• In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky: About the mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff.
• The Five Sons of King Pandu, but Elizabeth Seeger: A Westernized translation of the Mahabharata.
• The Baghavad Gita As It Is, by A. C. Bhaktivedanta, founder of the US Hare Krishna movement: A good English edition of the Bhagavad Gita, which is an important part of the Mahabharata.
• Tao Te Ching – A New Translation, by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English: My favorite translation of the Tao.
• The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen Myth, by William Dale Jennings: A great short story that introduces concepts from Zen Buddhism.
• Marx’s Capital Illustrated, by David Smith: An approachable alternative to Marx’s Das Kapital. This is the book that I probably give away most often. Haymarket Books is a great resource for books on social issues including socialism. Note that the book (if it ever comes out as a book) that contains this bibliography is neither economic nor political, and I am not a communist. Personally, due to fear and hence greed (as well as resource imbalances, existing global inequities, and existing inequities within individual nations), I don’t think that human beings can achieve true communism; we can only temper capitalism with socialist principles. I would argue that no country has ever actually achieved communism; some have achieved some level of socialism while others have existed as authoritarian regimes that may call themselves and/or political parties within tnem communist. Anyway, this book is about [finance] capitalism as a system explains a lot about how the global financial system operates, resulting in national and global systemic problems. It is not The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.
• Candide, by Voltaire
• Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, by Pete Walker: This book about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) focuses on childhood trauma but the outcome and treatments of sustained stress in the modern world are similar.
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, by Gabor Maté: Addiction and trauma psychology.
• Atomic Habits, by James Clear: Improving personal habits.
• The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg: Improving personal habits.
• No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover: Breaking out of predefined roles and expecations of men.
• Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
• The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli: Origins of Machiavelianism
• The Little Book of Ikigai, by Ken Mogi: Ikagi is a Japanese term that basically refers to what an individual determines to be the meaning of their life, which often involves perfection at a specific skill or vocation.
• The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
• Zen to Go, by Jon Winokur: A good introduction to Zen Buddhism.
• A First Zen Reader, by Trevor Ed and TR Leggett
• Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Thích Nhất Hạnh
• How to Focus, by Thích Nhất Hạnh
• Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
• Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
• Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
• Journey to the East, by Hermann Hesse
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad: See also Apocalypse Now.
• Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope, by Mark Manson
• Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain, by Shankar Vedantam
• Introduction to Logic, by Harry J. Gensler: This was a good book that I read in my first logic class in college.
• Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday: Much of this content is available through the linked blog or something, but the book about stoic principles and practices is good.
• Skeptics Guide to the Universe, by Steven Novella and Bob Novella: Much of this content is available through the linked blog or something, but the book is good. Especially relevent to me are the sections about weaknesses in the humand mind and our perceptive systems.
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein: This book explains some aspects of how unscruplous people take advantage of or even create disasters to promote their own financial interests.
• The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, by Dan Briody: This book describes war profiteering in the US conflict with Iraq, which has always been an issue for the US but has escalated dramatically.
• Mental Manipulation: Identify and Outsmart the Manipulators and Develop Your Mental Strength, by Victor Sykes: While much of this content feels like hastily-written blog posts pasted together, it provides a short and easily digestible overview of many psychological manipulation tactics used by abusers, which increasingly apply to technology. This book really helped me to understand my ex-wife; I highlighted the relevant sections, which covered about 70% of the text. This is another book that I give out frequently. If I ever finish this “book” that I’m supposedly writing, it should cover much of this material.

Dystopia

• Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding: About status anxiety and humans reduced to animalistic social structure of hierarchy and dominance.
• The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
• No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre
• The Giver, by Lois Lowry
• The Iron Heel, by Jack London: Note that I grew up in Sonoma County, where Jack London spent some time and his Wolf House burned down, with remnants in what is now Jack London State Historic Park.
• We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison: This short story about a[n] horibly sadistic AI named AM really creeped me out.
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick: This book was the inspiration for the movie Bladerunner, which I believe is a reference to running on a knife blade – something difficult, and also between two sides. I don’t know if he obtained some illegal information or if Dick lost his mind, and I never finished watching this interesting video about him He Literally Cracked Reality…Then DIED.
• The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick: I haven’t read this one yet, but have read good things about it.
• The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks: This was an entertaining read but I never continued the series (I think I bought this before the subsequent books camse out).
• Changeling, by Roger Zelazny: I think my sixth- or possibly second-grade teacher read this to the class. I remember it being about an age of magic that returns after people learn to fear technology. Coincidentally, the day after typing this, the video The Most Dangerous Philosophy in History Is Unfolding Right in Front of Us referencing his book Lord of Light popped up on my YouTube feed. It mentions accelerationism, “a range of ideologies that call for the use of processes such as capitalism and technological change in order to create radical social transformations.”
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson: I haven’t finished this lengthy classic.
• Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle: This is actually a political novel that I haven’t finished.

Great Thinkers

In addition to and possibly repetition of some of the listed authors, some additional great thinkers include the following, many of whom have available, books YouTube clips, and other media that you may wish to peruse.

• Alan Watts: A thinker and writer that merged Eastern and Western philosophies. See: The Bizarre Life of Alan Watts
• Rumi
• Albert Einstein
• Albert Camus
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
• Epictetus
• Aesop
• Dalai Lama
• Carl Jeung
• Socrates
• Aristotle
• Isaac Newton

Entertainment

Books

• The Shining, Stephen King – I saw the movie directed by Stanley Kubrik first, but the book is as good or better.
• The Bachman Books, Stephen King – For some reason my dad gave this to me when I was a teenager.

Music

Movies and TV Shows

• The Shining, Stanley Kubrik
• Yojimbo (bodyguard), Akira Kurosawa – A Fistfull of Dollars is basically a remake of this.
• The Hidden Fortress, Akira Kurosawa – Inspired at least the R2D2 and C3PO characters from Star Wars, where the Samurai inspired the Jedi.
• Top Secret
• Airplane!
• Stripes: Watch the version with deleted scenes that adds some context to their “trip” offbase.
• Uncle Buck
• Planes, Trains, & Automobiles: A good holiday movie (Thanksgiving/Christmas)
• Heaven Can Wait, Warren Beaty)
• Midnight Run
• Young Frankenstein
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• The Life of Brian: Supported by and with a cameo of George Harrison from the Beatles, this movie pairs well with Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• The Job, great TV series about Denis Leary as a New York City cop with some…issues.
• Metalocalypse: Adult Swim comedy about heavy metal rockers.
• Bladerunner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott: any version of the first movie without the Harrison Ford voiceover.
• Blackadder: Classic Brittish sitcom about Rowan Atkinson‘s mishaps as an old-time Brittish noble of some sort.
• Fawlty Towers: Classic Brittish sitcom about John Cleese‘s challenges running a small hotel.