▨ Jamie McHale

Reading

You can find me on Goodreads.

Rise and Fall of Civilisations

My current reading project is to put a dent in The Rise and Fall of Civilisations: A Reader Course by Tanner Greer. This is not yet the full list, but I will add a few more books as I get through them.

  • Robert J. Gordon: The Rise and Fall of American Growth
  • Azar Gat: War in Human Civilization
  • Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay
  • Francis Fukuyama: The Origins of Political Order
  • Francis Spufford: Red Plenty
  • Hendrick Spruyt : The World Imagined
  • James C. Scott: Seeing Like a State
  • Joe Studwell: How Asia Works
  • Joel Mokyr: The Lever of Riches
  • Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies
  • Machiavelli: Discourses on Livy
  • Mancur Olson: The Rise and Decline of Nations
  • Michael Mann: The Sources of Social Power Volume 1
  • Michael Mann: The Sources of Social Power Volume 2
  • Paul Kennedy: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
  • Peer Vries: State, Economy and the Great Divergence
  • Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rouke: Power and Plenty
  • Thomas Ertman: Birth of the Leviathan

Interintellect - Reading the Greats

In 2021 I took part in the Interintellect, Reading the Greats salon series. This monthly book club took us on a tour of some of the most well known works of the western canon.

  • (Anon): Beowulf
  • Austen: Pride and Prejudice
  • Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children
  • Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France
  • Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
  • Dante: The Divine Comedy
  • Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
  • Homer: Iliad
  • Huxley: Brave New World
  • Machiavelli: The Prince
  • Orwell: 1984
  • Plato: The Last Days of Socrates
  • Shelly: Frankenstein
  • Sophocles: Antigone
  • Woolf: Mrs Dalloway