The Compleat Vector

I had meant for the following to consitute my profile. Turns out that profile descriptions are limited to 500 characters. So much do I know about blogging. So, while we're all on our holiday hayrides, this post will keep the Vector lamp burning; and in future, it will be linked from my profile to serve as my introduction.

I make no claim of expertise in any of the subjects I write about. But I have made an extensive acquaintance of people who are experts. The following list includes almost every non-fiction book I have read in the past 25 years. They are grouped according to topic; and works that have acquired some canonical status in Western culture are in one group, although their topics vary.

With some 600 books still waitng on my shelves, the reading never stops. But this list will be final as of 2009. It is not meant to establish qualifications for anything & everything I may ever write about; it is only meant to indicate the intellectual journey that led up to this blog.

• The Political Economy of International Relations    Robert Gilpin
• Politics and Markets     Charles Lindblom
• Economics    Paul Samuelson, William Nordhaus
• Macroeconomics     Robert Gordon
• Global Tranformations     Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, Perraton
• Levels of Socio-Economic Development Theory     David Jaffee
• One World, Ready or Not     William Greider
• The End of History and the Last Man     Francis Fukuyama
• The Economic Illusion     Robert Kuttner
• Economic Development in the Third World     Michael Todaro
• The Evolution of Economic Thought     Jacob Oser, William Blanchfield
• The Ideal Worlds of Economics     Benjamin Ward
• The Future of Capitalism     Lester Thurow
• The Theory of Capitalist Development     Paul Sweezy
• The Wealth and Poverty of Nations     David Landes
• Money: Who has How Much and Why     Andrew Hacker
• Wealth and Democracy     Kevin Phillips
• Comparative Economic Systems     Paul Gregory, Robert Stuart

• A History of Political Theory     George Sabine
• Western Political Heritage     William Elliott, Neil McDonald
• Democracy's Discontent     Michael Sandel
• The Closing of the American Mind     Allan Bloom
• Bureaucracy     James Wilson
• Regulation and its Reform     Stephen Breyer
• The End of Liberalism     Theodore Lowi
• Groups, Interests, and US Public Policy     William Browne
• Original Intent and the Framers' Constitution     Leonard Levy
• Federal Tax Policy     Joseph Pechman
• Taxing Ourselves     Joel Slemrod, Jon Bakija
• Freedom and the Court     Henry Abraham
• The New Politics of the Budgetary Process     Aaron Wildavsky
• Balanced Budgets and American Politics     James Savage

• The Republic     Plato
• Politics     Aristotle
• The City of God     Augustine
• The Prince     Niccolo Machiavelli
• Leviathan     Thomas Hobbes
• The Second Treatise on Civil Government     John Locke
• Political Discourses     David Hume
• The Wealth of Nations     Adam Smith
• The Social Contract     Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Reflections on the Revolution in France     Edmund Burke
• The Federalist     Hamilton, Madison, Jay
• The Rights of Man     Tom Paine
• Das Kapital (abridged)     Karl Marx
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism     Max Weber
• Imperialism     JA Hobson
• The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money    John Maynard Keynes

• The Rise of the West     William McNeill
• The Story of Civilization  11 volumes     Will & Ariel Durant
• A History of Western Philosophy     Bertrand Russell
• A History of Christianity  2 volumes     Kenneth Scott Latourette
• Men in Arms: a History of Warfare     Richard Preston, Sydney Wise

• The Culture of Ancient Egypt     John Wilson
• A History of Greece     JB Bury, Russell Meiggs
• Histoy of Rome     Michael Grant
• The Civilization of the Middle Ages     Norman Cantor
• The Making of the Middle Ages     RW Southern
• Economic History of Europe     Shepard Clough, Charles Cole
• The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages     Robert Lopez
• Before the Industrial Revolution     Carlo Cipolla
• Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Centuries  3 volumes     Fernand Braudel
• The Age of Reconnaissance     JH Parry
• A History of the Modern World     RR Palmer
• From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life     Jacques Barzun
• The Age of Revolution     EJ Hobsbawm
• Peaceful Conquest: the Industrialization of Europe 1760-1970     Sidney Pollard
• The Pattern of Imperialism     Tony Smith
• The Prize     Daniel Yergin
• The Modern Mind     Peter Watson

• The Oxford History of the American People     Samuel Eliot Morison
• The New American Nation series - all of the volumes of national political history from the Revolution to World War II
  
• The Last Americans: the Indian in American Culture     William Brandon
• The Americans: a Social History of the United States 1587-1914     JC Furnas
• Religion in America     Winthrop Hudson
• Becoming American: an Ethnic History     Thomas Archdeacon
• From Slavery to Freedom     John Hope Franklin
• Westward Expansion: a History of the American Frontier     Ray Billington
• A History of American Law     Lawrence Friedman
• A History of Urban America     Charles Glaab, A Theodore Brown
• Drugs in America: a Social History 1800-1980     H Wayne Morgan
• Main Currents in American Thought     Vernon Parrington

• American Odyssey 1607-1789     Paul Lucas
• Liberty and Power 1600-1760     Oscar & Lilian Handlin
• The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution 1763-1789     Robert Middlekauff
• Ideological Origins of the American Revolution     Bernard Bailyn
• The Birth of the Bill of Rights 1776-1791     Robert Rutland
• Miracle at Philadelphia     Catherine Drinker Bowen
• The Vineyard of Liberty     James M Burns
• The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic     David Rothman
• Liberty and Power: the Politics of Jacksonian America     Harry Watson
• The Civil War and Reconstruction     JG Randall, David Donald
• With Malice Towards None: a Life of Abraham Lincoln     Stephen Oates
• Theodore Roosevelt     Nathan Miller
• The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt     Lewis Gould
• Over Here: the First World War and American Society     David Kennedy
• Great Times: an Informal Social History of the United States 1914-1929     JC Furnas
• Don't You Know There's a War On? The American Home Front 1941-1945     Richard Lingemann
• The Glory and the Dream: a Narrative History of America 1932-1972     William Manchester
• The Truman Presidency     Cabell Phillips
• The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order 1930-1980     ed. Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle
• American Foreign Policy Since World War II     John Spanier
• A Dream of Greatness: the American People 1945-1963     Geoffrey Perrett
• God's Country: America in the Fifties     J Ronald Oakley
• America in Our Time     Godfrey Hodgson
• Coming Apart: an Informal History of America in the 60's     William O'Neill
• Vietnam      Stanley Karnow
• It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: the Tragedy & Promise of America in the 1970's     Peter Carroll
• Chain Reaction: the Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics     Thomas & Mary Edsall
• The World Turned Right Side Up: a History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America     Godfrey Hodgson

• History of the American Economy     Gary Walton, Hugh Rockoff
• A Financial History of the United States     Margaret Myers
• The History of American Business & Industry     Alex Groner
• The Enterprising Americans     John Chamberlain
• The Economic Transformation of America     Robert Heilbroner
• The Emergence of Industrial America     Peter George
• Titan: the Life of John D Rockefeller     Ron Chernow
• The House of Morgan     Ron Chernow
• American Business in the 20th Century     Thomas Cochran
• Ford: the Men and the Machine     Robert Lacey
• Fat Years and Lean: the American Economy Since Roosevelt     Bernard Nossiter
• The Tax Decade     C Eugene Steuerle
• Barbarians at the Gate     Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
• Fluctuating Fortunes: the Political Power of Business in America     David Vogel

• The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain     ed. Kenneth Morgan
• Stuart England     JP Kenyon
• Cromwell     Antonia Fraser
• Court and Country: England 1658-1715     JR Jones
• Inventing the People: the Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England & America     Edmund Morgan
• England in the 18th Century     JH Plumb
• The Industrial Revolution     TS Ashton
• The Making of Modern England 1783-1867     Asa Briggs
• England 1870-1914     RKC Ensor
• English History 1914-1945     AJP Taylor
• Postwar Britain     Alan Sked, Chris Cook

• France     Albert Guerard
• Richelieu and the French Monarchy     CV Wedgwood
• Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen     Pierre Goubert
• The French Revolution     JM Thompson
• Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution     Simon Schama
• France Since 1789     Paul Gagnon
• France in Modern Times     Gordon Wright

• Modern German History     Ralph Flenley
• Germany in Western Civilization     William Maehl
• A History of Modern Germany  2 of 3 volumes     Hajo Holborn
• Restoration, Revolution, Reaction: Economics and Politics in Germany 1815-1871     Theodore Hamerow

• Italy: a Modern History     Dennis Mack Smith
• Spain: a Modern History     Rhea Marsh Smith
• Spain: the Root and the Flower     John Crow

• Eastern Europe in the Postwar World     Thomas Simons
• A History of Russia   1-volume     George Vernadsky
• A History of Russia     Nicholas Riasanovsky
• The First 50 Years: Soviet Russia 1917-1967     Ian Grey
• Economic Development of the USSR     Roger Munting
• Stalin     Adam Ulam

• A History of Latin America     Hubert Herring
• Modern Latin America     Thomas Skidmore, Peter Smith
• The Course of Mexican History     Michael Meyer, William Sherman
• A Short History of the West Indies     Parry, Sherlock, Maingot

• Japan: a Short Cultural History     GB Sansom
• Modern Japan     Mikiso Hane
• State and Society in Postwar Japan     Bernard Eccleston
• The Enigma of Japanese Power     Karel Van Wolferen
• MITI and the Japanese Miracle     Chalmers Johnson

• The Chinese Empire     John Harrison
• The Pattern of the Chinese Past     Mark Elvin
• The United States and China     John King Fairbank
• The Search for Modern China     Jonathan Spence

• The Oxford History of India     ed. Percival Spear
• A New History of India     Stanley Wolpert
• A History of Southeast Asia     DGE Hall

• A History of Islamic Societies     Ira Lapidus
• A History of the Arabs     Phillip Hitti
• The Arabs     Peter Mansfield
• The Ottoman Centuries     Lord Kinross
• War Without End: the Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response     Dilip Hiro

• A Political History of Tropical Africa     Robert Rotberg
• Africa Since 1800     Roland Oliver
• The African Genius     Basil Davidson
• Africa South of the Sahara 1988     Europa Publications
• History of Southern Africa     JD Omer-Cooper