No Two Alike
Uncommon Sense
The Selfish Gene (30th Anniversary Edition)

Cryptonomicon – Neil Stevenson

That’s really all you need.

1) Timor Kuran

“Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification ”

http://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-Falsification/dp/0674707583

2) Ian Deary
“Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction”

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192893211

3) Steven Pinker
“The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”

http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0670031518

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Astonishing literature: extreme, dancing ideas. Individualist, artistocratic… Conservative? Well, far from the vanilla fields of crunchydom! Not a bad thing.

- L’etranger. On being a man. Emotionless, unperturbed, together.

- Oxford Book Of Death.

I’m adding one more, Fraa Hume.
I was n’er much of a rule follower.

Black Man by Richard Morgan.
That is the Brit title. Guess they thought it wouldn’t sell in ol’ racist ‘Merica. lol, with Obama as presidentelect, the jokes on those british snobs!
The tile for American sales is Thirteen.
The book incorporates a verite noir vision of the future of the Republican party.

The Black Swan, by Taleb
Anything by Bruce Schneier (though probably not Applied Cryptography, unless you are into that) or even his blog:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Moments of purpose and belonging (e.g. reflecting on his love for his missing wife and thinking about the post-war lecture he would give on the psychology of the concentration camp) kept Frankl alive through Auschwitz. If Frankl had strong religious beliefs, they don’t show in this book.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. The flip side of Frankl–people without meaning in their lives will attach to any huckster with a smooth patter. Religious conversatives may note with approval Hoffer’s statements that the secularization of Jews after their 19th-century emancipation made them susceptible to Hitler.

Influence by Robert Cialdini. Cialdini identifies and explores seven tendencies in human cognition that can be exploited by advertisers and opinion leaders to sell products, ideologies, etc. The chapter on the desire for social proof has an anecdote on the transition of a 1960′s Chicago UFO cult from a secretive, insular cult to a proselytizing one after its central premise was invalidated. (That’s right, invalidated). I will leave a comparison of that anecdote to Matthew 28:16-20 as an exercise for the reader.

The Space Viking by H. Beam Piper — Piper was a libertarian, but the theme of this novel (“Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it—luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?”) is the sort of libertarianism that conservatives agree with.

It’s in the public domain, and there’s a very good free audiobook from Librivox:

http://librivox.org/space-viking-by-h-beam-piper/

The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790 (Rhys Isaac, 1982).

This eye gouging, flag waving terrain is not your father’s colonial Virginia! Isaacs’ scholarly, fascinating historical work is also a lively treatise on the rooting of American culture itself.

American Scripture (Pauline Maier, 1998).

Given the prominence of the Declaration of Independence in the “Christian Nation” school of thought, this one is a must. Maier does a terrific job of tracking the Declaration — from the background and controversy over its stated casus belli and its subsequent stint in political purgatory, to its electric effect on morale during the Civil War (unalienable American rights worth fighting for!) and its current “sacred” status as a foundational American document. Indeed, unless things have changed, the Declaration may still be literally enshrined above the Constitution at the National Archives.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn, 1962).

While technically belonging to the History of Science, Kuhn couuld easily have called it the structure of change itself, in everything from science to private life. It’s a compelling, accessible classic that seems particularly apropos on a site devoted to shifting a political paradigm! If your bookshelf is suddenly leaving you pressed for space and time, you can read Chapter IX, “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions,” online.

Just one book: Probability The Logic Of Science by Edwin T. Jaynes
If the reader can handle the math it will show you how Bayes Theory supports reason. You will never doubt the absolute validity of the scientific method again.

http://bayes.wustl.edu/

This is a very welcome list with Christmas coming up. I was surprised to find out how many I already have, as I never set out to collect “good for conservatives” books.

Two books on my shelf that I find myself returning to often (the ones decorated with sticky notes are Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer and From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun.

Here are my suggestions:
“Truth: A Guide” by Simon Blackburn

“The Ruins, or Meditation on Revolutions of Empires” by C.F. Volney

“Apes or Angels: Darwin, Dover, Human Nature, and Race” by
Cornelius J. Troost

Forgive my immodesty but Razib, Sailer, and Derbyshire wrote admiring comments about my otherwise fully taboo synthesis.It is at Amazon.com for those with curiosity.