Ex Libris

HISTORY:

The Great Shame. Thomas Keneally
The Potato Famine by the author of Schindler's Ark, the basis for Schindler's List

How the Irish Saved Civilization. Thomas Cahill
From the fall of Rome to the middle-ages, how those pesky Irish monks squirrelled Western Civilization away for safe keeping.

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made.
Norman F. Cantor
If you were wondering why the dark ages were dark; the 14th century's equivalent of global nuclear war.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon
And no, you can't read the abridged version... six volumes.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Sir Winston Churchill
Four Volumes: Why let someone else decide what's important?

War as I Knew It. George S. Patton
Old Blood and Guts, and quite possibly the most brilliant military strategist ever.

Yeager: An Autobiography. Chuck Yeager, Leo Janus
The Original Right Stuff!

The Brendan Voyage: Across the Atlantic in a Leather Boat. Tim Severin
Who was it that discovered America again?

The Federalist Papers
The philosophy and motivation of our founding fathers.

The American Revolution. Edward Countryman
A concise history.

The Civil War. Bruce Catton
I highly recommend all the Catton Civil War Books: Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road, A Stillness at Appomattox, The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, Never Call Retreat, This Hallowed Ground, Two Roads to Sumter, Gettysburg: The Final Fury.

The Renaissance: A Short History. Paul Johnson
A slim and easy read.

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY with a little Science

The Catholic Bible
Hey! It's got 9 more books in it,(Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruck, and Greek additions to Daniel and Esther), and costs about the same.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Everything you want to know about Catholicism

The Lives of Saints. H. Hoever
Every day has a saint, some have two or three... these are their stories.

The Qur'an
The works of that other Abrahamic religion. No, you really ought to read it. Really.

Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible
A historical, geographical, and biographical look at the Bible.

The Gospel of Thomas
Only found in 1945 it is a Gnostic gospel by the author referred to in the Gospel of John as 'Thomas who is called Didymos'. Warning: This book is considered non-canonical and apocryphal, some would call it heretical. As the author explains, the secret words of Jesus Christ; intended only for the apostles.

The Four Loves. C.S. Lewis
The nature of love from a Christian perspective. Heck! Read any of his work.

The Three Pillars of Zen. Roshi Philip Kapleau
Called the best book written on Zen in English (Roshi is an honorific meaning 'master') by the founder of the Rochester Zen Center. He was also Chief Court Reporter at the Nuremberg Trials.

Zen: Dawn in the West. Roshi Philip Kapleau
The followup to The Three Pillars.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A collection zen and pre-zen writings.
Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki
Stories, anecdotes, and Koans.

The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans. Koun Yamada
Commentory on the Mumonkon; Zen Teaching Stories.

Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. Shunryu Suzuki
The founder of the San Francisco Zen Center answers questions.

Zen Catholicism. Dom Aelred Graham
A blend of East and West by a Benedictine and former Prior of Portsmouth Abbey

The Society of Mind. Dr. Marvin Minsky
A book on natural intelligence by America's foremost expert on Artificial Intelligence.

The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Easter Mysticism. Frijof Capra
The title says it all.

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. John Gribbon
If you can do basic algebra, you can understand this.

Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life. K.C. Cole
A little light reading.

A Brief History of Time. Stephen W. Hawking
Cosmology

FICTION/NON-FICTION

The Story of the Irish Race. Seumus MacManus
A little mythology, a little history, all rolled into one.

A Treasury of Irish Folklore. Padraic Collum
Leprechauns, Fairies, Banshees, Selkies, what more could you ask for?

Angela's Ashes. Frank McCourt
The life of a poor Irish family in NY and Limerick. Dark, grim, and funny in only the way the Irish can make dark, grim things funny.

'Tis. Frank McCourt
Picks up where Angela's Ashes leaves off.

A Monk Swimming. Malachy McCourt
The story of the other McCourt brother, also picks up where Angela's Ashes leaves off.
Come on, you get it... Hail Mary... Blessed are thou a monk swimming.

An Innocent in Ireland. David W. McFadden
A Canadian travels in Ireland using only a 65 year old travel guide.

Oh Come ye back to Ireland. Niall Williams, Christine Breen.
Giving up the NY Madison Avenue lifestyle for County Clare (I'm green with envy).

Robert Heinlein
No I mean it... I have all his works.

Isaac Asimov
All his too!

Douglas Adams
Anything. How can you pass on the author who comes up with titles like "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul", "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish"... and so forth?

Malevil. Robert Merle
Translated from French by Derek Coltman. Are we really that far from Feudalism? If you can read French, let me know if he missed anything.

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, Gabo for short.
Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The General in his Labryinth. Introduced by a friend who grew up in Peru, I'm told he loses something in the translation, yet he is good, nonetheless. Who can come up with a better opening line than:
IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.