I am grateful for books. Probably the first book I read---about 6-8---was Call of the Wild by Jack London. I loved it and when my father brought home a puppy, it was mine and I named him Buck. About aged 11 I read an 1100 page book about Admiral David Farragut’s capture of New Orleans in the Civil War. I heard the General Authorities reference Shakespeare often in General Conference. I began a lifelong friendship with The Barb. He is off the charts brilliant. John Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem of engaging quality and promise. Karl Marx---The Communist Manifesto; Hitler and Mein Kamfe; How to be a good communist and Mao’s Little Red Book are fundamental to understanding society and government. Alexander Solzenitszchen’s The Gulag Archipelago is fundamental to understanding the application of communism. Locke’s 2 Treatises and de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America are wonderful. Edward Gibeon and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in instructive in understanding Western history, religion, culture, and government. Austin’s Pride and Prejudice is revelatory of human character. John Rushdooney’s The Institutes of Biblical Law should be mandatory reading and of course, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are fundamental. The foundation of any good I do or become is in the Bible (I read King James), The Book of Mormon; another testament of Jesus Christ; the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-say Saints and the Pearl of Great Price. I read these sequentially and continuously.
