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Highly Influential Non-Fiction Books That I’ve Read a Hundred Pages Of

Does a guy get credit for trying?

Orrin Onken
The Haven

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AI Image. Prompt by Author

I like to think of myself as a good citizen. I vote. I keep my lawn trimmed and I return my shopping carts to the cart corrals in the grocery store parking lot. I also try to read the books that contain the cultural and intellectual building blocks of human civilization. Sometimes I succeed, but in many cases I have been a spectacular failure. I start with the noblest of intentions and by about the hundredth page I am lost, bored, or confused to where I can’t carry on.

Here are the books that stymied me. Books that I have read a hundred pages of. Give or take a few pages.

Economics

I graduated high school in a community where we were all terrified of communists. Then I went to college and met leftists who were outraged by capitalists. Not wanting to accept either side’s word for it without investigation, I vowed to read the foundational literature from both. And I failed.

Das Capital, by Carl Marx. It started out okay and went deadly dull by page 100. I wanted to read it. Well, what I really wanted was to know what I was talking about if I threw out the word, “Marxist,” but when I figured how difficult that was going to be I resolved to dump both the book and the…

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