If I hear one more recommendation for Piketty....

Oh no, no Nancy Pearl today; where will Seattle adults get their recommendations for children's books from?

Did any Sloggers listen, or are we too infatuated with our own piddly little word comments?

I heard it. Excellent interview and selections. I will definitely read The Amoeba in the Room.

Am curious, though, why mentioning your affiliation with The Stranger was apparently off-limits.

@3, I have other things to do like work

That Amoeba book he's been shilling here, something about Slavery of Capitolism by a french writer, and a collection of short stories by anti-Semite GK Chesterton (which is really hard to pronounce or something).

Willing Slaves of Capital.... basically expanding on Marxism
http://kuow.org/post/charles-mudedes-boo…
http://www.amazon.com/Willing-Slaves-Cap…

Maybe Ansel should take a look at this book.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9000…
His views, which crop up in the most unexpected contexts, were most fully expressed in an essay called ‘The Problem of Zionism’ — that’s where he suggests that Jews holding high public office should dress as orientals, to remind people of their allegiance and origin — in which he says: ‘It is normal for the nation to contain the family. With the Jews the family is generally divided among the nations. This may not appear to matter to those who do not believe in nations…. But I literally fail to understand anybody who does believe in patriotism thinking that this state of affairs can be consistent with it. It is in its nature intolerable from a national standpoint, that a man admittedly powerful in one nation, should be bound to a man equally powerful in another nation by ties more personal even than nationality.’

In other words, the fact that Judaism is transnational, spread among different states, meant that Jews could not patriotically identify with any single country. Even without hindsight, it’s repugnant. Funnily, it’s reminiscent of the argument against Catholicism (articulated at John F. Kennedy’s election) that Catholics cannot identify with the state because their primary allegiance is to Rome. It was also the reason why Chesterton himself was a Zionist. And he was, by anyone’s reckoning, an intemperate opponent of Germanic racism, appeasement and Nazism, which he identified at the outset for what it was.

does every book have to be educational?
even the chesterton, charles recommended for political reasons- he said its because its about crime fighting in a town with no police?