JR'S Free Thought Pages
                           No Gods  ~ No Masters   

                    Free Thought Reading List     

Moral Literacy - Or How to do the Right Thing - Colin McGinn (good starter)

The Future of Moral Values - A. C. Grayling (good starter)

Practical Ethics - Peter Singer

Rethinking Life and Death - Peter Singer

Animal Liberation - Peter Singer

The Right Thing to Do - James Rachels

Ethics Without God - Kai Nielsen

Why Be Moral? - Kai Nielsen

Theories of Ethics - Phillipa Foot*

Moral Concepts - Joel Fienberg*

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy - Bernard Williams*

Ethics - J.L. Mackie*

Human Conduct - John Hospers*       

 (* More Technical)

The Meaning of Things (2002) by A.C. Grayling (excellent short essays by a first-rate contemporary philosopher) Graylings book on Russell is also worth reading. His website has some postings of his writings and a bibliography. Click Here  Anything you can find by Grayling is well worth reading.

The Reason of Things - A. C. Grayling

Meditations for the Humanist - A. C. Grayling

What Does It All Mean – Thomas Nagel (good starter)

Philosophy, The Basics (2nd Ed.) – Nigel Warburton  (good starter)

Thinking From A to Z - Nigel Warburton (good starter)

The Meaning of it All – Richard Feynman (A fascinating biography of Feynman is Genius by James Gleick)

Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl  

The True Believer - Eric Hoffer

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion – David Hume

Classics of Free Thought – Paul Blandshard, ed.

The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies – David Stove

The Faith of a Heretic – Walter Kaufman

The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener – Martin Gardner

The Demon Haunted World – Carl Sagan  (A First rate read - Check out the Carl  Sagan memorial here.)

Broca’s Brain – Carl Sagan

Innumeracy –  John Allen Paulos  (For an article by Paulos titled "Math and Miracles" click here.)

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper – John Allen Paulos

The New Skepticism – Paul Kurtz  For an interview with Kurtz click here.

The Transcendental Temptation – Paul Kurtz

Varieties of Unbelief: From Epicurus to Sartre – J.C.A Gaskin, ed.

Why We Know It Isn't So - Thomas Gilovich

Critical Thinking – Richard Paul

Critical Thinking (2nd Edition) - William Hughes

With Good Reason – Morris Engel

Thinking Straight - Antony Flew

Straight and Crooked Thinking – Robert H. Thouless

The Art of Argument – Giles St. Aubyn

How do you Know It’s True – Hy Ruchlis

Why People Believe Weird Things – Michael Shermer

How to Think About Weird Things – Theodore Schick Jr. & Lewis Vaughn

Labyrinths of Reason – William Poundstone

Thinking About Logic – Stephen Read

Logic and Its limits - Patrick Shaw

Irrationality - Stuart Sutherland

The Problem of God – Peter A. Angeles

The Born Again Skeptics Guide to the Bible – Ruth H. Green

Logic textbooks: Introduction to Logic - Irving M. Copi 

                               Becoming Logical - Robert Paul Churchill

                               Practical Logic - Vincent Barry & D. J. Soccio

                               Good Reasoning Matters - L. A. Groarke, C. W. Tindale & L. Fisher

Aha Gotcha , Aha Insight, & Order and Surprise - all by Martin Gardner

What is the name of This Book, This Book Needs No Title, 5000 BC and Other Philosophical Fantasies, Alice in Puzzleland, The lady or the Tiger, To Mock a Mockingbird and The Tao is Silent - all by Raymond Smullyan 

There Are Two Errors in The The Title of This Book - Robert M. Martin *  

* Error #1: two appearances of "The"  , Error #2: There is only one error

I Think, Therefore I Laugh and Mathematics and Humor - both by John Allen Paulos

The Paradoxicon by  Nicholas Falleta and Paradoxes by R. M. Sainsbury 

Necessary Illusions – Noam Chomsky ( anything by Chomsky is worth reading)

Democracy for the Few – Michael Parenti

Dirty Truths – Michael Parenti

The Ecology of Commerce – Paul Hawken

Kindly Inquisitors – Johnathan Rauch

The Worst Years of Our Lives - Barbara Ehrenreich

The Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch

The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy - Christopher Lasch

Future-Hype: The Tyranny of Prophecy - Max Dublin

When Freedoms Collide - A. Allan Borovoy

The Unconscious Civilization – John Ralston Saul

The Doubters Companion – John Ralston Saul

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice – Christopher Hitchens (explodes the myth of Mother Teresa)

Forbidden Knowledge - Roger Shattuck

Disobedience and Other Essays - Erich Fromm

Illiberal Education – Dinesh D’Souza

Dogmatic Wisdom – Russell Jacoby

The End of Education – Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman

Conscientious Objections – Neil Postman

Education for Intelligent Belief and Non-Belief – Nell Noddings

On Education – Northrup Frye

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

The Zinn Reader - Howard Zinn

Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science – Martin Gardner

Science – Good, Bad and Bogus – Martin Gardner

Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism - Philip Kitcher

Origins, A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth – Robert Shapiro

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism – Tim M. Berra

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea – Daniel C. Dennett

The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins

River Out of Eden – Richard Dawkins

Full House – Stephen Jay Gould (Anything by Gould is worth reading)

Consilience – E. O. Wilson

Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – Charles MacKay

The Crowd – Gustav Le Bon

Crowds and Power – Elias Canetti

Contrarian Investing - A.M. Gallea & William Patalon III

Contrarian Investment Strategies - David Dreman

                           For Home: