Books you should read

The main drive here at Freedom Alternative Network is to seek knowledge and wisdom. And that can’t be done without reading some books. The question is not how many books one should read but what books. Not all books are useful and not all useful books are promoted. Useful also doesn’t mean one should necessarily agree with.

As time goes by, this list will grow pretty big and will form the basis of books one should read before even beginning to think of oneself as a man of wisdom.

The list is provided as is. Some books are not available in English, most are not available in Romanian but we will, nevertheless, try to update if such thing becomes available.

Culture

Author(s): Thomas Sowell
Title: Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Publishing year: 2006
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A collection of essays challenging the intellectual class’ assumptions about blacks, Jews, Germans, slavery, and about education. Contains multiple facts and sources. Very useful when facing SJWs everywhere.

Author(s): Thomas Sowell
Title: Intellectuals and Race
Publishing year: 2013
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A thorough debunking of the “intellectual” narrative about race and a detailed description and documentation of the destructive role that the “intellectual” class has played in modern society by making things worse.

Economics

Author(s): Thomas Sowell
Title: Basic Economics – A common sense guide to the economy (5th edition)
Publishing year: 2014
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: 700+ pages without graphics and mathematics. THE book to read for anyone starting to study and understand economics.

Author(s): Friedrich August von Hayek
Title: The Road to Serfdom
Publishing year: 1944
Available at Mises Store
Available in Romanian? YES. On Amazon.
Description: This book was singularly responsible for launching an important debate on the relationship between political and economic freedom. It also set a new standard for what it means to be a dissident intellectual. It warned of a new form of despotism enacted in the name of liberation. Still relevant to this day since the debate is far from over.

Author(s): Bogdan Glăvan
Title: Liberalismul care îmi place
Publishing year: 2018
Available in English? NO.
Available in Romanian? YES. Editura Anacronic.
Description: One of the few books on economic liberalism written from an Intermarium/3SI perspective. Glăvan’s main thesis is that it is not enough for economic liberalism to be correct and sound. People also need to want to be free and avoid the temptation of wanting to live off the backs of someone else. The thesis is argued via numerous contentious examples mostly from Romania.

Feminism/Sexual Politics

Author(s): Ernest Belfort Bax
Title: The Fraud of Feminism
Publishing year: 1913
Available at The Guthenberg Project (FREE)
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A thorough debunking of feminism from over 100 years ago. One of the works that shows unequivocally that the problems with feminism did start in the ’70s. The 1870s, to be more precise.

Author(s): Ernest Belfort Bax
Title: The Legal Subjection of Men
Publishing year: 1908
Available at Archive.org[FREE]
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A detailed inquiry into the inherent misandry of the British judicial system between the late 1860s and until 1905. The author was a barrister and a connoisseur of the British court system. The book thoroughly demonstrates that the notion of a “patriarchy” sometime in the past is a figment of feminist imagination and not a daily reality in the supposedly “patriarchal” court system.

Islam

Author(s): [collected works]
Title: Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat Al-Salik
Publishing year: 1997
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Islamic subversion manual written by Muslim scholars for agents of stealth jihad.

Author(s): Samuel P. Huntington
Title: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
Publishing year: 2011
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? YES. As ”Ciocnirea civilizațiilor și refacerea ordinii mondiale” on eMag
Description: Classic book about international relations in postmodernity in general and about the Islamic problem in particular.

Politics

Author(s): Olavo de Carvalho, Aleksandr Dugin
Title: The USA and the New World Order – debate between Olavo de Carvalho and Aleksandr Dugin
Publishing year: 2016
Available at Amazon(in Portuguese)
Available in English? YES, in full, on this blog for free.
Available in Romanian? YES. At Humanitas.
Description: This is THE book to understand the difference between the orthodox Western view of the world and the present-day Russian view of the world. The book is the online debate between the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho and the Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin. The opening statements start from both men answering to the following question: “What are the historical, political, ideological and economic factors and actors that now define the dynamics and configuration of power in the world and what is the U.S. position in what is known as New World Order?” The book is a must read for those who want to understand the tension(s) that will fill the (geo)political agendas for the decades to come between the West and Russia.

Author(s): Stanton Evans
Title: Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies
Publishing year: 2007
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: The title is self-explanatory. Most of what the mainstream tells about Senator Joe McCarthy is an outright lie. McCarthy did nothing wrong.

Author(s): Oswald Spengler
Title: The Decline of the West – Form and Actuality
Publishing year: 1918
Available at For FREE at Archive.org
Available in Romanian? YES. Here.
Description: A book written in a polemic style, intentionally phrased in such a way that it would rub the readers’ sensibilities the wrong way. The main thesis is that civilizations are like any other organism – they are born, they get momentum, they reach their zenith and then they decline, slowly, until they die off. The writing style is intentionally aphoristic which is one of the many reasons Spengler remains controversial to this day. Nevertheless, his views influenced most of the intellectual class of his time and portions of his views remain relevant today, regardless of whether the reader ends up agreeing or disagreeing with the author.

Author(s): Douglas Murray
Title: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
Publishing year: 2017
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? YES. At Cărturești under the title ”Strania sinucidere a Europei”
Description: Murray explores two factors that explain why, in his view, European civilization as we have known it will not survive. The first is the combination of mass migration of new peoples into the continent together with Europe’s negative birth rates. The second is what Murray describes as “the fact that… at the same time Europe lost faith in its beliefs, traditions, and legitimacy”.

Practical Politics

Author(s): Dale Carnegie
Title: How to Win Friends & Influence People
Publishing year: 1936
Available at Archive.org for FREE
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Written more than 80 years ago, Dale Carnegie’s book remains a seminal piece of work for anyone studying propaganda, persuasion and other aspects related to political operative work. Its main “selling point” is the fact that it includes practical examples that are timeless and can easily be replicated in the modern era.

Author(s): Saul Alinsky
Title: Rules for Radicals – A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
Publishing year: 1971
Available at Penguin Random House
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Classical work on practical politics by far-Left radical Saul Alinsky. Used as an instruction manual by politicians such as Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton, this book is mandatory for anyone engaging in any form of practical politics-related work.

Author(s): Gustave Le Bon
Title: The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Publishing year: 1895
Available at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich for FREE
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: One of the most influential works of social psychology in history, The Crowd was highly instrumental in creating this field of study by analyzing, in detail, mass behavior. Contains multiple timeless observations on crowd control, crowd manipulation and techniques of ad-hoc changing of the framing of an issue during protests and other mass gatherings.

Author(s): Charles Murray
Title: By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
Publishing year: 2016
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Practical advice on how to oppose and/or elude insane government regulations.

Propaganda studies

Author(s): Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
Title: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition
Publishing year: 2006
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say “yes”—and how to apply these understandings. Written primarily for salespeople but applies to politics as well.

Author(s): Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
Title: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Publishing year: 1988
Available at Amazon (link towards the revised 2002 edition)
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Written from a far-Left perspective, “Manufacturing Consent” is a thorough description of propaganda networks – how do they work, how are they being deployed, how are they being maintained and what kinds of people are recruited to work for them. The far-Leftist ideological perspective is noticeable in the book by the kinds of examples chosen (only examples from the “American man bad” category) – but the tools described work for any cause/issue.

Author(s): Roger Fowler, Bob Hodge, Gunther Kress, and Tony Trew
Title: Language and Control
Publishing year: 1979
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A book meant to be a study but ended up being an instruction manual. In 10 chapters, the author examines each facet of life that is affected by controlling/manipulative language – from employment agencies, to newspapers, to community organizers, to therapists, psychologists and politicians. While written more than 40 years ago, its observations apply entirely to this day.

Author(s): Dentalion Jones
Title: Mind Control Language Patterns
Publishing year: 2008
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Mind Control Language Patterns (MCLP) are spoken phrases that can act as “triggers” to those who hear them. Identifying those phrases is the hard part but, once identified, the usage of such phrases can influence and control how people respond and cause people to be influenced to do things without their knowing. The existence of MCLP is established science based on documented uses in psychology, neurolinguistic programming and other studies of human behaviour. This book is helpful in order for the individual to learn to identify MCLPs. The book makes little to no moral judgments on the concepts with which it operates.

Author(s): Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell
Title: Propaganda & Persuasion Fifth Edition
Publishing year: 2011
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A book that goes mostly through the history of propaganda. The Fifth edition also includes modern-era propaganda, including globalized internet type of propaganda. The book also contains decent analysis on how the concept of ”collective memory” can be altered through various propaganda techniques.

Author(s): Jacques Ellul
Title: Propaganda: The formation of Men’s attitudes
Publishing year: 1973
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Book written from a critical perspective – the author considers that propaganda is in itself “destructive towards democracy” regardless of intentions. With that said, the observations presented are true and timeless, even if the conclusion is naive.

Author(s): Jacques Ellul
Title: The Technological Society
Publishing year: 1954 (in French); 1964 (in English)
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Book on technique as a distinct and different phenomenon from technology. Ellul argues that the society is heading towards being dominated by technique (remember he argues this in 1954). Technique is ultimately focused on the concept of efficiency. The term “technique” is to be comprehended in its broadest possible meaning as it touches upon virtually all areas of life, including science, automation, but also politics and human relations. On  most issues the book reads as if it were written in 2021.

Radicalization

Author(s): David Koehler
Title: Understanding Deradicalization: Methods, Tools and Programs for Countering Violent Extremism (Contemporary Terrorism Studies)
Publishing year: 2016
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Practical and theoretical frameworks and tools used in deradicalization programs by both State and private actors. Includes in depth case studies with both Islamist and neo-Nazi situations and establishes coherent methods.

Author(s): Daryl Davis
Title: Klan-destine Relationships
Publishing year: 1997
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: Black guy befriends KKK members. And things go better than everyone expected. The book is non-fiction and it was hated by the establishment because it portrayed Klansmen as real people. Nevertheless, if one studies radicalization and deradicalization, this book is mandatory.

Totalitarian ideologies

Author(s): Friedrich Engels
Title: Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State
Publishing year: 1884
Available at Marxists.org [free of charge]
Available in Romanian? YES. Marxists.org[free of charge]
Description: Classical far-Left book laying out the groundwork for what was later to be acknowledged as cultural Marxism. Marx’s partner, Engels, goes into great detail on how future communist societies should strive to abolish the family as a necessary step towards building communism.

Author(s): Aleksandr Dugin
Title: The Fourth Political Theory
Publishing year: 2012
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? YES. At Librăriile Alexandria
Description: THE book on the new Russian imperialist ideology.

Author(s): Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Title: Foundations of Leninism
Publishing year: 1924
Available at Marxists.org
Available in Romanian? YES. Here for buying. From this library for free (but you have to queue, lol).
Description: The book collection of lectures that turned the USSR from really bad to absolutely worst. Most notably, this collection of lectures introduces the concept of “self-criticism” and the ritual to be performed in order for self-criticism to be satisfactory, a ritual which can still be widely observed in most left-wing movements to this day.

Author(s): Jeffrey Thompson Schnapp
Title: A Primer of Italian Fascism (European Horizons)
Publishing year: 2000
Available at Amazon
Available in Romanian? NO.
Description: A Primer of Italian Fascism makes available for the first time in English translation the key documents pertaining to one of our century’s defining mass political movements. Whereas existing anthologies survey Fascist writings in a multiplicity of national settings, A Primer of Italian Fascism opts for a tightly focused, in-depth approach that emphasizes the development of Fascist ideology in the country of its birth. Historically speaking, Italian Fascism was the original Fascism. The model for subsequent movements including Nazism, Falangism, and Integralism, Italian Fascism set out to define a “third way” to modernization, known as “corporatism”. A Primer of Italian Fascism situates the rise and fall of corporatist ideals within the framework of the actual history of Benito Mussolini’s movement and regime.