Favorite Books of Donald Harvey Marks

Favorite Books and Recent Reads of

Donald H. Marks, physician and scientist.

Reason, ethics, healthcare access, 3rd generation veteran

You can follow my personal readings of books📚 on Goodreads app, my ID is @DHMarks

Physics, Science

• A Brief History of Time, and Brief Answers to the Big Questions, both by the brilliant Steven Hawkins. A little on the obtuse side, definitely not brief, but certainly thought-provoking
• Biochemistry, by Lehninger. 
• Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
• Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Hofstadter. A unified theory of math, art and music. Interesting, and sort of makes sense to me. Watch Now
• The ABC of Relativity, by Bertrand Russell. An older book which explains the basic concepts of relativity without requiring an understanding of calculus. 
• Principles of Internal Medicine, Harrison.
• The Innovators: How a group of inventors hackers geniuses and geeks created the digital revolution, by the great historical biographer Walter Isaacson. I enjoyed his biography of Einstein

The Truth, Fake News, Manipulation

• The End of Reality. How 4 billionaires are selling a fantasy future of the metaverse, mars, and crypto, by Jonathan Taplin. My review and summary of this interesting and informative book can be found at Click Here
• An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. Sheera Frenkel.
• How Fascism Works, the ultimate road map for us to avoid, by Jason Stanley. This is a great contemporary read for 2024 as we approach the election
• How Life Imitates Chess, making the Right moves from the board to the boardroom, by the brilliant and insightful Gary Kasparov, who IMO understands the context of everything. 
• The Battle for your Brain: Defending the right to think freely in the age of neurotechnology." @NitaFarahany
• The Cruelty is the Point: The past present and future of Trump's America, by Adam Serwer
• Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum. She lived with the subject and knows what she's talking about
• The Mind Illuminated, by Culadasa. John Yates.
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes
• The Age of the Spiritual Machine, and The Age of the Thinking Machine, both by Ray Kurzweil

Fiction:

• Charm School, and The General’s Daughter, well-written fiction by Nelson deMille
• Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, classic fiction by Dostoyevsky
• The Firm, John Grisham
• Do Androids dream of electric sheep? by Philip K. Dick

• 1984, and The Animal Farm, both by George Orwell.

• The Trial, by Franz Kafka.

• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A study of class struggle and social Darwinism.

• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 

• The Win Machine: The Road to Hell is Paved With Intervention, by Ryan McBeth. Reviewed on my blog by Donald H Marks

• The Client, by Grisham. I love his use of colloquial language

• Undermoney, international political and financial fiction by Jay Newman. Link to my book review  
• Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak 
• Atlas Shrugged, and Fountainhead, both by Ayn Rand. When I was younger, and a follower of Ronald Reagan, these simplistic concepts appealed to me. Older (and IMO wiser), I now understand that superficially complete but shaĺlow explanations don't work.
• All works by Shakespeare. 
• The First Circle, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Presumed Innocent, fiction by Scott Turow. Easy fun reading with spicy use of colloquial
• War and Peace, and Anna Karenina, greatest fiction by Tolstoy.
• 2034, a novel of the next world war. Elliott Ackerman.
• Crosshairs, James Patterson. Interesting police procedural with a very surprise ending

Economics, International Relations

• Danger Zone, The coming conflict with China, by Brands and Beckley. 2022. Review at Click Here 
• Losing the Long game: The false promise of regime change, Philip Gordon. America has BT DT. 
• On China, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, World Order, and Kissinger on Kissinger, all by the great Henry Kissinger. Perhaps the greatest National Security advisor and Secretary of State America has ever had. You may be interested in my podcasts on Henry Kissinger, conflicted Jew. Check Now 
• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, by Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates.  Impressive, detailed, predictive, must have been written with an army of helpers, like recent books of Fareed Zakaria.
• How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (Principles), by Ray Dalio. Excellent, detailed, perhaps too detailed. As a followup to Principles, could have been condensed. I recommend reading an outline instead.

• Shadow State: Murder, mayhem and Russia's attack on the west, by Luke Harding 
• Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the rise of irregular warfare, by Seth Jones 
• Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty. Excellent.
• Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy. Review at Check Now 
• Henry Kissinger and American Power: a political biography, by Thomas Alan Schwartz 
• 10 lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, by Fareed Zakaria: 
• Kissinger on Kissinger, and Reflections on Diplomacy. Lord and Kissinger. BTW, if you think I am obsessed with Kissinger, which I am not, then in all fairness listen to my podcast on the subject click Here 
• The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, by Peter Zeihan, 2022. 
• Accidental Superpower, 10 years on. Peter Zeihan 
• The Inevitability of Universal Basic Income for the Homeless & the Addicted  Bad idea or coming necessary? My essay on this blog, with added comments in the context of a post-labor economy.

History:

• The Ascent of Man, by Bronowski
• Sapiens: a brief history of humankind, by Harari
• The Fourth Turning is Here, by Howe
• Imperial Hubris: why the West is losing the war on terror, by Michael Scheuer
• Dossier : The Secret History of Armand Hammer, by Edward Epstein 
• Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley, by Williams
• The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the Age of color blindness, by Michelle Alexander
• The Total State: how liberal democracies become tyrannies, by Auron MacIntyre
• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. 2025, by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska 

Religion, Philosophy:

• No Other Gods, by Ana Lyons-Levy. A modern reinterpretation of the 10 commandments, putting them into more appropriate context
• Jews don't Count, by David Baddiel
• Making Sense of Loss, by R.L. Hayes. review

• No death, No Fear. by Thich Nhat Hanh. 
  When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi 

  
  
• The beauty of what remains. How our greatest fear becomes our greatest gift.  Stephen Leder.

Artificial Intelligence:

• The Age of AI and our human future. Kissinger, Schmidt, Huttenlocher
• The Coming Wave. AI, synthetic biology and a new dawn for humanity, by Mustafa Suleyman.

Politics:

• The End of Reality, by Jonathan Tapin. my review and summary https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNM0aRr21piS3umlGvMlYuAn2w86ODrPPsZhsZOW3KI/edit?usp=drivesdk
• The Wires of War: technology and the global struggle for power. By Jacob Helberg
• Our Time is Now: power purpose and the fight for a fair America, by Stacey Abrams. By today's standards and examples, she and Al Gore never should have conceded.
• Twilight of Democracy: the seductive lure of authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum 
• After the Apocalypse: America's role in a world transformed, by Andrew Bacevich
• Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken. IMO, he gave up too easily
• The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and his world, by Barry Green
• Losing Military Supremacy: myopia of American strategic planning, by Andrei Martyanov

Medical Fiction Books I have written, under the nom de plume of Dimitri Markov

• BloodBird: When the organ isn’t the only thing transplanted. Check it
• Vera Mortina:  When the patient is not the sick one! Check it
• Her Charm Was Contagious: A dangerous doctor and a patient who just loved everyone to death! Check it
• The Surrogate: The Surrogate: A young woman trapped in the greed and power of the IVF industry  Check it
• Transit States, Collected poetry of DH Marks  Check it

Additional writings of Donald H. Marks, physician-scientist

• Reliable news sources I personally use Check it  
• Fake News: Everything You Need to Know Check it 
• Best Online Free Fact-Checking Tools Check it
• Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News  Check it
• Infodemic: the epidemic of information Check it
• The Curious Case of Deepfakes Check it
• My personal list of Red Flags, Dog Whistles, Buzzwords, Hot Button words and meaningless caricatures that will drive toxic algorithms to heat and twist elections and trigger hatred on social media. Check it
• Einstein, Relativity and Relative Ethics Check it
• What I Haven’t Told My Family on the Meaning of Time. Check it
• Jonas Salk, Polio Vaccine and Vaccinating Against Hate, Check it 
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• Elitists Neocons Neolibs, oh my. What are they, who are they, and why should I care? Check it
• Undermoney. Techno economic political thriller by Jay Newman. Reviewed by Donald Harvey Marks Check it
• How Woke can we be? The meaning of Woke Check it
• Should all doctors be required to accept Medicare and Medicaid as a condition on licensure? 
• You're just another damn Progressive! Why my friends don't see me as the Centrist that I am. 
• The Inevitability of Universal Basic Income UBI for the Homeless & the Addicted - Bad idea or coming necessary? With my added comments in the context of a post-labor economy.
• Personal credo of Donald Harvey Marks, on this blogsite