Favorite books of DH 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 @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. https://youtu.be/R6e08RnJyxo?si=Q36qlkr16EXDd57J

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. 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 http://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2024/02/r-eview-of-end-of-reality-by-johathan.html

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 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 Client, by Grisham. I love his use of colloquial language
• Undermoney, international political and financial fiction by Jay Newman. Link to my book review https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2023/02/review-of-undermoney-by-jay-newman.html
• 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 wiser, I understand that they don't work and why they 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 https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/book-review-danger-zone?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Losing the Long Game: the false promise of regime change, Philip Gordon. America has BTDT.

On China, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, World Order, and Kissinger on Kissinger, all by 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. 

Henry Kissinger at 100. Former–The Easy Existentialist - Enduring ideas💡 that matter ☕to you – Apple Podcasts

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, Ray Dalio, 2021. Impressive, detailed, predictive, must have been written with an army of helpers, like recent books of Fareed Zakaria

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. 

Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy. Review at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-rickards/sold-out-supply-chain/

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 http://bit.ly/3jlf76x

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 

History

• The Ascent of Man, Bronowski
• The Fourth Turning is here, Howe
• Imperial Hubris: why the West is losing the war on terror, 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 Age of Revolution.  Fareed Zakaria. Good review 

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

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
• Making sense of loss

No death, no fear.

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

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

BloodBird: When the organ isn’t the only thing transplanted. https://amzn.to/35MAhlN

Vera Mortina:  When the patient is not the sick one! https://amzn.to/2P0Qv4T

Her Charm Was Contagious: A dangerous doctor and a patient who just loved everyone to death! https://amzn.to/2MVC7Iw

The Surrogate: The Surrogate: A young woman trapped in the greed and power of the IVF industry  amzn.to/2FSzyDv

Transit States, collected poetry of DH Marks  https://amzn.to/2MuJN5j  

List of my (Donald H. Marks) favorite movies: 

Additional writings of Donald H. Marks, physician-scientist

Reliable news sources I personally use http://bit.ly/3kECPvr   

Fake News: Everything You Need to Know http://bit.ly/345cj95 

Best Online Free Fact-Checking Tools http://bit.ly/3H97I44

Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News  http://bit.ly/3qudEyX

Infodemic: the epidemic of information http://bit.ly/3fV7BgN 

The Curious Case of Deepfakes http://bit.ly/3GZJdXhn 

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. http://bit.ly/3TcuT4I

Einstein, Relativity and Relative Ethics https://bit.ly/3gWWH9t  

What I Haven’t Told My Family on the Meaning of Time. https://bit.ly/374cpzJ

Jonas Salk, Polio Vaccine and Vaccinating Against Hate, https://bit.ly/3xjtosh 

My ever-updating fav list of coffee shops and espresso blends and locations https://bit.ly/3IkqOHE

Elitists Neocons Neolibs, oh my. What are they, who are they, and why should I care? http://bit.ly/3LMrs0e 

Undermoney. Techno economic political thriller by Jay Newman. Reviewed by Donald Harvey Marks https://bit.ly/3Fa4wqb 

How Woke can we be? The meaning of Woke https://bit.ly/3Fd7fPy