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. 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. 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 Firm, John Grisham
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 Click Here
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. Check Now
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 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
History:
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 Total State: how liberal democracies become tyrannies. Auron MacIntyre.
The Technological Republic, 2025. Alex Karp (reading now)
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. 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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 Total State: how liberal democracies become tyrannies. Auron MacIntyre.
The Technological Republic, 2025. Alex Karp (reading now)
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- The beauty of what remains. How our greatest fear becomes our greatest gift. Stephen Leder.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
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