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The Nixieworks Reading List

Updated: Jan 21

Writing this because every time I post what book I'm currently reading, I get questions on reading recommendations. As someone who spends eight or more hours a day in my workshop listening to audiobooks and podcasts, I go through a LOT of content. So here are some books, essays, and podcasts that I think are important for people to read. This will be a living list, and will occasionally be updated with new stuff I find. Where possible, I will post a link to an audio recording of the item, since audio recording is my preferred format.


NONFICTION - POLITICS / PHILOSOPHY

  • Industrial Society and its Future by Dr. Theodore J. Kaczynski (The Unabomber Manifesto)

  • Dark Age America by John Michael Greer (if you read only one JMG book, read this one)

  • Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush: The Best of the Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer (perhaps the best writer about Peak Oil and Catabolic Collapse)

  • Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan (argument that the invention of agriculture was a mistake and the hunter gatherer life was superior)

  • Generation Identity by Markus Willinger (general right wing essay from European Identitarian movement)

  • Fascism: The Career of a Concept by Paul Gottfried (a historical look at fascism and the misuse of the word today)

  • The Demon in Democracy by Ryszard Legutko (everything wrong with liberal democracy, really excellent read)

  • Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Hermann & Noam Chomsky (explains how the media allows elites to run a repressive regime without overt methods of repression)

  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (an excellent nonfiction account of life in modern society)

  • The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (an outstanding self help and philosophy book, very actionable)

  • The Way of Men by Jack Donovan (famous modern treatise on masculinity)

  • Masculinity Amidst Madness by Ryan Landry (read this after WoM. It's very actionable info)

  • The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis (an outstanding argument for objective morality and truth)

  • The Price of Panic by Douglas Axe, Jay W. Richards, & William M. Briggs (written at the end of 2020, outlying the mistakes of the public response to COVID)

  • Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan (theorizes the geopolitical future of various countries now that American Hegemony is failing)

  • Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann (how white minoritization and white identity political concerns are playing a role in modern populist right politics)


NONFICTION - RELIGION

  • Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (the best general Christian apologetics book I've read. If you are starting from an atheist perspective and want a full handholding guide into Christianity, read The Abolition of Man then read this)

  • The Great Divorce by CS Lewis (allegorical novel about purgatory and repentance)

  • The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis (justification of how a benevolent God permits suffering, and its necessity in the process of sanctification)

  • The Orthodox Church by Father Kalistos Ware (general introduction to Orthodox Christianity)

  • Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century by Stephen De Young (a historical argument in support of Orthodox Christian practices and traditions)

  • Words for our Time by Saint Matthew the Poor (excerpts from his writings and his life)

  • Nihilism by Father Seraphim Rose (how modern secularism inevitably leads to antichristian nihilism)

  • Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Father Seraphim Rose (how demonic worship is becoming increasingly common in mainstream society)

  • The Struggle for Virtue: Asceticism in a Modern Secular Society by Archbishop Averky (a guide for achieving asceticism in the modern world)

  • The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel (an atheist's exploration of historical evidence in support of the Gospel)


NONFICTION - OTHER

  • Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough (history of leftist US domestic terrorism in the 1960s-1970s)

  • Army of None by Paul Scharre (nightmare fuel about the future of autonomous weapons)

  • American Nations by Colin Woodard (an ethnic and cultural history of the groups that settled America. Great for dispelling the "nation of immigrants" myth)

  • Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (the classic environmental black pill)

  • The Reluctant Partisan Vol 1 & 2 by John Mosby (a survival guide for the slow collapse)

  • A Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade (the intersection of race and population genetics in humans)


NONFICTION - MILITARY HISTORY

  • Empire of the Summer Moon by SC Gwynne (history of the Comanche Wars)

  • Killing Crazy Horse by Bill O'Reilly (history of the Indian Wars)

  • Inferno by Max Hastings (grand history of WWII as a whole)

  • A Frozen Hell by William R. Trotter (secondary source on the Finnish Winter War)

  • Tigers in the Mud by Otto Carius (memoir of a Tiger Tank ace)

  • The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer (my favorite German Ostfront memoir)

  • Blood Red Snowby Gunter K. Koschorrek (German Ostfront memoir)

  • In Deadly Combat by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann (German Ostfront memoir)

  • Adventures in My Youth by Armin Scheiderbauer (German Ostfront memoir)

  • Fur Volk and Fuhrer by Erwin Bartmann & Derik Hammond (German Ostfront memoir)

  • The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan (secondary source on the Battle of Berlin)

  • The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Antony Beevor (secondary source on the Battle of Berlin)

  • The End by Ian Kershaw (secondary source on the collapse of the Third Reich)

  • With the Old Breed by EB Sledge (memoir on the Pacific War)

  • Spearhead by Adam Makos (secondary source on US & German tankers in WWII)

  • The Last Stand of Fox Company by Bob Drury & Tom Calvin (secondary source on the Frozen Chosin)

  • Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard B. Fall (secondary source on the siege of Dien Bien Phu)

  • A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan (a biography about an Army Officer that serves as an exposition of US Government lies and wrongdoings during Vietnam)

  • Dispatches by Michael Herr (crazy memoir by a journalist who went all over Vietnam. This was the guy who helped write the screenplays for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket)

  • SOG by John Plaster (full history of MACV-SOG recon team operations in Vietnam)

  • Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden (secondary source on Operation Gothic Serpent)

  • Generation Kill by Evan Wright (primary source on the 2003 Iraq Invasion)

FICTION - APOCALYPTIC

  • Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (civilians in 1950s Florida survive after a nuclear war)

  • Dies the Fire series by SM Sterling (all combustion magically stops working)

  • King of Dogs by Andrew Edwards (very grounded, Soviet-style slow collapse in the US southwest)

  • Metro 2033 series by Dmitry Glukhovsky (perhaps my favorite sci-fi post-apoc novel, if you liked the video games, the book is much, much better)


FICTION - HISTORICAL NOVELS

  • Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (perhaps my favorite novel ever. Apocalypse Now in the American West. The Indian Wars as a guise for a lesson about the immutability of human cruelty)

  • Team Yankee by Harold Coyle (US tankers in the Fulda Gap during WW3)

  • Chieftains by Forrest Webb (British tankers in the Fulda Gap during WW3)

  • The Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling (steampunk fiction)

  • Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson (historic WWII era adventure novel)

  • Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove (time travelers give the Confederate States of America AK-47s)

  • SS-GB by Len Deighton (alternate history England if Germany won WWII)

  • Island in the Sea of Time series by SM Sterling (Nantucket island is teleported back to the neolithic age)

  • Red Plenty by Francis Spufford (excellent novel about idealism in post-WWII Soviet Russia)


FICTION - SCI-FI

  • Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers (what STALKER was based on)

  • The Reality Dysfunction series by Peter F. Hamilton (space combat)

  • Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton (power armor space war)

  • Armor by John Steakley (very brutal power armor space war)

  • The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (a guy who has to go into hypersleep for decades every time his unit gets deployed)

  • Mindstar series by Peter F Hamilton (near future psychic detective in post-apoc England)


FICTION - OTHER

  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (classic novel about masculinity and anticonsumerism)

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