Herodotus, The Histories (5th century BCE)

Herodotus (c. 480 - 425 B.C.).
The Histories.
George Rawlinson, translator.
Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
(Series: Great Books of the Western World, Volume 6.)

A disadvantage of George Rawlinson's translation is that it is old (completed in 1860); the contemporary reader may find its British English somewhat archaic.

Other Translations:

• David Grene, University of Chicago Press, 1988 (Amazon).
  Note: Grene has provided commentary to an edition of Thomas Hobbes' translation of Thucydides, The Pelopenesian War, University Of Chicago Press, 1989 (Amazon).
• Walter Blanko, Norton Critical Edition, 1992 (Amazon).
  This is very readable; however, that Norton edition omits some of Herodotus' text. The Norton edition includes about 150 pages of "Backgrounds" (selected excerpts from ancient Greeks and Romans) and "Commentaries;" I found some of the Commentary essays useful.

If I had more time I would read these Commentaries:

• Herodotean Inquiries by Seth Benardete. St. Augustine's Press, 1999. (Amazon)
• The World of Herodotus by Aubrey de Selincourt. Phoenix Press, 2001. (Amazon)

Links:

• The History of Hellas
• Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece

Update, 13 Aug 2012:

Editions:
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. Robert B. Strassler, editor. Andrea L. Purvis, translator. New York: Pantheon, 2007.
[Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936).
What's Wrong With The World.
San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994.

Some books and websites related to Chesterton:

• The American Chesterton Society


• The Chesterton Society (UK)


• G.K. Chesterton by Martin Ward


• Wikipedia


• The Chesterton Review


• Gilbert Magazine; Links


• Dale Ahlquist. G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003.


• Joseph Pearce. Wisdom & Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.

Foreign Affairs, Volume 84, Number 6, November/December 2005.

The National Interest, Number 81, Fall 2005.

Two essays by John Fonte:

• Why There Is A Culture War: Gramsci and Tocqueville in America (Policy Review, No. 104, December 2000)


• Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West [PDF] (Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, May 2002)

The Claremont Review of Books, Volume V, Number 4, Fall 2005.

David Horowitz.
Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left.
Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004.

Additional details collected by Horowitz can be found here: Unholy Alliances.

Oriana Fallaci.
The Rage and the Pride.
New York: Rizzoli, 2002.

This book had its origin in a letter to a newspaper, to Italy, to Europe written in New York during the weeks after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Fallaci issues a passionate warning about the "nazifascism of Islamic Fundamentalism" and, more importantly, about the religious and cultural war which Islam now openly wages against the West (a Reverse Crusade, she calls it).

Note that I use the label "cultural war" in a metaphorical sense when refering to internal American culture and politics, but it has an entirely different meaning when refering to Europe's Islamic problem, as recent events illustrate (bombings in Spain and England, hostage taking and murder in Russia, assasinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, riots in France and Denmark and the Netherlands and Germany...). How will Europe deal with its unassimilated (and apparently unassimilable) Muslim population? England and France appear to have already taken many steps towards dhimmitude from fear of offending their violent Muslim populations.

Fallaci's most recent book is The Force of Reason (American edition, 2006).

Some recent articles on this topic:

• The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, Autumn 2002.


• Europe's Angry Muslims by Robert S. Leiken, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005. (The author's optimism about France has been proved wrong by the riots of October & November 2005.)


• The Suicide Bombers Among Us by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, Autumn 2005.


• If the Problem Is Muslim Terror, Then What? by Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal, Autumn 2005.
  


• The Real Global Virus: The plague of Islamism keeps on spreading by Victor Davis Hanson in National Review Online, 4 November 2005.


• Troubling "Facts" of the Paris Riots: How our newspapers might turn bias to balance by Bruce Thornton (6 Nov 2005)
  
  Thornton clearly identifies the deterministic materialism behind many Westerners' misinterpretation & misunderstanding of the Islamic threat to Western Civilization. He writes:
  
  "Even those who presumably believe that humans do have free will, and that spiritual reality is as real as material, are seduced by the same determinist assumptions. The Bush administration's belief that jihadist terror is a deformation of Islam brought about by lack of political freedom expresses the same assumption. This is akin to the equally mistaken belief that the jihadists in Iraq are blowing up American soldiers and fellow Moslems because of anger over the U.S. overthrow of Hussein. In both cases, those who act on the basis of spiritual beliefs are reduced to mere reactors to environmental forces outside their control. And when the jihadists identify for us, as they do repeatedly, the religious beliefs and doctrines that inspire their actions and that are consistent with the history and theology of their religion, we arrogantly dismiss their words as expressions of some neurosis or delusion whose true sources lie elsewhere."


• Articles by Paul Belien at The Brussels Journal:
  Ramadan Rioting in Europe's No-Go Areas (2 Nov 2005); The Fall of France (5 Nov 2005); Show Them Who Is the Boss in France (6 Nov 2005).

For more on this topic, see the works of Bat Ye'Or:

• The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam (1985)


• The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Century (1996)


• Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001)


• Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005)

and the works of Bernard Lewis:

• Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East (1973, 2001)


• The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982, 2001)


• Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople: Politics and War (1987)


• Race and Slavery in the Middle East: A Historical Enquiry (1992)


• The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (1994)


• Islam and the West (1994)


• Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery (1996)


• The Middle East (1997)


• The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (2001)


• The Emergence of Modern Turkey (2001)


• What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (2001, 2003)


• The Arabs in History (2002)


• The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (2002)


• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (2003)


• From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (2004)

Gertrude Himmelfarb.
One Nation, Two Cultures.
New York: Vintage Books, 2001.

Himmelfarb begins with this quote from Adam Smith:

In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called the people of fashion.

Himmelfarb describes the American Cultural Revolution of the Twentieth Century in which the liberal culture previously restricted to the upper classes and "bohemians" became widespread among the middle and lower classes (the "counterculture"). Himmelfarb details the resulting cultural divide and how it has played out in chapters devoted to: Civil Society, Family, Law and Polity, Religion, and Ethics. It appears that the American Cultural Revolution is in the process of being challenged, reversed and supressed to varying degrees by a reformation or counter-revolution which has become know in some circles as the Fourth Great Awakening.

Zuckerman & Malkan, eds., The Origin and Evolution of the Universe (1996)

The Origin and Evolution of the Universe.
Ben Zuckerman and Matthew A. Malkan, Editors.
Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc., 1996.

Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.

This book was a production of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life (CSEOL), University of California, Los Angeles.

Contents (These chapters consists of short - 15 to 30 pages - introductory survey essays.):

1. The Origin of the Universe, by Edward L. Wright.
2. The Origin and Evolution of Galaxies, by Alan M. Dressler.
3. The Origin of Stars and Planets, by Fred C. Adams.
4. Stellar Explosions, Neutron Stars, and Black Holes, by Alexei V. Filippenko.
5. The Origin and Evolution of the Chemical Elements, by Virginia L. Trimble.
6. The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Universe, by Christopher P. McKay, Link.
7. Future of the Universe, by Andrei Linde.

For more detailed introductions to Astronomy and Astrophysics, see these textbooks (approximately ordered by pre-requisites):

• Robert C. Bless.
  Discovering the Cosmos.
  University Science Books, 1996.
  Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.
• Frank H. Shu.
  The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy.
  University Science Books, 1982.
  Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.
• Stephen A. Gregory and Michael Zeilik.
  Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics, 4th Edition.
  Brooks Cole, 1998.
  Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.
• Bradley W. Carroll and Dale A. Ostlie.
  An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics.
  Addison Wesley, 1996.
  Book information: Publisher, Book Website (errata, etc.), Amazon.com.
• Jonathan Lunine.
  Astrobiology: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach.
  Addison Wesley, 2004.
  Book information: Publisher, Amazon.com.