AfterHours:Culture:Reading

Contents 1 Navigation 2 Related categories 3 About the Recommended Readings page 4 Public libraries and references online 5 Edgar Morin (in french) 6 Cao Xueqin - Hong Lou Meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber) 7 The Khazar winds 8 Short readings on unconventional topics 9 People, ideas, lives and biographies

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Related categories

About the Recommended Readings page

It is amazing how many rich reading resources on interesting topics can be found on Internet. But it is too much to be covered in the limited space of this page. However the few links and resources are helpful to go further, explore in more depth the online libraries and read according to own interests. We apologize for this little information, this page is still under construction. Please stay tuned.

Public libraries and references online

• Internet public classical literature library [1]
• The home of the Gutenberg Project [2]
• The web virtual library, a very valuable resource [3]
• THe World Factbook online [4]
• Great summaries of great books [5]
• The archived Stanford Humanities Review issues, great collection of essays on culture [6]
• Baen Free Library [7]
• The Classical Authors Library [8]
• Page by page books online [9]
• The free books directory [10]
• The U. of Virginia ebooks library [11]
• The Oxford text archive of classical works in ebook format [12]
• Resources & publications from American Geological Institute [13]
• Great online book collection [14]
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [15]
• Roger's Thesaurus [16]
• Berkeley Digital Library [17]
• Universal Library [18]
• Net Library [19]
• Library of Congress [20]
• Freebyte's Guide to Free Dictionaries [21]
• European Library online
• The Open Content Alliance - Free content & books online
• The complete online reference of Moliere's life, works and characters
• Wikipedia book index - search for multiple sources for a book given the ISBN number (i.e. after ISBN-10: or ISBN-13:)
• The Opposable Mind - Roger L. Martin's book on how successful leaders win through integrative thinking, published by Harvard Business Press
• ScholarPedia - a reliable reference-library online featuring articles written by invited domain-expert authors and peer-reviewed before publication. This seems to be a definitely better, less ad-infested reference than the likes of About.com and a serious answer to Google's Knols program direct threat
• Scribd - an excellent source of online reading topics
  • Orwell's 1984 novel
  • Marcel Leblanc's Arsene Lupin
  • An album of National Geographic photos
  • CCNA test questionnaire
  • An album of images from renowned carst formations in Romania's Apuseni Mountains
  • The sumerian poem of Gilgamesh
  • The epic the Babylonian creation myth of Enuma-Elish
  • The History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Asyria
  • The complete works of H.G. Wells
• The Encyclopedia Of Life (EOL) - a nascent project that aims at cataloging all life-forms on Earth

Edgar Morin (in french)

Great modern philosopher, exposing the root-cause and the cures for the identity crisis the occidental civilisation is traversing

• Articles, ideas and dialogues [22]
• Life and work of Edgar Morin [23]
• Edgar Morin, the thinker [24]

Cao Xueqin - Hong Lou Meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber)

The novel "The Dream of the Red Chamber", also known as "The Story of the Stone" was written in the 18 century and, as a large novel of more than 100 chapters, is at the same time an allegory and a portrait of 18th century Chinese society.

• Cao Xueqin - Hong Lou Meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber) [25]

The Khazar winds

Marek Halter recounts the less known but nevertheless extraordinary adventure of the Khazarian jews, a Turkmen people living in what today is Russia's great plains between the Caucasus and Volga. In the 10'th century they converted to judaism and there is evidence that at least in part, today's Russian jewish populace is descending from these ancient Khazars.

• Marek Halter's book Khazar Winds [26]

Short readings on unconventional topics

• David Gardiner's short novels and essays [27]
• Chaco Anasazi culture [28]
• Book review - Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries [29]
• Utopianunconventional reading [30]
• The theory of autism as Neanderthal heritage [31]
• Readings on unusual topics [32]
• Rocky Mountain Institute - for a sustainable development [33]
• Wise Earth - a community forum connecting organizations and people interested in sustainable development
• David Kupelian's Anatomy of an antisemite [34] [anatomy_of_an_antisemite.pdf]
• Antikythera mechanism, an antique analog computer [35]
• Richard Mitchell's "Less Than Words Can Say" study on American illiteracy [36]
• Prof. Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time - a book on science and astrophysics
• The Strategy Paradox - a "must-read" business book by Deloitte Consulting's Michael E. Raynor about the common ingredients of success and failure and the collision between commitment and uncertainty
• The Innovator Solution - a "must-read" business book by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor on the topic of dealing with disruptive innovation by successful business leaders
• The Proceedings of the Old Bailey (1674-1913) - searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court
• America and the World - an article on Andrew Bacevich's book "The Limits of Power or The End of American Exceptionalism" and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's book with the same title

People, ideas, lives and biographies

• Famous philosophers' chronology, life and ideas [37]
• List of French celebrities [38]
• The life and works of Ilya Ehrenburg [39] and [40]
• Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough [41]
• Short biographies of famous now-dead people [42]
• Paul Braffort, Science et Litterature [43] (local copy). Mentions Tristan Tzara's son, Christophe Tzara, a scientist, as well as Maurice Spighel, the renowned nuclear phisicist who started his career with professor Joliot-Curie.
• Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar [44]
• Bill Joy's Why the future does not need us (local copy)
• Richard Stallman's book Free as in freedom, the bedrock of today's free-software movement [45].Consistent to his ideals, Richard Stallman agreed with the book publication by O'Reilly only if the whole text was made available online.
• Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Democracy [46]
• Bruce Sterling's book about Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier [47]
• Biographies and work of famous and emerging artists [48]
• The (Thomas Henry) Huxley (President of the Royal Society) File
• Seymour Schulich's celebrated "Get Smarter - Life And Business Lessons" book
• Ayn Rand's philosophy of "objectivism", probably based on the author's painful experience in Communist Russia - background information and ideas
• Alan Greenspan's "Age of Turbulence" memoirs, profile and a related article
• Joel Spolsky, well-known with his Joel on Software blog, founder/CEO of MicroISV Fog Creek Software, author of FogBugz Project Management toolset.
• Naomi Klein, author of the "Shock Doctrine" - her web site
• The Corporation - a movie exploring the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time
• The End of Suburbia - a movie about oil depletion and the collapse of the American Dream
• The Institute for the Future of the Book - a small think-and-do tank concerned with the evolution of intellectual discourse as from printed pages to networked screens.
• The Anti-Googlization of everything blog
• The Complete Works of Voltaire in 21 vols. Over two centuries after his death, aspects of Voltaire's life remain less known - he had forged one of the highest incomes in the kingdom for himself, thanks to his domain at Ferney, to his industrial investments and to his ship financing venture. The author of "Zadig" did, it is true, formulate this phrase that has remained famous: "If you see a banker jump out the window, don't hesitate, jump after him; you can be sure there will be some profit in it"
• Life in a Jar - a playwright on the life and deeds of Irena Sendler, who, as member of the Zegota underground during the war, helped to save the lives of thousands of Jewish children from the nazi gas chambers
• Robert Graves, an English poet, scholar and and author of immortal novels I Claudius and The Golden Fleece
• Sir George (James) Frazer - scholar, historian and anthropologist, best known for his comparative-religion study The Golden Bough, based on a reference to a mystical tree in a Greco-Roman myth
• Steve Wozniak's personal site - he founded Apple together with Steve Jobs. Here is an interview with Steve Jobs on the iPhone success.
• Khaled Hosseini's stories on Iranian way of life
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
  • The Kite Runner
• Denis Finch Hatton - renowned British aviator and adventurer, dead 1931 near Nairobi and main character in 1985 movie "Out of Africa"
• Kirk Kerkorian, the 91 year old billionaire, presidend and CEO of Tracinda Corporation and one of the main Ford investors