To Flock or Not to Flock: The Question of Surveillance Cameras

One of this week's big stories has been the controversy over Flock cameras. I first saw it mentioned in an August 6 Facebook post that went like this:

Honest question: Why are people against Automated License Plate Readers (flock cameras)? I am not going to comment, I want to get people’s point of view! Thanks!

There were more than 50 comments. 

Evidently it's a pretty big deal because The Atlantic has a feature story titled In Defense of Flock and the NYTimes published a major story this week as well, titled Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don’t. 

My first thoughts, as is often the case, were contradictory. On the positive side of the ledger is the idea that stolen cars will be more rapidly apprehended. Criminal behavior will be, to some degree, curtailed. 

Simultaneously I thought of the ubiquitous presence of Big Brother in Orwell's 1984.  

Charles Fain Lehman's piece in The Atlantic carries the subtitle, Police cameras can help make the criminal-justice system both fairer and less punitive—if we let them. The subtitle on the Times story telegraphs its angle as well: In Texas, there’s one thing liberals and conservatives agree on: They don’t want cameras trained on their cars.

One of my concerns with de-Flocking (eliminating cameras) is that our police are already handicapped in so many ways that it has become a challenge to catch legitimate criminals. If my car is stolen, I like the idea that police can find it before some nutcase crashes it into a tree, like someone did to my neighbor's car 30 years ago, or hustles it off to a chop shop. The Times story notes that Boulder, Colorado has seen a decline in car thefts by more than a third since these cameras were installed.

The Times story also highlights some abuses that have already occurred. 

One difference between Flock and the cameras that began appearing in Duluth 15 or 20 years ago is that this new system is interconnected to a massive database. Another is that it's AI-powered. (Purportedly 70% of the country is connected. There are Flock cameras in every state except Alaska.)

We've seen censorship on social media instigated by our government. There are other ways a surveillance culture can take a dark turn. 

Here is a comment from X about Flock cameras:

@Wall Street Apes
Flock advertises these cameras as simple license plate readers. But their own patents tell a different story. They're AI-powered surveillance machines that capture every passing vehicle and person and transmit that data to a private corporate cloud, making it queryable by a multitude of state and federal agencies.

A quick review of other comments on X seem to support dismantling the cameras, as if vandalism were heroic. 

Jason Koebler on BlueSky posted: New: Regretful cities are literally covering their Flock cameras with black trash bags because they cannot figure out how to immediately exit their surveillance contracts or get the cameras taken down:

Someone else posted that all eight Flock cameras in Winona have been stolen.

Here's a story from KSTP in Minneapolis:

Flock cameras across Minnesota are being vandalized in response to data privacy concerns

SO, What do you think?  Leave a comment.

In Defense of Flock

Police cameras can help make the criminal-justice system both fairer and less punitive—if we let them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/flock-safety-cameras-ai-surevillance/688219/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20260810&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&lctg=656b49758e7913743006ce3d&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don’t. 

In Texas, there’s one thing liberals and conservatives agree on: They don’t want cameras trained on their cars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/us/flock-cameras-can-track-every-car-in-america-police-love-them-citizens-dont.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20260811&instance_id=180194&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=123953394&segment_id=224550&user_id=c5de7e4b28d36066d31878b87617b3c2

The Politics of Hate: From Orwell to Dylan

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
--Bob Dylan, Only a Pawn in Their Game

One of the memorable features in Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 was a seven-day period of orchestrated mass hysteria directed towards the Party's current enemy. It served as a crucial element in maintaining the Party's control over the population by suppressing individuality and critical thought, strengthening social cohesion and loyalty, and channeling emotional energy towards the Party's goals.

In 1984 Hate Week was a constant bombardment of propaganda and mass manipulation. Rallying against a common enemy not only served as a convenient outlet for negative emotions, it also prevented questioning of the Party or its policies.

And as Dylan so poignantly notes, Hate Week served as a diversion, much like a magician uses misdirection to accomplice his or her illusions. Hate relieves us from noting our own emptiness, our own pettiness, our own smallness. Hatred becomes a tool movements use to manipulate people and their perceptions.

Eric Hoffer, who was noted for his insights and observations about mass movements, wrote, "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." In other words, hate can serve as a powerful glue for uniting people, especially when a common enemy or scapegoat is identified.

In the end, Orwell, Dylan, and Hoffer are all pointing to the same uncomfortable truth: hatred is one of the easiest tools for those in power to use. It simplifies the world into heroes and villains, good people and enemies, leaving little room for reflection or self-examination. When anger is constantly directed outward, we rarely stop to ask who benefits from that anger or what problems are being ignored while we are busy blaming someone else.

The challenge for any free society is to resist that manipulation. It requires citizens willing to think beyond slogans and question the narratives they are handed. Look around and listen. Who are we being told to hate today? Turn on the news. Scroll through social media. Notice how quickly outrage is manufactured and spread. Be aware—and beware. Otherwise, like the pawns in Dylan’s song, we risk being moved around the board by forces we scarcely see.

The Ongoing Conflict Between Security and Individual Liberty: Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan

I bought this book at a garage sale
for 10 cents over 40 years ago
as a way to bone up on the 
classics of Western thought.

In his book The Church at the End of the 20th Century, Dr. Francis Schaeffer made an observation that stuck with me. He wrote that people will gladly give up freedoms in order to be "safe." 

The statement has proven to be remarkably prescient. Individual liberties are being eroded and even freedom of speech is being shackled. Will freedom of thought be next?

In 1651 the philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote an influential book dealing with this topic. His comprehensive theory of social and political organization was titled Leviathan and has been considered one of the most important works of political philosophy in the English language.

Hobbes argued that the natural state of humanity is a state of war, where individuals are in constant competition with each other for resources and power. This state of nature is characterized by a "war of all against all," where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

To escape this state of nature, Hobbes argued that individuals must come together to form a social contract, surrendering some of their natural rights in exchange for protection and security provided by the state. In other words, we are encouraged to accept this trade off: give up your freedom to do whatever you want want in exchange for the security provided by the state.

Nowadays we use Wikipedia and Google to 
fill in some of the gaps in our learning.

In Hobbes' view, the state should have absolute power to maintain order and prevent conflict. This absolute power is necessary to ensure that individuals do not revert to their natural state of war. Hobbes calls this absolute power the "sovereign." That is, we should have one supreme ruler and the people should have no right to rebel against it.

The sovereign's responsibilities include the power to make and enforce laws, judge disputes, and make war and peace. Hobbes also argued that the sovereign's power should be based on the consent of the governed. That is, the people should be able to choose their sovereign.

Hobbes also discusses the relationship between the sovereign and the individual. When it comes to individual responsibility, he argued that the individual has a duty to obey the sovereign, even if the sovereign's commands are contrary to the individual's interests. The individual should only disobey the sovereign if it is a matter of self-preservation.

In Leviathan, security and stability have priority over individual liberty. The state should have absolute power to maintain order and prevent conflict, and that individuals should surrender some of their natural rights in exchange for this security.

It seems that the history of our country has been a conflict between these two forces: individual liberty vs. the (absolute) power of the state. Writers like John Steinbeck and people like Chief Justice Earl Warren focused on protecting the interests of the underrepresented and the basic freedoms our nation was purportedly founded on.

Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World each address this in different ways. The great risk is that by embracing security as a supreme value, we give up our humanity.

Your thoughts?

Orwell On Media Mischief

Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell

This year I have been on something of an Orwell jag. After reading 1984 and Animal Farm last year I dove into Thomas E. Ricks' Churchill and Orwell this spring, which ignited a renewed interest in reading more Orwell. According to Ricks, both Churchill and Orwell produced their best work at the end of their writing careers.

In the case of Orwell, the books 1984 and Animal Farm were his best, but Ricks cited Homage to Catalonia as a turning point. I thus purchased Homage to Catalonia, in part because of the Ricks endorsement and in part because of a recurring interest in the Spanish Civil War. 

But Ricks also noted that Orwell, whose birth name was Eric Blair, wrote innumerable essays in the twilight of his career. (He only lived to be 47.) Currently I have been dipping in to a collection of narrative essays assembled under the title Facing Unpleasant Facts.

The essay currently in my hands during my bedtime reading is titled Looking Back On The Spanish War. In the fourth section of the essay he discusses the manner in which the media cover events, not just the specificities of the Spanish conflict but media in general. It is no wonder that people are so misinformed, as all the events we read about are mediated to us. We are not there and so we rely on others to convey what is happening.

Here's what Orwell has to say about this.

The struggle for power between the Spanish Republican parties is an unhappy far off thing which I have no wish to revive at this date. I only mention it in order to say: believe nothing, or next to nothing, of what you read about internal affairs on the Government side. It is all, from whatever source, party propaganda--that is to say, lies.

A little further down the page he writes:

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports that did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.

I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traders, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing those lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various "party lines.”

These observations seemed to jump off the page in light of current events and a few experiences from my own lifetime. 

Something to think about.

* * *

Related Links

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Is Instructive on Many Levels, Plus a Good Read

Staying Human Is What Is Important

Bertrand Russell's Free Thought and Official Propaganda Has Much to Say about the Current State of Cancel Culture

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

Staying Human Is What's Important

"It's not enough to stay alive. It's staying human that is important."
--Winston, in Orwell's 1984

"It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life  and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it."
--Nicolas Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
--Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

"Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?"
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

So many roads, so much at stake
Too many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity
--Bob Dylan, Dignity

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.
--Ecclesiastes 1:18

George Orwell on Wells, Hitler and "Patriotism vs. the World State"

Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell

Something I'd read this past week prompted me to see how many George Orwell books there were in our local library. I was surprised at the number of books written by or about this man. Thursday I put in requests for about eight. Friday I lay them out on a table and riffled through the contents of each, finally withdrawing four for further review, foolish because I already have a short stack of books I'm gripped by, clambering through.

Orwell is a writer whom nearly everyone is familiar with through his dystopian 1984 or the dark tale Animal Farm. These were certainly jewels, but his essays show him to be an exceptionally perceptive observer of his times. 

One of the books I brought home is titled Dickens, Dali and Others. It's a compilation of essays on various people, one of them being a barbed 1941 critique of H.G. Wells. 

The essay begins with a long quote from Wells' pen nearly mocking those who are afraid that Hitler is about to overrun England. As proof he states "The German air power has been largely spent. It is behind the times and its first-rate men are mostly dead or disheartened or worn out." 

The quote goes on for two more paragraphs in which Wells derides the experts who talk as if Hitler is someone to be feared and concerned about. Wells sees Hitler as nothing more than a silly defective, nothing more than a phantom threat. 

Orwell extracted the quotes from newspaper columns that had been assembled and published as a book titled Guide to the New World. The rest of the essay is Orwell's response. 

He sets up his rebuttal by drawing attention to how quickly the German army had overrun the Balkans and invaded Russia and could march through Turkey and Spain at will. In other words, Wells appeared pretty naive about Germany's incapacity to be a real threat to anyone and Wells' predictions were wrong almost as soon as the ink dried on the printing press.

The real problem with Wells, Orwell points out, was that his world view and belief system blinded him to the realities that were right in front of his face.

Wells at this time was an old man who for decades had been a proponent of a World State in which all people lived in harmony. To this Orwell observes, "What is the point of pointing out that a World State is desirable? What matters is that not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing." Even if sensible people believe in such a dream, the reality is that the sensible people have no power, he writes.

It may be that Hitler is a criminal lunatic, Orwell notes, he still has an army of millions, thousands of airplanes, tens of thousands of tanks and a nation that has been working six years of overtime for this man and fighting for two years more, "whereas for the common-sense, essentially hedonistic world-view which Mr. Wells puts forward, hardly a human creature is willing to shed a pint of blood."

That sentence alone had me sit upright and take note. He continues:

"But before you can even talk of world reconstruction, or even of peace, you have to eliminate Hitler." 

I love the feel of well-worn old books. 

Here's the thing he underscores. While the liberal elite scoff at patriotism, Orwell asks, "What has kept England on its feet during the past year? In part, no doubt, some vague idea about a better future, but chiefly the atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking people that they are superior to foreigners. For the last twenty years the main object of English left-wing intellectuals has been to break this feeling down, and if they had succeeded, we might be watching the S.S. men patrolling the London streets at this moment."

"Similarly, why are the Russians fighting like tigers against German invasion? In part, perhaps, for some half-remembered ideal of Utopian Socialism, but chiefly in defense of Holy Russia..."

The people who identified Hitler with the Antichrist or, on the other hand, the Holy Ghost, were nearer to an understanding of the truth about him, Orwell says, than the intellectuals who saw him as a character from a comic opera not to be taken seriously. 

One reason English authors were unreliable interpreters of the times is that they lived life too leisurely. The best writers, Orwell says, are those "who have seen totalitarianism up close quarters and known the meaning of exile and persecution." 

As I read that last sentence writers like Solzhenitsyn and Koestler came to mind.

What stood out for me in this essay was how these world-views continue to be in conflict amongst us today. Take for example this constant repetition in our time of the phrase, "trust the science."  When people say this, what I hear is, "Trust our narrative of the science." 

Here's Orwell on Wells again:

"If one looks through nearly any book that he (Wells) has written in the last forty years one finds the same idea constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past."

Our attitude toward the past determines much regarding how we go forward. Years ago I remember hearing a speaker contrast the two perspectives in this manner. The conservative view is that the past is a foundation upon which we build. For the modernist the past is an anchor that holds us back. Their solution is to cut the cord and leave the past behind. 

If you look around, read and listen, you'll see that the ideas in this essay are still at war with one another.  Here's the full essay, a relatively short one and a worthy read:

https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws

Related Links 

Public Introspection: George Orwell's Why I Write

Shooting an Elephant

 

Super Bowl Advertisers Get What They Paid For: A Game People Watched to the End

A nod to pollinators.

From before the opening kickoff, the advertising was a kick. Kudos to Secret for their Let's Kick Inequality ad before the kickoff. The timing of the ad was good for them because they didn't have to pay the full in-game price for the ad, yet you can be pretty sure everyone was watching as they put the ball through the goal posts. Watch The Secret Kicker.

When you think about the $5.2 million dollar price tag for the parking space alone (plus cost of production) this event is not for the little kids on the playground. But when you look at the size of some of these players (a few of these companies are Trillion dollar babies) you get the impression they could sneeze five million and not even notice.

This is an illustration of one trillion dollars. The little man in the lower left corner
is life sized. Next to him are two layers of skids of packets of hundred dollar bills.
Get the picture? It's a lot of money.

And so it is that we see tech gorillas Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft coming to play. Squarespace and Verizon round out the tech ads. Budweiser is a perennial player at the big game. Or rather, Anheuser-Busch since they were pushing Michelob Ultra and this Bud Light Seltzer which seems, well... different.

I thought the cross-promotions of brands in the Proctor & Gamble stable was cool. The guy with a stain on his shirt was clever. And what did you think of that Wal-Mart play with movie tie-ins. Watch Famous Visitors. They also had two other spots, flexing their muscles a little.

Speaking of movie tie-ins... "Ned! Is that you?" Yes, we re-lived the best parts of Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It was hilarious and if you have a minute, I've embedded it below. 

This is just a graphic element.

Pepsi's Half-Time Show did the usual pyrotechnic thing with lascivious performers seeing how much they could get away with without being flagged as indecent. Pepsi spent $11 million to sponsor that halftime extravaganza. They also had ads for their other various brands from SodaStream, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew to Doritos and Sabra. There with something new in a black can, but that was two days ago and I forget.

Coca-Cola introduced its new Coke Energy line and Kellogg trotted out its Pringles and Pop-Tarts. (A first.)

The carmakers are ever present. Thank goodness we didn't see that stupid Chevy spot with the "real" people being "amazed" at their awards. Unforgettable because it was so nauseating. (Sorry guys. Go back to Heartbeat of America. Or is that just a slogan now because you ain't the heartbeat any more.)

So we saw Toyota, Hyundai, Jeep (my fave) Audi and even Porsche, fewer car spots than in years past.

Last but not least, Little Caesars made a first-time Super Bowl appearance. Congrats. I saw their ad in Friday's USA Today which promised a free pizza for everyone in the world if they texted that the Little Caesars ad was best. (Or something like that.) I meant to, but forgot.

* * * *
Google is one of those companies that made a name for itself without advertising, so it's interesting to see them just show up. Not everything they do succeeds (See: Google Flops & Fizzles) but if your company has a net worth of one trillion dollars (See graphic: What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like) you must be doing something right. What's amazing in this story is that in 1986 there were dozens of search engines and Google didn't even exist. It was a crowded market in a very specific niche, yet they muscled their way in with a better concept that made it easier and faster for users to find what they were looking for. Two decades later they are being compared to monopolistic robber barons.

They have plenty of cash to play with--over $100 billion--so why not be part of the world's biggest party?

Here's an interesting article about how we might be watching the Super Bowl in the future... with hologram technology and other gizmos.

And finally, for Mac users, that epic ad that showed the real possibilities of building a brand with a single "shot heard round the world" --Watch 1984.



And so it goes.

What would your Super Bowl commercial look like if your were hired to be the executive creator for one of these brands? 

Foreshadowing: an Invaluable Tool in the Writer’s Toolkit

Writing fiction involves many skills that the average person does not automatically possess. Masters of the craft of novel writing become so by mastering these skills. Description, character development, plotting and pacing are just a few of the skills one must hone.

This past week I read George Orwell's 1984 for what is probably the third time. While reading, I  observed that one of the techniques Orwell used is foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which the author hints toward something that will happen later in the story. By means of foreshadowing the author generates suspense, creates tension. And in 1984 a second reading reveals just how many ways the ultimate "reveal" is foretold and how each time it increases the reader's anxiety for the central characters, Winston and Julia.

SPOILER ALERT

If you've not read the book, the following info will give away the ending. Also, if you've not read the book, then you owe it to yourself to read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, Huxley's Brave New World and C.S. Lewis' space trilogy that culminates in That Hideous Strength. The three authors were writing at roughly the same time about things that they foresaw, things we are experiencing in various degrees at this very time in history.

The main characters are Winston, Julia and Big Brother. Winston is the central character, a man who works for the Ministry of Truth, his job being to re-write the past to make it perpetually consistent with what the Party dictates in the present.

The world he inhabits has no privacy. There are telescreens everywhere, foreshadowing our own age of Alexa and the Internet of Things. Thinking one's own thoughts is itself a crime.

There are three political realms: Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania, where Winston lives. The totalitarian state of Oceania is perpetually at war, first with one and then the other.

At the center of the story is the development of Winston's love relationship with Julia, who uses sex (sexcrime) as a means of rebellion against Big Brother. Also central to the story is Winston's diary. That is, the novel begins with his own taking up of a pen to keep a diary, a forbidden act that is punishable by death.

As the story progresses Orwell drops little clues about a place where it is always light, about a Room 101 and the Ministry of Love. The references are increasingly ominous. Readers, however, do not know how to imagine what takes place there, only that it is not good.

Eventually both Winston and Julia are caught, betrayed by a man named O'Brien whom they believed they could trust, who the thought was like themselves part of a hidden underground. Winston no doubt projected his belief that O'Brien was a co-conspirator and seduced into trusting him.

From here we accompany Winston to the Ministry of Love where he is tortured--by this very selfsame O'Brien--until his heart and mind have been altered and he not only mouths the right words, he actually loves Big Brother.

* * * *

At the center of Winston's core is his conviction that he will not betray Julia, whom he has come to love. The manner in which he is tortured is terrifying. Earlier in the book Winston and Julia have been secretly meeting in a room in a rundown place infested with bugs. A rat emerges from a rathole in the corner of the room and we can tell by Winston's reaction, and his own admission, that he is terrified of rats.

As it turns out in the end, by means of this horror that O'Brien extracts a confession from Winston. "Do it to Julia!" It's all the more heartbreaking because of Orwell's having painted the characters so vividly and you so much care about them. You really want love to win out in the end.

Had the torture scene taken place without foreshadowing, it would never have been as effective. By means of subtle references, and then later overt references, readers clearly grasp that this is not something anyone would wish for. When Winston is later incarcerated after having been arrested, other people come and go from the jail cell, each one shaken to the core when they are told they must go to Room 101. Their reactions underscore the horror that awaits.

Whether you are a writer of novels or screenplays, learning how to incorporate clues into the story is an invaluable technique for generating suspense. 

Throwback Thursday: Influential Books

THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARED SEVEN YEARS AGO TODAY

I just finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and I can only say it deserves all the accolades it has ever received. The book is so much more than a story. It is a mirror reflecting the distortedness that infected our culture as a result of racism. The writing is beautiful and vivid, and the manner in which the story is told is singular. Thank you again, Ms. Lee.

Interestingly enough, To Kill A Mockingbird never made it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List, which was birthed on August 9, 1942.

I mentioned last week that Mockingbird was named in a 1991 survey as one of the most influential books of all time. You might be interested to learn some of the other books on that list in the order they were listed. NYT #1 Bestsellers are in bold.

1. The Bible, whose Revised Standard Version and New English versions were both #1 when released.
2. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand ("Who is John Galt?")
3. The Road Less Travelled, by M. Scott Peck
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
7. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
8. The Book of Mormon
9. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
10. A Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
11. Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl (tie)
12. Passages, by Gail Sheehy (tie)
13. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harrold Kashner

It's been said that the biggest influences on our lives are the people we meet and the books we read. So a list of most influential books is also a good barometer of the culture. If I were a betting man, I would guess that a number of these books would not appear on a list compiled today, 19 years later.

Actually, with a simple Google search you can come up with all kinds of lists of "influential books", but most seem to be individuals conjecturing on what books were most influential in history, or others outlining their own personal lists (eg. NY Times blogger Ross Douthat) which can often make a good starting point for your next reading program.

Lists like this can also be very personal, and a book that I found influential might not have any significance for the next person. For example, unless you're ambition is to be an influential writer yourself I doubt the book You Can Tell the World will be on your list.

The manner in which the list is assembled will certainly influence the outcome, too. The list above was assembled in conjunction with the Book of the Month Club, few of whom were compelled to include Marx or Thoreau on their lists, authors whose influential works have produced worldwide reverberations.

In the meantime, what's next on your reading list? There really are too many books, and so little time.

* * * *
Addendum 2017
When I look back on this blog post from 2010 I find the book list to be quite America-centric. Marx & Engels' Communist Manifesto was certainly influential, as was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Darwin's The Origins of Species would have to be included, as well as Plato's Republic. Let's include Orwell's 1984 while we're at it. If you've not read it, then find a copy and you'll see why this was such an important book.

At the time I wrote this I'd yet to publish any books myself but was working on one. As of today I've produced more than a half dozen, which you can check out here.

Any excuse to read is a good one. Read!