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Paul Kingsnorth's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Paul Kingsnorth recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Paul Kingsnorth's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
Recommended by Paul Kingsnorth, and 1 others.

Paul KingsnorthRobinson Jeffers was a poet who lived in California for most of his life. He’s a very interesting poet, unlike any other I have come across. I remember reading an anthology many years ago and coming across a couple of his poems. I’d never heard of him before but thought they were very striking for two reasons. (Source)

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2

St. Mawr/The Man Who Died

These two brilliant novels are deservedly among Lawrence's most popular works. Both are at the same time exciting narratives and striking expressions of Lawrence's philosophy. St. Mawr is the story of a splendid stallion in whose vitality the heroine finds the quality that is lacking in the men she knows. It is also the first of Lawrence's writing to be partially set in America, on a ranch in Arizona. The Man Who Died, originally published in Paris as "The Escaped Cock" and later retitled and revised, has as its main character Christ, who does not die on the cross but escapes to... more
Recommended by Paul Kingsnorth, and 1 others.

Paul KingsnorthThere are a lot of fiction and non-fiction writers in the 20th century who started to feel the weight of this machine of civilisation. George Orwell wrote about it all the time, most famously in 1984, as well as Huxley, Lawrence and poets like Robinson Jeffers and RS Thomas. All sorts of writers had the sense that we are living in a machine civilisation that we can’t control, and which has its... (Source)

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3
“Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber's next target. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument. . . . As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in [Kaczynski’s writing]. I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote from Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil's book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it.” — Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, in “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,”... more
Recommended by Paul Kingsnorth, and 1 others.

Paul KingsnorthI included this one as a metaphorical bomb to throw at people. This is a very interesting book that I only came across recently after I read an article about David Skrbina, the academic who put it together and had been corresponding with Kaczynski in prison. I find it interesting that they were able to publish it in America, because the constitution allows somebody who’s in prison to publish... (Source)

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4

The Word for World Is Forest

When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.

This is...
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Recommended by Paul Kingsnorth, and 1 others.

Paul KingsnorthI’m not really a big science fiction fan, but this book was recommended to me a few years back and I thought I would give it a try. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film Avatar, but as far as I can see it seems to be pretty much the same story, except that the film has a happy ending and the book doesn’t. (Source)

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5

A Short History of Progress

Each time history repeats itself, the cost goes up. The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old... more
Recommended by Paul Kingsnorth, and 1 others.

Paul KingsnorthWright is a very thoughtful writer and this is a very interesting and analytical book – it’s not at all a piece of tub thumping. He’s examining the myth of progress. I don’t mean myth in the sense that it’s a lie, I mean in the sense of the guiding story that our civilisation lives by. Wright says that all civilisations live by myths, that we all have stories that we believe in about the way the... (Source)

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