What Has Changed My Life
For as long as I can remember, books have played a major role in my life, and a recent move between apartments revealed little has changed. Thank God, and a competitive market, for e-readers and digital versions from here on in.
My mother used to laugh about the story of The Brave Little Tailor, which apparently I couldn’t get enough of as a child. If you’ve not read it, it is strange as far as fairytales go. My best summation of the moral of the story is “shoot your mouth off, and maybe it’ll happen.”
When I was about 10 years old, I won a local cross country race and decided that I wanted to be an athlete. She then bought me The Essential Runner, which I still have to this day. It inspired me to make my first training plan and diary on the old IBM Compatible.
It also offered one of my first tastes of independence. While school offered little of interest, athletics allowed me to pursue my intellectual curiosity and apply new knowledge to my life right away.
To this day, I feel fortunate to have access to almost any book or thinker I choose. After the Cuba Corps and Language of Liberty conference in Miami in February, along with news from China and so many other countries, I see how that access is precious and how many people in power fear transparency. Ignorance, far from being bliss, keeps people in submission. On the other hand, knowledge, when converted into action, is power.
I’m also increasingly aware that many books have had a profound impact on me. They have not only changed the way I think but the course of my life.
Given the chance to review many of these over the past week, I wanted to take the opportunity to share the leading ones with Stateless Man readers. Without doubt, I will forget to mention some, and they don’t fit neatly into topical categories. However, I hope these will offer insights into what has shaped my thinking and stimulate others to read the books that have given so much value to me. (In future, I’ll come up with a
My mother used to laugh about the story of The Brave Little Tailor, which apparently I couldn’t get enough of as a child. If you’ve not read it, it is strange as far as fairytales go. My best summation of the moral of the story is “shoot your mouth off, and maybe it’ll happen.”
When I was about 10 years old, I won a local cross country race and decided that I wanted to be an athlete. She then bought me The Essential Runner, which I still have to this day. It inspired me to make my first training plan and diary on the old IBM Compatible.
It also offered one of my first tastes of independence. While school offered little of interest, athletics allowed me to pursue my intellectual curiosity and apply new knowledge to my life right away.
To this day, I feel fortunate to have access to almost any book or thinker I choose. After the Cuba Corps and Language of Liberty conference in Miami in February, along with news from China and so many other countries, I see how that access is precious and how many people in power fear transparency. Ignorance, far from being bliss, keeps people in submission. On the other hand, knowledge, when converted into action, is power.
I’m also increasingly aware that many books have had a profound impact on me. They have not only changed the way I think but the course of my life.
Given the chance to review many of these over the past week, I wanted to take the opportunity to share the leading ones with Stateless Man readers. Without doubt, I will forget to mention some, and they don’t fit neatly into topical categories. However, I hope these will offer insights into what has shaped my thinking and stimulate others to read the books that have given so much value to me. (In future, I’ll come up with a