Reading List from Unqualified Reservations

Introduction

Even with more than 400 entries in my Goodreads reading list, I was hungry for obscure and occult books. I therefore compiled all (most) books cited by Mencius Moldbug on Unqualified Reservations. I did this egoistically but I supposed it may interest other nerds.

This article contains, in that order, the reading lists mentioned by Moldbug, then the list of books cited on UR, and finishes with a small FAQ.

Substack doesn’t let writers copy-paste hyperlink from Word documents and Google docs. I’m not gonna add manually 400 hyperlinks again, so if you want the links to Amazon or Google books you can find them here.

But first, this story in numbers:

• 357 articles on Unqualified Reservations

• 391 books mentioned

• 26 posts referencing Latter-Day Pamphlets, more than any other

• 10 glasses of Red Wine writing it

• 6 Reading lists created by Moldbug, plus an additional

• 1 dead dolphin

Reading lists

Reactionary theory of modern history

From How Dawkins got Pwned Chapter 4
Reflections on the French Revolution - Burke
Popular Government - Maine
Democracy and Liberty - Lecky
Public Opinion - Lippmann
Lincoln, the man - Masters
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man - Nock
As we go marching - Flynn
On Power - Jouvenel
Liberty or Equality - von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Suicide of the West - Burnham
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - Stephen

American Rebellion Reading list

From A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations: Chapter 2
Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia - Hutchinson
Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion - Oliver
History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War - Stedman American Revolution - Lecky
True History of the American Revolution - Fisher
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution - Bailyn

Carlyle reading list

From Why Carlyle Matters
Chartism
Latter-Day Pamphlets
Shooting Niagara
Occasional Discourse

Froude Society reading list (or Imperial Reaction Instant Red-Pill Super Victorian Headcharge)

From Join the Froude Society! & Slow History Extravaganza
The Bow of Ulysses - Froude
Popular government - Maine
Latter-Day Pamphlets - Carlyle

Old America Quantum Tourist Psycho Railroad

From Slow History Extravaganza
Life and Liberty in America - Mackay
Land of the Dollar - Steevens
Outre-Mer - Bourget
Dessert: Democracy and the Party System in the United States - Ostrogorsky

Varina’s Revenge Sith Civil War Confederate Mindbomb

From Slow History Extravaganza
Shall Cromwell Have a Statue - Adams Jr.
Memoirs of Service Afloat - Semmes
The Roving Editor - Redpath
Dessert: A South-Side View of Slavery - Adams

Most mentioned books

List of books being mentioned in 4 articles or more
Latter-Day Pamphlets - Carlyle (19)
Shooting Niagara - Carlyle (10)
Public Opinion - Lippmann (9)
The Theory of Money and Credit - Mises (7)
The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism - McKenna (7)
Popular Government - Maine (7)
The Machiavellians - Burnham (6)
The English in the West Indies - Froude (6)
Memoirs of Service Afloat - Semmes (6)
The Law of Nations - Vattel (5)
A Treatise concerning Civil Government - Tucker (4)
The War for Righteousness - Gamble (4)
On Power - Jouvenel (4)
Three New Deals - Schivelbusch (4)
The Land of the Dollar - Steevens (4)
True History of the American Revolution - Fisher (4)
Chartism - Carlyle (4)
American Revolution - Lecky (4)
Authoritarian Socialism in America - Lipow (4)
The Dark Side of the Left - Ellis (4)

Numbers in brackets are a lower bound. For instance, Latter-Day Pamphlets was referenced in about 26 articles.

History

Antiquity

Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius - Machiavelli
The Fall of the Roman Republic - Merivale
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides

History of England

An Historical Essay on the Revolution of 1688 - Ward
The Expansion of England - Seeley
Colonial Civil Service - Stephens
The Letters of Queen Victoria - Victoria
History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth - Froude
Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events - Carlyle
The Political Works of James I - James I
A History of Crime in England - Pike
History of England - Hume
A History of England in the Eighteenth Century - Lecky
The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth century - Froude
History of England - Macaulay
Modern England - McCarthy
Private Lives, Public Spirit - Harris
The English Radicals - Kent
Ancient and Modern Imperialism - Cromer
Brief History of Crime - Hitchens
The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister - Crossman
Twenty Five Years - Lord Grey Fallodon
Life of Canning - Temperley
The life of Samuel Johnson - Boswell
Shakespeare by Another Name - Anderson
Past and Present - Carlyle
The abolition of Britain - Hitchens
Life at the Bottom - Dalrymple

Pre-rebellion American History

The Communistic Societies of the United States - Nordhoff
The March of Democracy - Adams

American Rebellion

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution - Bailyn
Conceived in Liberty - Rothbard
Alexander Hamilton - Oliver
American Revolution - Lecky
The Tribes and the States - Sidis
True History of the American Revolution - Fisher
Speech on Conciliation with America - Burke
The Struggle for American Independence - Fisher
American Creation - Ellis
The Life of John Marshall - Beveridge
Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia - Hutchinson
Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion - Oliver
Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution - Sabine
History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War - Stedman Alexander Hamilton - Oliver
Four letters - Adams
Mr Buchana’s administration on the eve of the rebellion - Buchanan
Notes on the State of Virginia - Jefferson
The Life of John Jay - Jay

Slavery, Civil war and Lincoln

Lincoln, the man - Masters
The Destructive War - Royster
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government - Davis
What Lincoln Believed - Lind
Memoirs of Service Afloat - Semmes
Roll, Jordan, Roll - Genovese
Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Stowe
A short History of Reconstruction - Foner
The Bloody Shirt - Budiansky
Reconstruction after the Civil War - Franklin
The Cotton States - Nordhoff
Reconstruction and the Constitution - Burgess
A South-side view of Slavery - Adams
The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem - Page
Following the Color line - Baker
Race adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America - Miller
The Origin of the Late War - Lunt
The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland - Maitland
Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works - Lincoln
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Richardson
The Impending Crisis - Potter
The Slave Power Conspiracy - Davis
Political Debates between Lincoln and Douglas - Lincoln
Glittering Illusion - Vanauken
American Negro Slavery - Philipps
Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln - Fehrenbacher
Abraham Lincoln - Beveridge
Lincoln the Man - Master
Anti-Slavery Days - Clarke
The Abolitionists - Hume
The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences - Herbert
A Defence of Virginia - Dabney
Political History of Secession to the Beginning of the American Civil War - Howe
Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson - Dabney
The Roving Editor - Redpath
Sick from Freedom - Downs
The Devil’s Dictionary - Bierce
Lee at Appomattox - Adams

American Gilded Age

An Undeveloped Function - Adams
Shall Cromwell Have a Statue - Adams
‘Tis Sixty Years Since - Adams
A cycle of Adams Letters - Mifflin
Orations and After-dinner Speeches - Depew
A National Change of Heart - Adams
The Land of the Dollar - Steevens
How the Other lives - Riis

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him - Tumulty
The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson - Hoover

American New Deal

Three New Deals - Schivelbusch
The Coming of the New Deal - Schlesinger
The Roosevelt Myth - Flynn
Country Squire in the White House - Flynn

American Empire

The Sword and the Scales - Fritzsche
Triumph Forsaken - Moyar
Background to Betrayal - Du Berrier
Dishonest Broker - Aruri
The Military and Colonial Policy of the United States - Root
Power, Faith, and Fantasy - Oren
George Ball - Bill
The Past has another Pattern - Ball

American History - Miscellaneous

Life and Liberty in America - Mackay
Brother Jonathan - Matthews
The Liberal Tradition in America
The Disuniting of America - Schlesinger
Journey to America - Tocqueville
Plea for the Constitution - Austin
Outre-mer - Bourget
The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President - Shepard
Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism - Lynd
Democracy and the Party System in the United States - Ostrogorsky
Tales from Geronimo - Frank
Men and Manners in America - Hamilton
Radical Chic - Wolfe
Murder in the Model City - Bass
Blacklisted by History - Evans
This is my Story - Budenz
Odd Man Out - Thornton
Twenty Years at Hull-House - Addams
It Didn’t Start with Watergate - Lasky
Buried by the Times - Leff
The New York Times - New York Times Company
Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens - Steffens
The Vampire of the Continent - Reventlow
The Plan - Emanuel
The Promise of American Life - Croly
Making of an American Thinking Class - Staloff
None Dare Call it Treason - Stormer
Inventing the people - Morgan

European History

Frederick the Great - Carlyle
A Political and Social History of Modern Europe - Hayes
La France Orange Mécanique - Obertone
World of Yesterday - Zweig
Inside Europe - Gunther
The Europeans - Barzini
The Italians - Barzini
Naples: A Travellers’ Companion - Seward
The Origins of Contemporary France - Taine
Diary of a Man in Despair - Reck-Malleczewen
Language of the Third Reich - Klemperer
Expansion of Europe - Muir
Letters on the Spanish Inquisition - de Maistre
Earthly Powers - Burleigh
Paraphrases and Translations from the Greek - Macmillan

French Revolution

Reflections on the French Revolution - Burke
The French Revolution - Bosher
The French Revolution - Carlyle
The French Revolution in San Domingo - Stoddard
The Reign of Terror - Simpkin
Letters on a Regicide Peace - Burke
The French Revolution - Taine
A Gascon Royalist in Revolutionary Paris - Lenotre

World War I

World War I as Fulfillment - Rothbard
Storm of Steel - Jünger
The Politics of Hunger - Vincent
Origins of the World War - Fay
How Diplomats Make War - Neilson
Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918 - Williams
Germany and the Next War - von Bernhardi

Interwar period

Germany and World Peace - Hedin
Hitler Germany as Seen by a Foreigner - Santoro
The Life of Benito Mussolini - Sarfatti
European jungle - Yeats-Brown
How we Squandered the Reich - Spitzy

World War II

The Fire - Friedrich
Freedom Forgotten and Remembered
The Answers - von Salomon
Hitler’s Table Talk
The Pearl Harbor Myth - Victor
Desperate Deception - Mahl
Back Door to War - Tansill
Second World War - Fuller
The Black Book of Soviet Jewry - Ehrenburg
The German Talks Back - Hauser
US Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic - Lippmann
The Nazi War on Cancer - Proctor
Human Smoke - Baker
The Morgenthau Plan - Dietrich
The curtain rises - Reynolds
As we go marching - Flynn

Soviet Union and its satellite states

Gulag Boss - Mochulsky
The Lesser Evil - Klemperer
The Captive Mind - Milosz
To Build a Castle - Bukosky
One who survived - Barmine
Soviet Communism: A new Civilization - Webb
Is Stalin a Dictator - Webb
From Under the Rubble - Solzhenitsyn
The Forsaken - Tzouliadis
The Gingerbread Race - Navrozov

History outside the West

Modern Egypt - Cromer
Letter on Paraguay - Robertson
Wandering in West Africa - Burton
The West Indies as they are - Bickell
The China Story - Utley
The English in the West Indies - Froude
The Great Betrayal - Smith
‘So Far and No Further!’ - Wood
Guatemala - Fergusson
The Chatham House Version - Kedourie
Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman - Freeman
Esto Perpetua - Belloc

Other

Black Mass - Gray
The Culture of Defeat - Schivelbusch
Modern Warfare - Trinquier
The International Year book - Dodd
On Heroe - Carlyle
A Journal of These Days - Nock
The Menace of Peace - Herron
Tragedy & Hope - Quigley

Politics

Libertarianism

On Power - Jouvenel
Freedom and the Law - Leoni
The Machiavellians - Burnham
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man - Nock
Whose Freedom? - Lakoff
The Ethics of Liberty - Rothbart
The Revolution - Paul

Progressivism

The War for Righteousness - Gamble
The reconciliation of Government with Liberty - Burgess
The Promise od American Life - Croly
The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism - McKenna
Authoritarian Socialism in America - Lipow
The Dark Side of the Left - Ellis
Origins of the Welfare State in America - Rothbard
Blood of the Liberals - Packers
Common Ground - Lukas
Authoritarian Socialism in America - Lipow
The Blank Slate - Pinker
The Radicalism of the American Revolution - Wood
The Promise of American Life - Croly
The Soul of Man Under Socialism - Wilde
Drift and Mastery - Lippman
A Theory of Justice - Rawls
Americanism - Gelernter
Suicide of the West - Burnham

Democracy

Liberty or Equality - von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Latter-Day Pamphlets - Carlyle
Shooting Niagara - Carlyle
Public Opinion - Lippmann
Popular Government - Maine
Democracy and Liberty - Lecky
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - Stephen
Limits of Pure Democracy - Mallock
Oceana - Froude
Democracy at the Crossways - Hearnshaw
Democracy and Reaction - Hobhouse (a) Chartism - Carlyle
Leviathan - Hobbes
Political Parties - Michels
Democracy and France - Scherer
Democracy: The God that Failed
Mediocracy - Tassano

Totalitarianism

Origins of Totalitarian Democracy - Talmon
The Captive Mind - Milosz
The Open Society and Its Enemies - Popper
Omnipotent Government - Mises
Power of the Powerless - Havel

Monarchism

De Monarchia - Alighieri
Patriarcha - Filmer

Nazism

The Nazi Conscience - Koonz
Lingua Tertii Imperii - Klemperer
The Third Reich - Burleigh
Inside the Third Reich - Speer
Hitler’s Private Library - Ryback
The Third Reich in Power - Evans

Internationalism

Federation of the World - Trueblood
The Law of Nations - Vattel
Principles of the Law of Nations
The Elements of International Law - Davis
The Rights of War and Peace - Grotius
Perpetual Peace - Kant
The federation of the World - Trueblood

Media

End Times - Cockburn
The man who invented Fidel - DePalma
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky

Other

Odyssey of a Liberal - Utley
Radical Son - Horowitz
Coup d’État - Luttwak
On War - von Clausewitz
American Diplomacy - Kennan
The Messianic Character of American Education - Rushdoony
A Treatise concerning Civil Government - Tucker
English Essays from Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay - Eliot
The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic writings of Niccolo Machiavelli - Detmold
Politics - Aristotle
Anti-Machiavel - Frederick of Prussia
The Family - Sharlet
Reflections of a Russian Statesman - Pobedonostsev
Critical and miscellaneous essays - Carlyle
Rules for Radicals - Alinsky
Race Course - Ayers
Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents - Neustadt
Backstabbing for Beginners - Soussan
The Limits of Power - Bacevich
Orations and memorial addresses - Depew
The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey - De Quincey
Behemoth - Hobbes
The Works of Thomas Carlyle - Carlyle
Occasional Discourse - Carlyle
The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle - Carlyle
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters - Defoe
Dictatorships & Double Standards - Kirkpatrick
Burke, Select Works - Burke
Foundations - Wormser
Dissertations and Discussions - Mill
Occasional Papers - Gates
The Theory of the Partisan - Schitt
Profiles in Courage - Kennedy
Dreams from my Father - Obama
Atlantic Essays - Higginson
Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences - Hume
Congressional Government - Wilson
Liberal Fascism - Goldberg
Guerrilla Parties - Lieber

Economics and Finance

The Theory of Money and Credit - Mises
A Treatise on Currency and Banking - Raguet
On the Origins of Money - Menger
The Austrian Theory of Money - Rothbard
Buy Gold Now - McGuire
Man, Economy and State - Rothbard
Failure of the ‘New Economics’ - Hazlitt
Stabilizing the Dollar - Fisher
Lombard Street - Bagehot
Mystery of Banking - Rothbard
The Economic Consequences of the Peace - Keynes
Theory and History - Mises
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought - Rothbard
Monetary Reconstruction - Strover
The National System of Political Economy - List
America’s Great Depression - Rothbard

Fiction

Poetry

Poems Seven - Dugan
Collected Poems - Cavafy
Complete Poems - Bunting
An Almost Pure Empty Walking - Tolides
The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson - Tennyson
Locksley Hall - Tennyson
June 1940 - Kees
Obituary - Kees
The Bell From Europe - Kees
The Poems of Prudentius - Prudentius
The Great Tradition - Greenlaw
Life Studies - Lowell

Novel

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Gulliver’s travel - Swift
A study in Scarlet - Doyle
Bleak House - Dickens
The Good Soldier Svejk - Hasek
Smoke Ring - Niven
Water-babies - Kingsley
Mission of Gravity - Clement
The Serial - McFadden
Penrod - Tarkington

Theatre

Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Twelfth Night - Shakespeare

Science

Demonic Males - Peterson
The science of everything - Orrell
War Before Civilization - Keeley
The 10’000 Year Explosion - Cochran
A moment on the Earth - Easterbrook
The Blank Slate - Pinker
The Trouble with Physics - Smolin
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! - Feynman

Religion

The right to heresy - Zweig
The God Delusion - Dawkins
Breaking the Spell - Dennett
Passover! - Schotter

Programming

Types and Programming Languages - Pierce
Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages
The Brain Makers - Newquist

Seasteading

Sailing alone around the World - Slocum
The Oxford book of the Sea - Raban
Passage to Juneau - Raban

Other

The Guardians - Kabaservice
Markings - Hammarskjold
The education of Lev Navrozov
In Praise of Prejudice - Dalrymple
Chronicles of Wasted Time - Muggeridge
The Great Shark Hunt - Thompson
Inside Steve’s Brain - Kahney
Gang leader for a Day - Venkatesh
In Defense of Lost Causes - Zizek
A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects - Webster
Satan’s Invisible World Displayed - Stead
Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects - Hume
Unwritten Treaty - Warburg (Harcourt)
Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Mackay
The World’s Work - Doubleday
The Cult of Incompetence - Faguet
Specimen days & collect - Whitman
Carlyle Redivivus - Smelfungus
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays - Carlyle
The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius
Memorial Edition of Thomas Bewick’s Work - Bewick

FAQ

Q: Is this the complete list of books mentioned on Unqualified Reservations?

A: No, I missed some of them. Sometimes because there were no hyperlink, sometimes out of pure laziness.

Q: Is the list of articles mentioning a particular book accurate?

A: No, some are missing.

Q: Are you aware your classification sucks?

A: Yes! If some books are misplaced, send me an email or a Twitter DM.

Q: Are all links provided by Moldbug?

A: No, I added ones when there were no hyperlink or when they were defective.