In Defense of Books: The Brain Grenades We Need.
Published: May 21, 2025 | Author: RB Maxwell | Category: Nonfiction Book Reviews, Surveillance, Propaganda
Make America Read Again. Make America Think Again.
It’s official: I can mark myself safe from the shame of not blogging. My business manager (who also happens to be my wife) and my agent can finally breathe a sigh of relief that they have content to use to help people find me and my books.
I won’t pretend I had this planned. Truth be told, I’ve wrestled with the question for a long time: what information or knowledge could I possibly share?
Turns out, the answer was surrounding me the whole time—on every wall of my home office, stacked in bulging boxes in storage, piled on the floor, towering next to my bed, in baskets in the bathroom: books.
Thousands of them - Two thousand thirty books, plus thirty or so odd new ones that haven’t made it into the custom database I created. And, thousands of PDFs saved by the terabytes on drives, sticks and countless piles of coffee-stained paper.
I’m not talking about cozy reads or trendy titles. These aren’t books found on Oprah’s Book Club or recommended as the must-read in the latest issue of a glossy magazine (I think these retro paper relics still exist?).
I’m talking about heavy-hitters, no longer (actually, never) read in traditional school, often no longer published, sometimes banned, that cracked my mind wide open and left me gasping in the rubble of my once innocent worldview. I’m launching this series with the kind of books that demand a seat at the grown-up table:
The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (because not all revolutions wear suits)
Reading Matters—Especially in the Age of Doomscrolling
Here’s the cold, hard truth: Reading is on life support—and it’s taking our ability to think critically down with it.
In 2022, just 48.5% of U.S. adults read a book for pleasure. Ten years ago, that number was 54.6%.
Only 14% of 13-year-olds read daily in 2023—half the rate from a decade ago.
Screens are up. Empathy is down. Critical thinking? Circling the drain.
Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf argues that "deep reading" builds the kind of reflective, empathetic minds that make society work.
UCLA’s Patricia Greenfield found that screen saturation reduces analytical thinking. Want proof? Just scroll your feed for five minutes.
And yet, people toss aside books like Crossing the Rubicon or Wall Street and Bolshevik Revolution—which offer blueprints for decoding today’s chaos—in favor of whatever got 10 million views on TikTok.
We’re trading intellectual resistance for algorithmic obedience. It’s easier to swipe than to question. But that's exactly how did we end up in a world where nobody asks why?
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“Reading is not just a matter of acquiring information; it is a matter of learning to think for yourself, which is why so many ideologues want to control what you read.”
-Thomas Sowell
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20 Years, 2,000 Books, and Countless Break-throughs and Breakdowns Later…
I’ve been tearing through nonfiction for decades.
Not for a degree. Not for clout. Certainly not for popularity (I’ve lost more friends than I’ve gained).
For survival.
Titles like The Crowd and The Big Bamboozle didn’t just pass the time—they gave me a lifeline and kicked me into action. These weren’t beach reads. They were how-to guides for spotting BS in a world addicted to spin.
The Naked Communist revealed the playbook behind creeping ideologies.
Propaganda and Crystallizing Public Opinion laid out how the masses get manipulated.
The Gulag Archipelago taught me the cost of staying silent.
Lord of the Rings reminded me that nobody can change everything.
These books aren’t just thought-provoking—they’re thought-detonating. They are thrilling and enlightening.
They are not always an easy read or pleasant to think about. Some of them are terrifying and will keep you up at night, brain racing and stomach churning. More importantly, some are complete garbage and written by absolute lunatics or disinformation organizations. I’ll stay away from those and let them remain in storage.
But that’s the idea: these are books that will make you think. And question. And wonder. And doubt. And believe. And hopefully act.
Their words didn’t just inform me—they transformed me.
Somewhere between the grind of chasing a 401(k) and the soul-death of the goldwatch life, I woke up. I penned the story that would become The Willing Fool Series between about 2010-2015 while stuck in a soul-sucking corporate consulting job.
It was during this time, traveling every week, spending lonely nights in hotel rooms away from my wife and four kids, that this story became my escape. I didn’t sit down to write a book. It just sort of happened.
In many ways, it saved me. In many ways, I am Leroy O’Malley and he is me. He is also so many of you, and you are him. Leroy O’Malley is what modern America became and what I hope it can be. You will have to read the series to see what I mean.
Sounds a bit depressing, but I promise, it’s a fun read.
Think Wag the Dog meets Fight Club meets 1984, but with more Florida, more grit, and way more Fargo vibes thrown in.
My wife says if Carl Hiaasen, the Coen Brothers, and Jeff Lindsay had a love child—and men could actually have babies (they can't, for the record)—my writing would be the result. Twisted, funny, and a little dangerous.
What to Expect from This Series
Each post will spotlight a book that cracked open my skull in the best way possible. Expect:
Quick, sharp summaries
Occasionally irreverent commentary
Real-world connections to media, politics, religion, and more
Social posts with opportunity for discussion, strong opinions, and very possibly some disagreements.
I’ll break down titles like The Fourth Turning, Esoteric Hollywood, Aeon (trust me, it’s wild), and Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare.
Whether it’s Don Quixote tilting at windmills, Bernays steering public opinion, or Bertrand Russell promoting the ‘expert’ class, we’re going deep.
For the record, I’m not a professor or a scholar. But I can play rock riffs galore on my collection of epic guitars and because of that I can claim ‘expert’ status and ascribe it to any opinion I have…thanks Bert.
Occasionally I’ll post an album review of my favorite music and even delve into the equipment used, recording techniques, and anything else of note.
Other than that, I’m just an average American husband and father who fell down a rabbit hole of books and came out writing satirical thrillers and a blog about books. PH.D. be damned.
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