• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements Eric Hoffer (Perennial Classis/HarperCollins)(2002) 9780060505912 177 pages (Philosophy).

     A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer – the first and most famous of his books – was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.

     Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of a fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

• Philogos Tabula Rasa: On the Manifest Need for Fundamental Philosophical Redirection  Somos (Philogos Foundation)(2008) 9780979085901 91 pages (Religion).

     This book seeks to offer the reader an unbiased, unmortgaged look at the way things really are without preconceptions, entrenched traditions and beliefs, or hypocrisy. It encourages the seeker of fact to consider the deeper questions of existence via a table rasa (clean slate) devoid of preconceived notions for an updated, more accurate understanding of fact and truth. Throughout history, people and institutions have believed many different things about truth – just ask the likes of Galileo.

     We are now living in an age hundreds, even thousands of years after some of philosophy’s and religions’ great thinkers (and impostors?) and the author makes the case that we should be able to recognize, define and understand the true nature of things a lot more clearly by now.

     There are serious thinkers who are not happy and content with the way truth has been defined according to those old traditions, creating a need for fundamental philosophical redirection. By foregoing archaic traditions, superstitions and preconceptions, readers are led to separate fiction from fact to come to grips with the realization of the way things really are.

• The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real  Willian Irwin (Editor) (Open Court/PGW)(2002) 9780812695021 280 pages (Pop Culture/TV & Film). Volume 3 in the series, Popular Culture and Philosophy

     The choice is yours, and you'll have to live with the consequences for at least the rest of your life. Will you take to blue pill - put this book back on the shelf and go on thinking of The Matrix as just a movie? Or will you take the red pill - read this book, and find out just how far down the rabbit-hole goes?

   Is the world around us truly as it appears or are we inert bodies in tanks, our brains electronically stimulated to create a make-believe world which is all we know? This old philosophical puzzle has become cutting-edge cool with the appearance of the Keanu Reeves cult sci-fi movie, The Matrix.

     The Matrix is the most philosophical film ever made, every step of its fast-paced plot pivoting on a philosophical conundrum. If the world as we know it is nothing more than our dream, does this make the dream real? If we had the choice to step out of our world into a more real but less pleasant one - to take the red pill - would it be a moral failure not to do so? Why do humans have a value above that of intelligent electronics mechanisms? Can the mind live without the body or the body without the mind? 

     In The Matrix and Philosophy, professional philosophers analyze The Matrix from many angles: metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and aesthetic. They uncover hidden depths in this intricate work of art, and often reach disturbing conclusions. Those who take the red pill never look at "the real world" the same way again.   

• The Hidden Persuaders: What makes us buy, believe - and even vote -the way we do?  Vance Packard (with an Introduction by Mark Crispin Miller)(Ig Publishing)(2007) 9780978843106 240 pages (Psychology).

     Originally publish in 1957 and now back in print to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, The Hidden Persuaders is Vance Packard's pioneering and prescient work revealing how advertisers use psychological methods to tap into our unconscious desires in order to "persuade" us to buy the products they are selling.

     A classic examination of how our thoughts and feelings are manipulated by business, media and politicians, The Hidden Persuaders was the first book to expose the hidden world of "motivation research", the psychological technique that advertisers use to probe our minds in order to control our actions as consumers. Through analysis of products, political campaigns and television programs of the 1950s, Packard shows how the insidious manipulation practices that have come to dominate today's corporate-driven world began. Featuring an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, The Hidden Persuaders has sold over one million copies, and forever changed the way we look at the world of advertising.