John Cusack's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2021)

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

Stalking Irish Madness

Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia

Patrick Tracey | 3.87

Recommended by John Cusack, and 1 others.

John CusackThe immortal Irishman also a great newer book @ECroydon: Professor Patrick Tracey write a marvelous book about effects of starvation on Irish people called “Stalking Irish Madness” recommend it to anyone but you may really enjoy it, @johncusack Slainte https://t.co/0n8T5cpdU5” (Source)

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Rites of Spring

The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

Drew Gilpin Faus | 4.22

A rare and remarkable cultural history of World War I that unearths the roots of modernism

Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I, from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, to the death of Hitler in 1945. Recognizing that The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole, author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past...

Recommended by John Cusack, Jonathan Boff, Brent Glass, and 3 others.

John CusackGreat book ⬇️ RT @PuddockII: Wow. https://t.co/EF6Iyc0Kmc (Source)

Jonathan BoffWhat this book does is it views the war as a cultural phenomenon, rather than a military phenomenon. Eksteins is a cultural historian who thinks in terms of literature, music, plastic arts, and so on. (Source)

Brent GlassWhat the Civil War was about was mass killing on a scale that we had never ever dreamed of. (Source)

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The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

John Perkins | 4.28

Shocking Bestseller: The original version of this astonishing tell-all book spent 73 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than 1.25 million copies, and has been translated into 32 languages.

New Revelations: Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this expanded edition of Perkins's classic bestseller brings the story of economic hit men (EHMs) up to date and, chillingly, home to the US. Over 40 percent of the book is new, including chapters identifying today's EHMs and a detailed chronology extensively documenting EHM activity since the first edition was published in 2004.

Former economic hit man John Perkins shares new details about the ways he and others cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Then he reveals how the deadly EHM cancer he helped create has spread far more widely and deeply than ever in the US and everywhere else--to become the dominant system of business, government, and society today. Finally, he gives an insider view of what we each can do to change it.

Economic hit men are the shock troops of what Perkins calls the corporatocracy, a vast network of corporations, banks, colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them. If the EHMs can't maintain the corrupt status quo through nonviolent coercion, the jackal assassins swoop in. The heart of this book is a completely new section, over 100 pages long, that exposes the fact that all the EHM and jackal tools--false economics, false promises, threats, bribes, extortion, debt, deception, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power--are used around the world today exponentially more than during the era Perkins exposed over a decade ago.

The material in this new section ranges from the Seychelles, Honduras, Ecuador, and Libya to Turkey, Western Europe, Vietnam, China, and, in perhaps the most unexpected and sinister development, the United States, where the new EHMs--bankers, lobbyists, corporate executives, and others--"con governments and the public into submitting to policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer."

But as dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers a detailed list of specific actions each of us can take to transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy that provides sustainable abundance for all.
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Recommended by John Cusack, and 1 others.

John CusackBook inspired groove point blank and war inc “@im_noexpert recommend "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"the US, World Bank & IMF extract a "pound of flesh" from struggling countries to maintain the US strangle hold on our planet & resources. A scary but insightful read!”had (Source)

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John Cusack's Top Book Recommendations

Stalking Irish Madness

Rites of Spring

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

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