Person
Every book Josh Clark recommended on podcasts
Josh Clark’s most recommended books
- 1491 by Charles C. Mann, Charles Mann
- Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
- The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor
- 1493 by Charles C. Mann, Charles Mann
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Josh Clark is an American stage and screen actor. On the podcast Stuff You Should Know, Clark recommended several books and stories. When asked about Stephen King's work, he named Skeleton Crew as a favorite among King's earlier short story collections and recalled the cover of Night Shift. He also recommended Joe Hill's short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, stating that it outperformed the work of Hill's father. Clark recommended that listeners purchase Sarah Addison Allen's Paper Ghosts and brought up Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City while describing a historical dinner, noting that the book reproduced authentic menus from the era. Additionally, he recommended Ken Silverstein's article and book about David Hahn, cited O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi as an exemplar of the ironic twist, and credited Gerard Koeppel's City on a Grid as a source used by writer Dave Roos for an episode on the Manhattan grid.
Books recommended by Josh Clark
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1491
1491 by Charles C.
Recommended“So, Chuck, uh I I know that you know this, but not everybody knows this. I had a personal conversation with one Charles C. Mann who wrote my favorite book of all time, 1491.”
Where to get it
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Awakenings
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is a classic medical narrative detailing the harrowing experiences of encephalitis lethargica patients in the 1960s and their subsequent treatment with L-dopa.
Discussed“It's very famously associated with dopamine for anybody who has read Awakenings or saw the movie.”
Where to get it
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The Emerald Mile
The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko is a nonfiction adventure book that chronicles the harrowing, record-breaking river run down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon during the historic flood conditions of 1983.
Discussed“I appreciate that you obtained most of your information from Kevin's book, the Emerald Mile, which is for the most part accurate.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“And yet some other people say, 'Hey, this might have even inspired The Great Gatsby in some ways.'”
Where to get it
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How Star Wars Conquered the Universe
How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor is an extensive cultural history that explores the massive global phenomenon of the Star Wars franchise and its profound impact on entertainment and society.
Recommended“There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with a sledgehammer.”
Where to get it
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1493
1493 by Charles C.
Recommended“if you read 1493 or 1491, I can't remember which one it is, but both are excellent books by Charles C. Man, he talks about the passenger pigeon”
Where to get it
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Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is Adolf Hitler's notorious autobiographical manifesto detailing his political ideology and antisemitic worldview.
Discussed“And what's what makes it a little worse though too is he wrote all this stuff out in in 1925 in my comp.”
Where to get it
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The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye by J.
Discussed“this is sort of I guess where we can start talking about C The Catcher And The Rye”
Where to get it
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The Radioactive Boy Scout
The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein is a chilling true crime and investigative journalism book detailing the story of David Hahn, a teenage boy who attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard shed.
Discussed“this story was... may have just gone fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local newspaper item. If it hadn't have been found by a gentleman named Ken Silverstein who ended up writing a very large piece in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive Boy Scout Colon, The True Story of a Boy in His Backyard Nuclear Reactor.”
Where to get it
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The Jungle
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a 1906 novel that serves as a harsh expose of working conditions in Chicago's meatpacking industry during the Gilded Age.
Discussed“it wasn't until that book you mentioned the jungle uh was published in 1905 that people like really sat up and took notice and Congress acted almost immediately passed the Pure Food and Drug Act the next year that's the impact that Upton St Clair's the jungle had”
Where to get it
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In broad daylight
In Broad Daylight by Harry N.
Discussed“There has there's no shortage of content about Ken Mroy. Uh there was a book written in 1988 by Harry Mlan, a crime writer called In Broad Daylight. You know it's coming colon, a murder in Skidmore, Missouri.”
Where to get it
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a seminal exploration of behavioral psychology that examines the two systems of the human mind—intuitive thinking and deliberate reasoning—and how cognitive biases drive systematic errors in judgment.
Discussed“Daniel Conorman came out with thinking fast and slow which was one of those super popular airport books, you know. Yeah. Thinking, fast and slow. Yes. Thank you.”
Where to get it
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The Devil In The White City
The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson is a celebrated work of popular narrative nonfiction that chronicles the 1893 Chicago World's Fair alongside the chilling simultaneous crimes of serial killer Dr.
Recommended“Have you ever read Devil in the White City? No, man. I still have not read that. You should read it. It's pretty good. But one of the things that the book does is it reproduces menus from these dinners that they had when they were planning the expo.”
Where to get it
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Merchants of Doubt
Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M.
Discussed“Well, plus also that it's been proven um I've mentioned that book before, The Merchants of Doubt that think tanks have been set up to basically influence public thought and point out like scientists aren't 100% certain, scientists aren't 100% certain.”
Where to get it
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MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is an epic American novel that chronicles the obsessive, self-destructive quest of Captain Ahab to hunt down the giant white whale that maimed him.
Discussed“And there was a I guess in Moby Dick, still haven't read it yet. Melville talks about how um the rope was coiled so precisely by like a professional rope layer.”
Where to get it
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A Story of The Stone Age
A Story of the Stone Age by H.G.
Discussed“he um heard about some of those finds and he wrote a story called the story of the stone age which is basically like there's a continent under the North Sea between the UK and Europe.”
Where to get it
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An Essay on the Principle of Population
An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus is a foundational 1798 economic and demographic text arguing that population growth tends to outpace agricultural production, leading to inevitable resource scarcity and societal competition.
Discussed“Yeah, that was definitely um the book was called Essay on Principle of Population and that was like a super game changer”
Where to get it
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Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone
Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone by Hunter S.
Discussed“it seems to be based on a misinterpretation of what a dream Chrome does and where you get it based on um Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because Hunter Thompson has basically a throwaway intimation that the adrenochrome that he does and goes on a crazy trip over um can only be gotten from the adrenal gland of a”
Where to get it
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S.
Discussed“it seems to be based on a misinterpretation of what a dream Chrome does and where you get it based on um Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because Hunter Thompson has basically a throwaway intimation that the adrenochrome that he does and goes on a crazy trip over um can only be gotten from the adrenal gland of a”
Where to get it
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Helter Skelter
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry is widely recognized as the definitive true crime account of the Manson family murders and the motivations behind them.
Discussed“in the case a guy named Vincent bugliosi who wrote a book called Helter Skelter like a 600 page book basically this the definitive True Crime book on the Manson family and the Manson family murders”
Where to get it
- Maus I: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
- The Garden of Health by William Langham
- The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments by Robert Brent
- The Secret Doctrine by Helena P. Blavatsky
- Utopia by Thomas More
- Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
- The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum
- Pygmalion in the classroom by Robert Rosenthal, Lenore Jacobson
- The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- The Call by Os Guinness
- Crooked House by Agatha Christie
- Medical Education in the United States and Canada,... by Abraham Flexner... by Abraham Flexner
- The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond
- 'The Beverly Hills Supper Club by David Brock
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
- Born to Rebel by Frank J. Sulloway
- Confessions of a Dangerous Mind by Chuck Barris
- Curtain by Agatha Christie
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
- Folk Tales of Sherpa and Yeti by Shiva Dhakal, Yuyutsu Sharma
- Forever by Judy Blume
- Hotel by Arthur Hailey
- My Quest for the Yeti by Reinhold Messner
- Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
- Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
Books Josh Clark wrote
Josh Clark’s latest episodes with books
Josh Clark’s book recommendations by year
All 458 books Josh Clark recommended or discussed across 291 episodes, filed by the year each episode came out. Each year goes episode by episode, with the minute every book came up.