Ben Affleck's Reading List

"I, like many, initially chafed at Strunk and White’s ideas. Once I accepted that you had to learn the rules before you could break them, I set about what would become the oddly comforting task of getting to understand the true and ordered nature of the universe of writing. Perhaps the best thing in the book was what it taught (or tried to teach) me not to do. Their caution against overwriting, overstating, injecting opinions, and going on at length (I’m in serious danger of it here, in fact)..."

"The book shows that ultimately the people of Iran had to choose between the oppression of SAVAK and the firebrand ayatollahs of the Islamic revolution. History tells us, of course, whom they opted for; Kapuściński tells us why they did so and shows us the madness and tragedy of how it happened."

"This is an extraordinary account of a Western journalist trying to find answers in Rwanda in the years following the genocide. Yearning, peripatetic, and deeply accessible, it gave me an entrée into this monstrous event. Gourevitch finds a very human path through the wreckage of an inhuman event. Riding in his wake, I felt as though I started to know a place I had never been. As soon as I finished the last page, I wanted to know more."

"I’m grateful to the book for introducing me to Chomsky, a political analyst whose startling brilliance comes from speaking plainly and without compromise about matters that others would wrap in a mendacious fog. Along with Howard Zinn—whose book A People’s History of the United States had a similar impact on my life—Chomsky is a writer I believe everyone should read. You will not agree with either of them all the time (I don’t), but even when you disagree, you will find both men challenging y..."