K. J. Parker - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm enamored with K. J. Parker. Not all his work is great, but he has single-handedly established economic fantasy (and yes, I'm going to coin that term). This is an offshoot of the genre, a tall tale of a siege as seen through the eyes of a military engineer trapped in that city and told from his witness perspective (subjective as that may be).

But Orhan, son of Siyyah Doctus Felix Praeclarissimus is not trapped by the city, more so by his own morals, his own interpretation of duties, obligations and maybe even loyalty to people of mutual despise. Shrewd as he is, misguided as he may be, against overwhelming odds none of the 15 established ways of defense are going to work and thus he has to come up with a sixteenth. War and Death forges weird alliances and pushes the ties of friendship to their breaking point with the bad luck of having most of the friends on the other side of the impregnable walls.

Sam Harris: End of Faith (2004)

In a time of unprecedented level of peace, prosperity and individual freedom, the majority of humankind in the 21st century nominally reach back for moral foundations to scriptures written thousands of years ago by scribes of desert-dwelling, xenophobic illiterates following a wrathful and jealous god. Since the dawn of civilization, religion served as much as the engine of war and sadism as a tool of personal guidance and consolation, and almost continuously the main obstacle of scientific progress and human flourishing.