First… I would take a good speed reading, these two subjects usually result in very large tomes. Speed reading will help you focus properly in my opinion. I would also dedicate a hilighter just for juicy quotes… they always come in handy and make you look oh so smart. (specially at weddings) Some of my favs…
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socrates and aristotle – taught humanity to shake off our superstition and question the world around us.
friederich nietzche – life wasn’t black and white… morality has grey areas.
john locke – father of modern western politics.
adam smith – timeless insight of world economy.
carl jung – the collective mind
tom paine – rights of man
the jews will give you a powerful mind and unstoppable at debates – philo, spinoza, russell, maimonidies, buber
sprinkle some eastern philosophers – lao tsu, confucius
some in some existentialists – jean paul sartre, epicurus, thoreau
logic thinkers – william of ockham, kurt godel, gottlob frege, hegel
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Big big list, get the thinnest books possible, learn to love em, plan on taking years to read most of these. The list should be much longer but… Speed read, hilight… I promise you will be a powerful thinker.

Good recommendation on the speed reading, @Tomfafa. And a pretty good list. Reading books is preferable to journals. Lots of

What type of history are you interested in? There are are a lot of publications, and I tend to read them by relevance to the subject matter that I’m interested in. Which, in my case, is post-Revolutionary War history, and the westward expansion, through the Blackhawk Wars.

don’t think I could better @Tomfafa‘s advice…

[mod note:] Above quip removed at @Tomfafa‘s request.

If you have specific topics that you want to read journal articles about, you might want to go to a local college library and search them on the database JStor. This is a database of scholarly journals on a variety of topics. You can search by discipline by checking off “Philosophy”, “History”, etc. as the disciplines you wish to search for. Also, you can view the list of journals indexed by discipline. This would be an excellent way to identify some of the academic journals you wish to start reading.

Bertrand Russell is very readable (but not Jewish @Tomfafa). I particularly like Unpopular Essays.

Tomfafa put together an excellent list. I would throw in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. That’s a classic and applies to life and business (figuratively) as well as war.

The question is about journals.

@fundevogel He’s not!? oops… busted! Well he is readable, but you gotta devote the time.

@Tomfafa Nope, but his grandfather was an earl, which is always convenient when you’re a liberal peacenik in with a tendency toward getting thrown in jail.

@Tomfafa: Hmm… Excellent list, but couldn’t we throw some David Hume in there as well? And Karl Marx, just for good measure. I do realize, of course, that you did say the list should be much longer.. And I am in complete agreement there. It’s so difficult when asked questions like these. There are so many wonderful reads out there… And so many waiting to be written!

Anais Nin.

@filmfann ‘There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.’ Delta of Venus was given to me by the women who took my virginity, she was older and very very sensuous and sexy… she completely shaped the rest of my life. That is a favorite quote of hers.
@Jerikao Very worthy of mention… I just thought john of locke because of his more direct influence on our founders and our political thought even till today… until obama that is.

Sorry about the huge delay in responding. You can blame El Nino and the resulting power outage.

Anyway…

Oops, was meaning to include what fields of history I like. Lately, I’ve been liking world/comparative history, and modern european history, but I’m still open to anything.

@tomfafa: Good point about reading the books. I’ll give that a try! Do you have any tips on learning to speed-read though? I’m very wary of scams/snake oil.