I was thinking Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith or Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell but those may be a bit advanced
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School made me hate reading. Prior to around 7th grade, I used to read a ton. Easily one like "adult-sized" book every two weeks. Up until that point, school reading wasn't much of a thing. We might read a book at school or the books were honestly so below the level I could read them in spare time at school over a couple days.
Suddenly, they want to heap on all these books. I didn't even hate most of the books if I'm honest, but it's all the twisting them around to dig up all these supposed hidden meanings and analyse the shit out of them. Don't dare submit a paper questioning the approved analysis either. I eventually said to hell with it about 9th grade and just started buying those cliff note things and making up essays the night before. I would do just as well anyway.
The last paper I ever submitted to an English/Literature/Writing type class was the final paper for a college course, it was a pretty open ended type assignment and I did it on why the overanalysis of literature was a bad thing. It was very detailed, cited, etc. Far and away the most time I spent on a college paper for such a class. It was also the worst grade by far I ever got on a college paper for such a class. Yeah, the one I forgot about and wrote at 2am the night before it was due full of drivel did better.
I was almost 30 before I really got back into reading again, and still not at the level of kid me. Albeit, I have less time to spend on it now.
I didn't read much until my mom made me a deal that I could see Jurassic Park once I read the book (which was a crazy deal to make, because the book was way more violent and "adult" than the movie).
Then after that I started reading all the Michael Crichton books, and 10-12 year old me got to learn about sexual harassment and murdering prostitutes and all the other fun stuff in his books that my mom would absolutely never let me see if it was in a movie.
Now that you mention it, Jurassic Park was probably the first "adult" book I read.
I would totally not be surprised by it being intentional. Older men at least those I know about seemed to highly value reading and literature. My granddad always pushed me to read, and when he got older he was more well off and bought up a pretty big collection of high end books of just classic literature that he'd let me read and now myself and my brother split up when he passed. Even my great-grandfather from a totally different part of the family, who was very much greasy old school blue collar held on to some books I have my hands on now. They are compliations of 20-40 page writings on different things in history, written with detail and intelligence the modern world would have you believe no one but those with a list of degrees could even understand. Men used to value this stuff, yet now how many average-age adult men read at all?
I remember a teacher saying that getting the boys in her class to read was easy once she had them read stories about action/adventure. The curriculum only had books that appealed to girls.
It's totally intentional. If you disconnect men from literature, which is their culture and heritage, how long is it before they can be told they're anything? "Oh, American has ALWAYS been majority minority!" "Oh, the Founders were extreme democrats, there were no guns and MUH ABORTIONS in colonial America!"
They also pick some boring new books too, always about either the holocoaster or oppressed black women. I was interested in sci fi and military stuff and I only ever got to read two things that I liked ("For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "1984"). Nowadays I read a lot of technical books on military equipment, aircraft, maritime, science stuff. Nothing we would have ever read in Middle or High school.
As with everything. Look for who pities the ox instead of the donkey.
I didn't come out bitter like the above guy, but I came out with a superiority complex the size of Santa's naughty list filtered to Google employees.
My college peers were pathetic. They wrote like shit. The standards were pure unremitting garbage. And the professors were complete idiots. They couldn't catch subtext for one, and read so haphazardly that started replacing whole pages with spaghetti logic and still passing.