The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

Though this book is only about 40 pages long, I found it to be as difficult to read as it is historically significant. (So please don't dock me for its length!) The book its self was written by Karl Marx mainly, but was co-written by Fredrick Engels. Throughout the book, Marx describes his thought of what would be a near-perfect government, or lack thereof. He talks about past and current forms of governments, and how they've failed or triumphed, but usually how they've failed. He writes a lot about the  bourgeoisie, which is a big, complicated word used to describe the upper-class of a capitalist society, and how communism would create an almost perfect world - where everyone is equal and there are no higher powers. As I read the book, I couldn't help but feel like his ideas of a perfect world were impossible, because in order for there to be true communism, there would have to be no physical disabilities amongst people, no crime, no social classes, and no racism, unfortunately, all these things will almost always exist in our society; so the idea of communism is really just a dream. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under the age of 18, (because it's really boring and uses words that I had to Google a lot) I think that this is a pretty important book to read, because the more people read it, the more likely our society will eventually become communist, which would actually be a great thing, because as Marx describes in this book, communism would benefit everyone by making everyone equal, and therefore would be no wars, no homeless people, and overall no problems. I personally thought the book was awesome, it taught me a lot about communism, and after reading it, I understood the book Animal Farm a lot more, and it has given me some serious advantages when I get in arguments about whether or not communism is a good thing. So, before you blame everything on communism like a lot of Americans would, read this book to give yourself a decent education of what communism originated from.

Matched

         Matched is about a society that controls your whole life. They decide who you get married to, when you get married, how many kids you are aloud to have, what clothes you wear, what recreational activities you can do, and how much you eat plus so many more. This story is based around a girl named  Cassia. She doesn't think that her life is bad. In fact she likes the society that she lives in and she thinks life is great. Well come her Match Banquet (when they choose who you marry) the screen goes blank. She realizes that the person she will marry was in the same room as her. Turns out she is marrying her best friend named Xander. The Officials gave Cassia a micro card that had pictures and tons of information on her Match. She Plugged it into her computer and the picture that came up first wasn't Xander it was "Mystery Man." So of course she got super confused and an official came and talked to her and told her it was an accident. But Cassia starts to fall in love with the "Mystery Man." Now she is starting to hate the society for not letting her choose. Will she fight for her own rights? Or will she marry Xander and forget all about "Mystery Man?" I guess you'll have to go find out your self.
         This book was very interesting to see how things work in a society that chooses everything for you. There really are countries out there that are similar in the sense that you are set up for an arranged marriage and you have a limit of how many kids you are allowed to have. It makes you realize how fortunate we are in America, and that we shouldn't be taking things like choosing who we get married to, for granted.
         I thought that this book was very good. It does take a while to actually get engaged in this book. Once you get past that though it truly is an awesome book. This book taught me not to take so much for granted because a lot of things we get a lot of people in 3rd world countries don't have. This book had very good intentions. Overall, I would give this book an A+.