Animal Farm by George Orwell

Boo Communism. Hooray beer!

Short and to the point. Orwell does a very good job at cutting apart Soviet style Communism while sticking to his plot and not deviating from the story to make his point. The thing I found most interesting about Animal Farm is that even though it was written as a criticism of Communism decades ago, it was still eerily relevant today (or at least a few years ago). Every time they said "If you do/don't do X, Jones will come back. You don't want Jones to come back, do you?" I heard "If you don't let us illegally wiretap your phones/If you vote for the Democrats/etc the terrorists win. You don't want the terrorists to win, do you?" Every time they talked about an impending attack from one of the neighboring farms, I felt like I was reading about Saddam's WMDs. The sheep shouting "four legs good, two legs bad" or whatever reminded me of the way political discourse degenerates into a contest to see who can shout the loudest. Also, the fact that the animals started with a long list of ideals and whittled it down to one short sentence seemed similar to the way politicians take nuanced, complex issues and turn them into a bumper sticker policy. So, take from that what you will. Animal farm = still relevant.