Best ethnic & national biographies according to redditors
We found 2,473 Reddit comments discussing the best ethnic & national biographies. We ranked the 891 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 2,473 Reddit comments discussing the best ethnic & national biographies. We ranked the 891 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
There aren't as many very large, highly organized gangs as there were in the 80's and 90's. Those functioned more like a black market business. The goal was to make money, gain territory, and move up in the hierarchy.
Now that a lot of the head guys were taken down, the gangs splintered and are much smaller, and less organized. In Chicago where I live, gang territories are very small and gangs run a corner, but the whole south side or north side isn't split between the People and Folks, across the line. There is tons of infighting between cliques that are technically affiliated with the same larger group.
Gang leaders are not as often powerful black market CEOs, but more than likely an 18 or 19 year old kid running a group of 20 kids.
Dismantling the gangs in the 90's actually really increased violent crime in the city, because the focus is no longer on making money. There aren't level headed guys at the top telling people to quit it with petty violence, because body counts are bad for business.
Most homicides in Chicago are not related to the drug trade, but to some little slight or disrespect, a $20 loan, someone flirting with someone else's girl.
If you'd like to really learn what gangs today are like I'd suggest Gang Leader for A Day
To understand some more of the structures of violence and gangs I really highly recommend The Interrupters
If you want to understand what gangs were like at the height of their influence, in the 80's and 90's, there's nothing better than The Wire. But that shows a reality that no longer really exists.
The exception is the Latino gangs that are trafficking drugs into the US. They are HIGHLY organized and very disciplined in their use of violence. If you'd like a snapshot of this, I'd recommend Sin Nombre
And if I may briefly stand on my soapbox, please be aware that if you buy your (illegal) drugs from anywhere but a legal pot dispensary, it's very likely that you ARE supporting the highly organized Latino gangs that are ruthless and violent. It's difficult to harmlessly buy black market drugs, unless you personally know your grower.
The story of Henrietta Lacks is super interesting, but also really sad. Her cells were harvested at a blacks only hospital without her consent or notification. Later, the doc who harvested them went on to make buckets of money selling the cell line to researchers all over the place. People still make buckets of money off that line, and her family never saw, and will never see, a dime of it.
It wasn't all bad, though, as her cell line also helped to produce standards for cell culturing/storage/growth/an entire industry that all began with her cell line. It literally started a new era of research.
If you ever get a chance to read Skloot's book give it a read. Very eye-opening for me in terms of patient rights and medical ethics at the time.
EDIT: As /u/Halsfield pointed out, there actually has been a legal development in the situation. Two of her surviving family members now sit on a committee that controls scientific access to the DNA, as well as recognition in published papers using this line. There's no reported financial compensation, but apparently the family wasn't all that interested in cashing in. In fact, it sounds like it's opened up a ton of lucrative speaking engagements for her remaining family. I'm glad to see a happy ending, hats off to Rebecca Skloot. Without her, Henrietta would be nothing more than a footnote in history.
EDIT2: I am not as good with details as I'd hoped. Hopkins, where she was admitted, had a black wing and a white wing, and the Dr. who collected the sample did not make buckets of cash. It did spring a healthy business producing/shipping the cells to other researchers, but buckets of money might not be the best description. For clarity's sake I'm leaving my original comment as is.
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
A fantastic book, I've reread it a few times. Jon Krakauer does a great job telling this story, and he talks about the kind of things you don't normally hear about Everest, just like what you're seeing in OP's image.
It wasn't just to change his opinion, but to really understand how society treats LGBT.
Reminds me a lot of Black Like Me, where in the '50s a white guy changes his skin (with medical help and makeup) to become a black man so that he can understand what it means to be black in America.
This is a brilliant idea.
I'm just been trying to remember what books I liked when I was still at school, the ones that I have come up with so far are: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (I know it's a graphic novel but it's really good!), Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, Wild Swans by Jung Chang, The Wind Singer, by William Nicholson. There are probably many more, but that's all I can think of right now - hope I've helped a bit though!
Eugene Sledge, in his book With The Old Breed, mentioned that while they were happy for the troops in Europe, it meant nothing to them.
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Oh wow! It's on YouTube
Disk 1
Disk 2
A very tough read at times.
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Edit: Those are soldiers of the 77th Division. My Grandfather was a Doughboy with the 77th in France from 1917-1918. My Uncle was in the Navy at Okinawa on an LST that landed troops from the 77th. He was always proud that he served with his Father's unit.
Kid's form is terrible. Runs like he just learned how to as a child. That's cute and all, 'run like nobody's watching' and all that. But if you're serious about running, you need to think of your form and the impact it has on your joints and muscles long term.
This book is a somewhat interesting read on the subject.
>but do you really want 11 to 16-year-olds to act like real people their age?
My answer is NO. I don't want to read about average teens.
People should realize the Trio was anything but average. Average teens would have long collapsed under the pressure they were in. Ron, the most average of the three, also gets the most hate.
On the other hand, teenagers are perfectly capable of becoming vicious killers. Read this book and you will find out.
Reading books like Hillbilly Elegy and Between the World and Me back-to-back suggests that kind of defensive thinking is pretty universal.
"Getting too big for your britches" among poor white folks is pretty similar to the pressure to "keep it real" among poor black folks. Crabs in a bucket, basically.
You can read it via waybackmachine here, yIKES
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"I’ve applied every ounce of the researching laser beam that Cambridge gives you as a result of 3 years to try and find an example of a girl who is 23 years old or younger when they publish their first memoir. And I couldn’t find a single example of one that had a positive life. Famous examples are Malala and The Diary of Anne Frank. They literally had to survive the Holocaust and be shot and left for dead on a bus. That’s what it takes to get a young girl a memoir."
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, very interesting story about human cell research, the woman whose cells made it possible, and her daughter. It is a compelling true story and describing it makes me want to read it again! And I second (or third) the Mary Roach books; they are sometimes LOL funny.
The meme response is to advise you to apply judicious quantities of alcohol until the feelings subside.
Your feelings sound perfectly rational to me.
Many Commandants as well as Gen Mattis have advocated for learning from those who have gone before us from their teachings recorded in books & stories.
You might find some comfort in the stories of those who have already walked this path.
https://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Brother-Major-Winters-Brothers/dp/0451218396
https://www.amazon.com/One-Bullet-Away-Making-Officer/dp/0618773436/
https://www.amazon.com/Helmet-My-Pillow-Parris-Pacific/dp/1977052304/
https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419063/
https://www.amazon.com/Im-Staying-My-Boys-Basilone/dp/0312611447/
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Before you engage your chain of command, I encourage you to seek out a more junior combat veteran in your unit and discuss your unease.
I'm not saying "Don't engage your CoC." I'm suggesting you try getting guidance from a pseudo-peer first.
If anyone is interested in more on this subject, I highly recommend Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. Framed as an account of Adolph Eichmann's 1961 trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Jerusalem, the book really digs into how great evil is often brought about by banal motives like careerism and stupidity.
>The Immortal Life of Hennrietta
Based on the book by the same name by Rebecca Skloot
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
I can't tell you what tribe the declaration of independence was referring to, but Empire of the Summer Moon does a good job of describing the atrocities of the Comanche.
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
In addition to the many rape stories as well as the killing of children, there were others like how they would cut your eyelids off and tie you down on your back staring into the summer sun until you baked to death.
He wrote a book about his experience as well!
http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind/dp/0061730335
Thanks for elaborating, I was trying to give a very brief outline.
For anyone interested in the history of Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide, I'd recommend Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families. It's absolutely nuts to me that over a 3 month period people picked up their machetes and slaughtered 20% of the population.
Everest is climbed in several stages, with a few day's rest at each camp. The final summit push is a single day up-and-back hike. The base camp for the summit hike is just below 8000 meters. That's where the "death zone" starts - that's high enough that there isn't enough oxygen to support a human, so you need to get in and out ASAP.
The people who die do so because they plonk themselves down at the side of the trail in the Death Zone and don't have the energy or brainpower to get back up, mostly due to hypoxia. Everyone else who's going by them is also maxing out their physical and mental abilities just to haul their OWN body around. Providing meaningful help to someone else just isn't usually possible, because you would BOTH die. About all you can do is hand them another oxygen bottle and hope.
This is also why nobody brings the bodies back down. The physical effort to move your own body is all an individual is capable of up there. Source: Jon Krakauer's excellent book "Into Thin Air".
Obligatory mention of the book "Born to run"
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
>Seems to me, if you wanted to be in good shape, there are much better ways to do it then spending months training to run an large yet arbitrary number of miles.
Most people do not run marathons simply to 'be in good shape.' That's one benefit of many but an erroneous framing of the issue. You can run to set a goal and meet it. It's not arbitrary; it has a history.
This usually starts out running a lower set of miles and working up. It's seeing tangible benefits for a constructive use of time. This is an important mental foundation of any kind of running but it often feeds into shorter-distance runners pushing themselves to a limit they've never envisioned themselves meeting. This is an emotional high that is very hard to match, though it is not exclusive to running.
Also, some people simply enjoy running. The fact that you see it as merely something to do to stay healthy is inevitably going to ignore that it is also something people can do for fun even if it's not your thing. I don't really see why people enjoy yoga even if I acknowledge some health benefits, but people who take part in yoga are also part of a community and a subset of fitness culture and also enjoy the act of taking part in it.
Building on that, there is a running community, ranging from ultra-marathon runners (if you think ~24 miles is bad, try 100+) to Hash Harriers. Individuals coming together as a group to set a goal and push each other is something from which a lot of people derive personal utility.
Finally, there's nothing that says long-distance running is ipso facto bad for you simply because it is long-distance. There is an argument to be made that much of human evolution focused in some part on the necessity of running for survival. You also need to acknowledge that some people, such as the Tarahumara, have an entire culture that revolves around long-distance running that surpasses the average marathon and colors everything ranging from education and holidays to courting and dispute revolution.
I can't really speak for nipple issues because I wear a sports bra, but needless to say it really shouldn't be enough to tip the scales from all of the above just because it doesn't fit one's neat aesthetic preference for athletic beauty.
Doing something for personal reward, community, and culture is not masochism.
EDIT: I forgot to add that marathons are super accessible. You don't even need to formally sign up for an event in order to run one. It's an egalitarian form of competition - either against yourself or others - that basically requires a shirt, shorts, shoes and fortitude. Some even view shoes as optional. Compare that to hockey, golf or football where they require investment in protective gear or pay-per-play course access at the least (at the most, a membership at a club.)
I recommend reading the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families.
I mean Sierra Leon's govt/rebels used 10-12 year olds as their front line fighters for years.
One of them watched his buddy get hit by a RPG and kept fighting. His memoirs can be found in a A Long Way Gone
http://www.amazon.com/Anne-Frank-Diary-Young-Girl/dp/0553296981
Since most people here will have naver heard about the reasons why Poland's PM saud this, here is a list (far from complete) of those reasons:
Salomon Morel
Chaim Rumkowski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenrat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_13
"Eichmann in Jerusalem" by Hannah Arendt.
Can't believe this isn't a top comment. If ever there was a category that this book fit in, it would be this one.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Started reading it and had to stop. Very poignant.
Roméo Dallaire's autobiography, Shake Hands With the Devil, is a good, if long-winded read. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families is briefer, but very good nonetheless, and contains first-hand accounts of the events from both Hutus and Tutsis.
Both books were very painful to read, indeed I couldn't bring myself to finish either, but they are very, very good. I think I will have to give them another try, definitely don't regret buying them.
You wouldn't use the same literary techniques to interpret the poetry of Walt Whitman as you would to interpret the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Genesis 1 is a poem.
The rest of Genesis is not.
Why would you uniformly treat Whitman and Malcom X exactly the same with no difference as to the literary format?
To add, you can find a lot of his smaller work on The Atlantic, here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/
His biggest, prize-winning, piece is this one from 2014: The Case for Reparations
His recent, massively successful and also award-winning book is: Between the World and Me
And if you're into that sort of thing, as Obama mentioned in his recent address to Howard U, Coates is also the writer for the latest Black Panther superhero comics run.
As you might gather, Coates is relatively narrow in his range of topics though. His topic is race in America, about which he talks both from a deeply personal perspective and from a deeply historical perspective. He is respected as a writer/journalist who not only talks about the problems of racism in current times, but who can connect current problems with the whole history of the United States drawing on both academic historical scholarship and in particular the African-American intellectual tradition.
Kagame is most likely not behind the murder of Habyarimana. Looking at the chain of events, the Hutu majority was being stirred up against the Tutsi minority for months prior to the assassination. There were also rumors of something big happening before the assassination. Less than an hour after Habyarimana's plane crashed, the military had roadblocks up and was searching opposition leader houses. Within hours, the massacre of Tutsis by Hutus had began, the culmination of months of propaganda against the "Tutsi cockroaches".
We don't know who fired the SAMs that hit Habyarimana's plane, but they were most likely fired from areas that the Rwandan army already controlled. It's widely believed that Hutu extremists who wanted to eliminate the Tutsis were responsible for taking out Habyarimana, a major obstacle to their goal. Further, his agreement to the Arusha Accords would end the Rwandan Civil War and create a power-sharing agreement with the Tutsis, something that many Hutus disagreed with. To be fair, Habyarimana didn't like the accords, particularly since they stripped many of his powers, but they were a means to end the civil war.
So why would Kagame, a Tutsi, assassinate Habyarimana? The Arusha Accords would give Tutsis power. The genocide decimated Kagame's tribe and anyone paying attention to the situation in Rwanda knew that it was a powder keg. The Tutsis were in a position to reclaim some lost political power and there was even a possibility that the Rwandan "Tutsi diaspora" across neighboring countries could eventually return home. For Kagame to throw away this huge win for the Tutsis on an outright gamble doesn't make sense.
Note regarding the use of the words "civil war": Some would argue that because the Tutsis who invaded Rwanda in 1990 were based in Uganda, largely members of the Ugandan army, and supported by the Ugandan president, that it was an invasion by Uganda and not a civil war. However, there was also a law passed that prevented non-Ugandans from owning land in Uganda. Because many of the Tutsis in the army were involuntarily exiled from Rwanda, but could not have a stable place in their adopted country, they felt tremendous pressure to return "home". I'm hard-pressed to say whether the term "civil war" is without merit, but it's a succinct way of describing the situation without getting into the complexities.
Sources: The Rwanda Crisis: History of Genocide and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (a brilliant and heart-breaking book).
Any of them will do, I think
Here's a link to the mass market paperback version
There's a book that won the National Book Critics Circle Award about the genocide, written by Philip Gourevitch who covered the story for The New Yorker. It is called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
If you want to read his pieces from The New Yorker, here's the author's page on their website with links to his stories.
Would that be the Tarahumara indians? Featured repeatedly in this book Born to Run - an AMAZING read, highly recommend it
This is it man, You've got to treat this moment as your last chance. You will fail but you will recover.
Whatever your feeling is temporary. It's ego death.
Figuring from your username, you think a lot.
That's a good thing in general, it means you care. But it's debilitating.
Quite simply, grow a pair of balls. Quit trying to live the world through your thoughts, live in the real world, be present in every moment.
Personally, I would wrap myself in my thoughts as a safe haven. I have tons of good ideas, but I never had the balls to manifest them. I liked being in my safe world where I was god and nothing could harm me.
The only problem with this is that it's fucking lonely. I may elevate my ego by convincing myself the world is shit and I know better than everybody else. I believed that I had the solution to everything; but it's shit, it's all shit, it was me lying to myself to stay in my protected metaphysical bubble where I'm god. Nothing could humble me.
There's nothing wrong with such a meaningless existence, I didn't harm anything, I didn't bother anything, I was miserable but I didn't make the world a worse place. I rationalized that what I did was ok.
But that was bullshit: That's me, that's my story.
But that's also past tense. I would get glimpses into this other realm of consciousness; a feeling of oneness with everything, or belonging, or happiness. It's why religion is so popular, we'll all suffer through this shit together praying that such and such will stave off our meaningless existence; give purpose to a purposeless world.
You have to find something important for yourself, this feeling will go away. How do you get back to it?
Mainly, how do you quite the rational mind, and let the intuitive self guide you?
To fix this I read Chaos by James Glieck. It thought me how much I can actually gain by thinking; it's not much. We can only grow through new experiences, if we think all the time, we don't get to work with new information.
But that only led me to understanding, how do I take it to the next level of application?
Quit philosophizing. There is nothing more paralyzing than searching for an overall understanding. That understanding is god, or what people like to call god, or faith, or being, or whatever strokes your ego. I'm an atheist. But I pray to God ALL THE FUCKING TIME. The truth is God does exist. But it's in the manner of his existance. God is your brain, your brain is God. That is all. You are a fucking human. You are a part of the species that eats and shits and dies. You are the part of the species that can contemplate its own existence, sends rockets to mars, manipulate genetic information, communicate 5,000 miles away instantly. You are part of THAT FUCKING SPECIES. Your potential is just shy of infinite. The choice is yours. You have the power of God, not in some benevolent, bullshit, religious, make myself feel good about my self sense. But in the sense that YOU can make the changes you see fit in the world. If you're a thinker, and seek understanding, your ideas are better than 99.9% of the world.
What I did:
read proverbs in the bible. No bullshit, it talks about God's true being. But it has to be dug out. The beginning of knowledge is fear of the lord. And fear of the lord is fear of death. Hopefully that's a big enough hint on how it should be read. It can't be read with any preconceptions about anything, it has to be read when your experiencing the experience you felt earlier.
Exercise: So FUCKING important. And where you will fail. Start running, read this book www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347142293&sr=8-1&keywords=born+to+run
we are much more like animals than you wish to believe. don't give up.
Have sex. But not in a nondiscriminatory manner, find someone who you can make feel special And have AWESOME FUCKING SEX, ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Because there are few things, and especially few natural things which will make you feel this good, especially with and for someone you care about.
Solve problems, seek understanding, hold wisdom above all else.
If you have the balls, do yoga.
Be accountable, I'll be that person for you, keep this post as a journal. It can be something we share. Maybe other people will read it and learn. Most likely not, I doubt you will. But I will, for what it's worth. I'll post every fucking week. Because fuck it; I'll expose my life to the world. It's the least I can do.
I hope you choose to do the same. We could help each other, I just started on this path and could use advice as well.
Most importantly, quit searching for meaning and be the meaning.
Become the change you wish to be in the world.
To answer your question, How do I give a shit about the world again?
Give a shit about yourself first. Then you can have the capacity to give a shit about the world.
tldr:
Good now your getting it. This was too long, you shouldn't have read this post. Get the fuck of Reddit, Get the fuck off the internet. Get the fuck out of your mind, grow a pair of balls, do something you think you can't.
Always remember you can. You may think you can't, but it's only a thought.
I haven't bought many shoes that I've had to stop wearing because of pain, but I'm really picky and do a ridiculous amount of research beforehand. I should probably experiment more - I don't know what I'm missing out there. I'm with you on Frees though - the soles are just too squishy for me to run in. As far as breaking them in, I'd say that most of my shoes stop feeling "new" after 15-20 miles in them.
Thinking about my stride and body mechanics has made me a much, much better running. If you haven't seen in, take a look at Chris McDougall's Born to Run.
Edit: Just to expand on form and stride a little, give the hundred-up drill a try. The idea is to trick your body into running efficiently without engaging your brain. The other thing that worked for me was to think about my upper-body position, which filters down to my feet. Try to run with a slight lean forward, and instead of pushing off with your back foot try to imagine your upper thighs being pulled forward. Shorter, quicker strides that land you on your midfoot with slightly bent knees is what you want to aim for.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is one of the more recent NYT bestsellers that is also a pretty good biology read. The Hot Zone is a classic, and although it is dated, it will probably regain some of its formal popularity due to the [current ebola outbreak] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_outbreak). I would recommend Creighton if you want a "fun" read, but his works are fictional, predictable, and often infuriatingly inaccurate.
I think you'd find The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a very interesting read.
I spent most of the summer reading WW2 memoirs, including Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed.
I feel like WW2 stuff is the base of so much of the modern meme around needing a new warrior class.
What rules about this meme, and the general mindset that we need for a better society is Strong Men creating Good Times through war, is it ignores the part where the Strong Men who managed to make it through with all their limbs still attached suffer decades of nightmares and panic attacks and broken marriages and emotions they cannot control.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A poor black tobacco farmer to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, because without her we wouldn't have half the cures to diseases we have today - including the polio vaccine.
There are no Children Here
Gang Leader for a Day
Hoop Dreams - Also a very good documentary film.
The book Born to Run explains this very well. http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
The theory it talks about basically says that Homo Sapiens beat out Neanderthal because we could literally run grazing animals to death by exhaustion. Neanderthal was used to hunting large game that was in the process of going extinct, and could not compete with our hunting style on the smaller, faster animals.
Also, Homo Sapiens has physical structures on our body that directly aid our running ability that even close relatives like chimps and early hominids don't.
For the Black Panthers:
There's Malcolm X's biography recorded and written by Alex Haley, writer of Roots.
Another book called Black Against Empire: History of the Black Panther Party, supposedly very good.
For the Irish Republican Army:
Here's an extensive list from Goodreads.
Hope that helps you get started, OP. Knowledge is power. :)
EDIT: and you can always posit specific questions to /r/AskHistorians. They'll take a while to formulate and you may not get a response, but when you do it's usually a good one.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: about the Rwanda genocide, written in 1998. You will lose whatever faith you ever held in western politicians and international organizations after reading this book.
The descriptions of the Clinton administration arguing over the technical meaning of the word 'genocide' are just painful to read.
The Tarahumara were chronicalled in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
If you haven't read it, it is definitely worth the read.
I recommend you read a little bit about 'no shampoo' diet and about barefoot running first before dissing the ideas. I'll give you two links to start you off if you're willing to spend some time reading about it.
'An Experiment in Giving Up Shampoo'
'Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen'
I highly recommend Tom Reiss' book about him, The Black Count.
Your analysis reminds me of a book I taught earlier this year. It's entitled, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. He was a white man from Texas who underwent cosmetic procedures to darken the pigment of his skin. He then lived as a black man in the South during the 1950's for several months in order to give a "true" account of what it's like to live with racism.
The inherent problem with the project, while it did result in a fascinating book, lies in the original premise; it isn't a book about being black in the South, it's a book about a white man pretending to be black in the South during 1950's.
More or less exactly what the book about her is about. http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
Cynthia Ann Parker was the daughter of White settlers on the Texas frontier in the early 1800s. Her family had built a fort in Central Texas, where the Comanches had massacred them. I think most of the Whites were killed. She was taken hostage as an eleven year old girl in 1836.
When the Comanches took her in, she was treated with about as much respect as a foreign invading hostage could possibly have. She was raised as a daughter by the couple she was given to, and when she grew up she became the wife of Peta Nocona, one of the more powerful war leaders. She pretty much lost all of her original White culture and very much became assimilated as a Comanche. For years, decades, the Texans were trying to find her.
Eventually after Peta's death in the Battle of Pease River she was recaptured (as an adult) by the Texas Rangers, where she was returned to her birth family, her uncle Isaac Parker. She did not adjust well at all and several times tried to flee back to the wilderness. Eventually she went on a hunger strike and died in the 1870s. Her son Quanah Parker became very well known and has a small town in North Texas named after him (Quanah, TX).
Ninja edit: Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne goes into much detail about her, as well as the general story of Texas and the Comanches during that time period. Great book, I recommend it.
This guy's story is really interesting. Parker's Fort, where his mother was captured and the rest of his family slaughtered, is a well kept state park. There was a book written about him, Empire of the Summer Moon, that was a Pulitzer finalist and great read. You can't imagine the violence and turbulence in his world as the Comanche fought the Anglos and Spanish/Mexicans.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakeur.
Read this.
https://www.amazon.com/J-Innocent-Can-Prove/dp/1616086203
This book. Mind you, this book could have been just like 6 pages or so. There is specific info that is fact about Jason in there that is just amazing to read.
Like the fact that Chris Darden was going to look into Jason, and OJ got Carl Johnson to be Jason's lawyer, but they never went after him, they just put it all on OJ. The fact that at the civic trial, Jason was finally questioned in a deposition and it went so badly that it was essentially stopped and the line of questioning about his alibi was glossed over.
Ok I found all the info someone typed it from the book:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.radio.talk/YFhuo1_ZeiE
Click the first post
HOSPITAL.
AND NICOLE AT AN EARLY AGE.
WITH A BASEBALL BAT.
WITH ABUSING DRUGS AND ALCOHOL.
CONDITION, LATER BEING DIAGNOSED AS "INTERMITTENT RAGE DISORDER" ACCOMPANIED BY
SEIZURES. HE WAS PRESCRIBED DEPAKOTE, A DRUG FREQUENTLY PRESCRIBED TO
INDIVIDUALS SUFFERRING FROM RAGE.
TOGETHER.
ALCOHOL IN THE CAR WITH HIM AT THE TIME OF THE ARREST.
BREAKS HER BACK BY THROWING HER INTO AN EMPTY BATHTUB.
HAIR.
HE WAS COMMITTED TO THE PSYCHIATRIC WARD AT SAINT JOHN'S HOSPITAL.
THE MEDICATION, BECAUSE IT COULD FURTHER COMPLICATE HIS EXISTING NEUROLOGICAL
CONDITION, BUT CONTINUED TO DO SO.
UNDER THE CARE OF A PSYCHIATRIST.
A KITCHEN KNIFE. AT THE TIME OF THE MURDERS, JASON WAS STILL ON PROBATION FOR
THIS EARLIER OFFENSE ON PAUL GOLDBERG.
INTO CEDARS SINAI HOSPITAL. PREVIOUSLY, WHEN HE WAS ABOUT TO RAGE, HE CLAIMED
TO HALLUCINATE BY HEARING VOICES OF PEOPLE WHO WEREN'T THERE.
GIRLFRIEND, JENNIFER GREEN, AT HIS BIRTHDAY PARTY. LATER THAT NIGHT, ACCORDING
TO AN ARTICLE, TRIED TO STRANGLE HER.
DEPAKOTE BECAUSE, AS HE WAS REPORTED TO HAVE SAID, "IT'S FUCKING WITH MY HEAD".
RESTAURANT [ON THE NIGHT OF THE MURDERS], WHERE JASON WAS THE CHEF, BUT SHE
FAILED TO SHOW UP [ON THE NIGHT OF THE MURDERS].
RESTAURANT WHERE HE WORKED AROUND 9:45 P.M., APPROXIMATELY 45 MINUTES TO AN
HOUR PRIOR TO THE MURDERS.
THE NIGHT OF THE MURDERS, BUT JASON'S CIVIL DEPOSITION INDICATED HE DID NOT
SPEND THE EVENING WITH JENNIFER GREEN AS SHE INDICATED, BUT WENT DIRECTLY HOME
AFTER HE DROPPED JENNIFER OFF AT HER APARTMENT.
DROPPED OFF HIS GIRLFRIEND JENNIFER GREEN, OTHER THAN HIS CLAIM THAT HE WAS
ALONE AT HIS APARTMENT WATCHING TELEVISION UNTIL AFTER 3:00 A.M.
WAS COOKING IN FRONT OF 200 PEOPLE AT JACKSON'S RESTAURANT. ON THAT PARTICULAR
NIGHT THERE WERE LESS THAN 40 PATRONS AT THE RESTAURANT THE ENTIRE NIGHT. JASON
LEFT BEFORE IT CLOSED.
RESTAURANT AT APPROXIMATELY 9:45 P.M. ON THE NIGHT OF THE MURDERS.
JACKSON'S AS ARRANGED ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 12, 1994.
AS O.J.'S.
TO O.J.'S CLOTHES CLOSET AND IS KNOWN TO HAVE TAKEN ITEMS OF CLOTHING FROM HIS
DAD AT WILL.
AND DETERMINED THAT JASON SIMPSON SHOULD HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED A MAJOR SUSPECT
IN THE MURDERS OF NICOLE SIMPSON AND RON GOLDMAN.
STATED O.J. IS NOT THE KILLER OF NICOLE SIMPSON AND RON GOLDMAN BUT IN ALL
PROBABILITY WAS AT THE CRIME SCENE AFTER THE MURDERS. THEY BOTH FELT THAT JASON
SIMPSON SHOULD HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED A MAJOR SUSPECT.
CHARLES KELLER REVIEWED JASON'S RECORDS AND FELT, BASED ON MY [DET. WILLIAM
DEAR] INVESTIGATIVE MATERIAL, THAT JASON SIMPSON IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTURBED
AND IN NEED OF HELP.
WALKING TIME BOMB".
SUSPECT EXCEPT FOR HIS AIR-TIGHT ALIBI ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 12, 1994.
ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES NOR THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE. NOR WAS HE ASKED TO FURNISH
AN ALIBI FOR THE EVENING OF SUNDAY, JUNE 12, 1994 IN CONNECTION WITH THE
MURDERS OF NICOLE SIMPSON AND RON GOLDMAN. NOR, ACCORDING TO SOURCES, WERE
JASON'S FINGERPRINTS EXAMINED IN COMPARISON TO THE UNIDENTIFIED FINGERPRINTS
FOUND AT THE CRIME SCENE.
CONVICTED BECAUSE OF HIS MENTAL CONDITION.
MURDERS.
CRIMINAL ATTORNEY TO REPRESENT JASON. THIS WAS PRIOR TO O.J.'S ARREST FOR THE
MURDERS.
OF THE SLOW-SPEED CAR CHASE.
MURDERS.
TO BE A "RAGE KILLING BY AN AMATEUR".
SIMPSON'S FUNERAL, NOT WANTING TO VIEW NICOLE'S BODY.
THAT TRULY BELIEVES HIS OWN LIES.
JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE" PERSONALITY WITH UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE.
LAYERS OF HANDWRITTEN NOTES WRITTEN ON TOP OF EACH OTHER, APPEARING TO BE
SCRIBBLING AT FIRST SIGHT, STATING "DEAR JASON" AND DESCRIBED THE WRITER AS
"THREE PEOPLE...WALKING ON BROKEN GLASS...FUCKED...I KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT I
HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH GUTS TO DO IT."
BEING THREE PERSONS, WAS LATER IDENTIFIED BY HANDWRITING EXPERTS AS BEING
WRITTEN BY JASON LAMAR SIMPSON. A SHOCKING BUT REVEALING PIECE OF EVIDENCE OF
HIS OWN PERCEPTION OF HIS TRUE PERSONALITY.
FROM: O.J. IS GUILTY, BUT NOT OF MURDER, BY WILLIAM C. DEAR, PRIVATE
INVESTIGATOR.
OP, I think you mean Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143039881/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_bGJGAbJ6XYEXC
Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong
Islam: The Straight Path - John Esposito
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley
More advanced (should have some understanding of Islam before reading):
The Great Theft - Khaled Abou El Fadl
The Story of the Qur'an - Ingrid Mattson
If you want to learn more about ultras and distance running in general I highly recommend this book. It's a really great read.
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild is really good. Its about the Belgian King's rule over the Congo.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevich is an account of the Rwandan Genocide of '94.
That's more recent history, but the fact is little is written about pre-colonial Africa (not dealing with Egypt). I haven't read much, but I'm sure theres some decent readings about the Mali Empire (maybe start with Mansa Musa?).
I recommend Wild Swans if you want to read about Mao's time
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0743246985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422211501&sr=8-1&keywords=wild+swans
It's from the perspective of a Chinese woman whose parents were both staunch Communists, and details what they went through during the Cultural Revolution, and before.
It's really eye opening
if anyone wants to read a good book about this time in history, read wild swans http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0743246985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261763228&sr=1-1
The term "racist" can be very loaded and charged, because some people (especially white people) view the label with such fear and dread that they will vigorously defend themselves against any hint of an accusation of being racist. The defensiveness masks for them the systemic racism within the culture into which they were born.
It's not always as simple as saying "X person is a racist" or "Y person is not a racist". There aren't just two options. Outside of people like white nationalists, who are overt and admitted racists (and who Trump regards as "fine people"), for everyone else, the label of "racist" is given out by others, and when it is, people usually run from it as fast as they can.
The reason I like to use it only sparingly when directed at an individual is not because it isn't true that the person being accused isn't a racist, but because the label halts any possibility of either person shifting from their position. A person labelled a racist becomes blind to even their own actual views on race, and blind to the larger existing cultural problems involving race.
Trump supporters will often respond to accusations of Trump being labelled a racist much in the same way as if they themselves were being accused, so we encounter the same problem.
If you really want to know the ways in which Trump is racist, you can just Google it, read about it on Wikipedia, or read one or two of the numerous, well-documented, thoroughly researched articles on the topic.
What I recommend instead is that, if you genuinely want to understand race in America, these three books are a pretty great place to start:
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
My go-to book for a reference on discrimination against Asians and the construction of Asian masculinity within a white supremacist society is "Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality" by Chou http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14366163-asian-american-sexual-politics
There are tons of other brilliant books but I have yet to find one as eloquent as this piece.
In the book, Chou stresses that the construction of Asian masculinity is intrinsically tied to construction of masculinity for other people-of-color, like black people. Therefore, there are many overlaps between the social troubles that Asian folks face in Western countries with other people-of-color, even though not all of them are the same.
I am very interested in the African-American experience, because I feel that they experience racism much more deeply and appreciates the perniciousness of white supremacy more viscerally.
Many excellent books have came out this past year, such as:
Tears we Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
https://www.amazon.com/Tears-We-Cannot-Stop-America/dp/1250135990
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
And some classics:
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son - Tim Wise
What does it Mean to be White - Robin DiAngelo
The Heart of Whiteness - Robert Jensen
I am not your Negro - James Baldwin
Any speech by Martin Luther King and Malcom X is just as good as any of these books. For a brief review on the history of racism and white supremacy in the United States with actual footages, I have found "Eyes on the Prize" series on YouTube offer a more than excellent recount https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts10IVzUDVw
There are many African Americans who see parallels between their own struggle with those of Asian folks Why Black America should care about the Death of Danny Chen, therefore we must return the favor and stand with them and not against them in their struggle for human rights. And on the global scale, China and other countries in Asia must stand with African nations, we might fight the battle against white supremacy. We either rise together or we both get destroyed by this white supremacist world, there is literally no other way
Many did, and they were called "The Old Breed"
Read me
Try Krakauer's other well known book Into Thin Air, and because there's some controversy regarding his version of events, also The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev who was a major player that day.
Krakauer's other book Under the Banner of Heaven is a good "true crime" style story about some Morman murders, but may not be enough like Into the Wild to appeal to you.
Over the Edge of the World is more of a history, covering Magellan's circumnavigation of the earth. It was facinating and definately had intrigue, machinations, and survival elements.
Another book on exploration and survival, Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage
And another one, Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson. I think this is the one I read, but I can't be certain. It doesn't seem to be as well regarded, but i thought it was still interesting.
A book on diving and survival: The Last Dive, Chowdhury
The Hot Zone could be thought of as science survival. Anyway, you'll probably love the opening bits in Africa, although it does slow way down after that.
Far away from survival, but still about travel are the wonderful Bill Bryson's travelogues. Witty and informative. In a Sunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods are particularly recommended.
Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).
The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).
Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.
Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.
Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.
After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.
Happy reading!
edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.
Hey there, white dude here as well. I highly recommend reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. That book utterly changed my life and I can't recommend it enough. It highlighted a lot of my own internal biases and caused me to do a lot of rethinking about myself and the world around me. Totally changed my perspective.
My two favorite WWII memoirs that I recommend to everyone interested in WWII history:
Always Faithful: A memoir of the marine dogs of WWII - The story of the US Marine Corps war dogs from training to battle on Guam as told by the commander of the Third Dog Platoon. This book is all about the loyalty, companionship, heroism, and immeasurable value of the war dogs on the battlefield, most of which were ordinary family pets who were "volunteered" by their owners to help with the war effort.
"With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - If you haven't read this one, it's an essential pick and a no-brainer. The HBO series "The Pacific" was based partly on this book. A view of joining the US Marine Corp in late 1943, training, and deployment to Peleliu and Okinawa as told from the perspective of a young grunt.
Have you watched The Pacific?. They had a marathon on yesterday for 12/7 and it was awesome. I've watched it before, but it gets better every time. It's based on 3 individuals and follows them throughout the war. It is only 10 episodes so you should be able to get through it rather quickly. I also recommend the book With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge (one of the marines featured in The Pacific).
http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
This is a very good book, highly recommend. And it touches on the chicken heart.
You should check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
I had a customer recommend it to me. I've only gotten a few chapters in, but it's pretty well written and I'm liking it.
According to the book Empire of the Summer Moon, during the American Civil War the Western Frontier was actually pushed back quite a bit because the soldiers that had been guarding it were called back East to fight the civil war and the Plains Indians seized the opportunity to take back some of their land. So yes, going West at the time likely would have sent you into a different line of fire.
While the exact same scenario is for obvious reasons unlikely in a hypothetical American Civil War 2, it isn't hard to imagine various warlords and militant groups arising to fill the power vacuum in remote areas. The Taliban and ISIS both pretty much started out that way.
Lolek Skosowski, a Jew, a Gestapo agent, who in 1943 gave the Germans death to over 2,000 survivors so far during the so-called Polish Hotel scandal
there were also other Jewish voluntary organisations that were willing participants of Holocaust like the most famous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBagiew which was operating by infiltrating Jewish and Polish resistance movements, giving away the Polish groups hiding the Jews etc - making it significantly harder to operate since they never could be sure if the next Jewish person to hide is not the one that will give all the others away, etc.
and other like:
Obviously, these examples being true doesn't mean Jewish involvement being significant, just like in case of the Poles there was a strict minority of people willing to collaborate voluntarily (e.g. Żagiew, Group 13, early Judenrats) and those forced to collaborate (late Judenrats, Sonderkommandos) - but that's exactly the whole point of Morawiecki's comparison.
The capture of Adolf Eichmann is a covert operation that I find interesting and Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann In Jerusalem about his trial in Israel is fascinating from both a historical and philosophical perspective.
Chicago gang life is essentially a shadow government keeping its own brand of order in the ghetto, its pretty scary in some ways, but also actually really interesting to read that there really are "rules" and people enforcing the rules....
here's an interesting book about a university of chicago sociologist who hung out with them for a while.
good read
https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X
The real problem is running shoes in general - their design promotes heel landing, which is not how the body is supposed to run.
Try running barefoot on concrete and you will quickly bruise your heels - the more natural way to run is to land with the fore-foot, or the pad right behind your toes. This places the stress of landing on the calf and hamstring muscles, rather than the knee and hip joint when heel landing.
Shoes nowadays that have zero drop or minimal drop (thickness difference between toes and heel on a running shoe) can be found, but you have to ease into the transition.
Check out the book, Born to Run.
Ich kann We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda empfehlen, mit der Warnung, dass das Buch extreme Gewaltdarstellungen enthält. (Und Bildmaterial, wenn ich mich richtig erinnere. Ist etwas länger her.)
You're wrong. So wrong. You need to educate yourself and read The Autobiography of Malcom X. Don't let leftist indoctrination cause you to focus only on his pre-Mecca pilgrimage teachings. I get why you think what you do about him and it's straight up leftist revisionist history, the way they teach all history. Eric Foner, Howard Zinn, they ALWAYS leave out the inconvienent shit that blows up their narritave. He changed after Mecca when he realized Muslims weren't all black/brown people (see how this blows up their "Muslim is a race" narrative) and that's why the black supremacists in the Nation of Islam killed him.
In the book Born to Run by Mcdougal, he actually tells a story of a couple guys (iirc) running down a deer (antelope?) until it collapsed and died. Took them several hours but they did it.
Read this book.
Tigers have big teeth and claws and are strong and have stripes that make them hard to see. Rabbits are fast and good at hiding and finding food and making more rabbits. These are the obvious advantages nature has given them. So what are our obvious advantages? Everybody knows about the opposable thumbs and the big brain. In our society, we get to operate our brains all the time. And we're always picking up little objects and doing things with our hands. So we all know about that.
What we don't know, however, what many of us never realize, what our modern civilization has hidden from us, is that we have another gift nature has given us. Human beings can run. We are literally the best long-distance runners on the planet. Cheetahs can run faster; horses can carry more; oxen can pull harder; but when it comes to long distance running humans wipe the floor with all of them. When you combine this natural ability with our tool use (like our ability to bring water along) and our big brains (like our ability to find and remember where the water sources are) we are practically long-distance superheroes.
The entire human body is built around this, and most people never use it. Once you're used to it, you feel your body is doing the thing it's supposed to do. If you never run, just try it: go outside, run as far as you can, then switch to walking as long as you have to, then run again. You can cover a huge amount of ground this way. And it might surprise you what you can do even without training or significant preparation. The comedian Eddie Izzard trained for just a couple months before running 27 marathons in 27 days. Think about that: if you're in reasonable health and not too old or massively overweight, you could run a marathon in just a month or two. True, you're not going to win against a bunch of people who've been running for years, and you might have to do the run-walk-run trick, but you can make it. And once you've used your body for what it's really for, you feel it.
Complaint: It's too cold to run. There, I said it.
Confession: I read Born to run while in the Hospital. The moment I got home, I made some Iskiate. ( Unicorn Snot )
It's fucking delicious and I am completely addicted to it. My fridge is full of it now. I've drank a mason jar a day since I got home.
Recipe:
Mason jar. 32oz
4 table spoons of chia seeds,
3 table spoons of sugar,
juice from 1 lime,
Put ingredients in Jar, fill with water. SHAKE IT.
leave it overnight in the fridge.
SHAKE IT.
Drink the nectar of the gods.
Things to occupy yourself with!
-- as a matter of fact, you know, I bet we could really make some badass stuff in this subreddit, this Halloween... it's the perfect time to do so, no? Assassin's Creed is pretty anchored into the culture now, people generally will recognize it when they see it, and Unity's pretty big on the "group/customization" aspect this year. I expect to see some stuff, you guys!
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
I posted a bunch here. There's some in the comments too. It appears the link expired so I'll re-up it now.
OK, here's:
the list does not include Into Thin Air, which makes it wrong. And please, a handmaids tale?
You are not the first. It's an interesting book, if you haven't read it.
In Bill Bryson's travelogue Down under, also known as In a sunburned country, he describes one moment where he was doing boogie-boarding or something like that, but he sank like a stone because he was obese. His traveling companions had a good laugh at his expense. :)
I can give you a short list of personal favorites, books that I consider both informative and extremely interesting / entertaining to read. As you'll see I prefer memoirs and eyewitness accounts to sweeping historical overviews of the war.
With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge. Personal memoir of the author's experience as a marine machine gunner in the Pacific war, specifically the campaigns on Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge is a marvelous writer with prose I'd describe as "Hemingwayesque", a real compliment. Grueling, appalling, human, his account does a great job of sketching in the personalities of his fellow marines.
"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel. This is the book that World War Z is aping, but the actual book is a far more gripping read. Terkel sat down for personal interviews with 121 survivors of the war, Germans, Japanese, British, Canadian as well as American.
Band Of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose. Now made famous by the TV series, the story of E Company's recruitment, training and ultimate combat experience during and after the Normandy invasion is as intense and eye-opening as it sounds.
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, Leo Marks. Marks was a cryptographer working in London for the SOE (special operations executive, the group responsible for running much of "The Resistance" throughout occupied Europe, North Africa and Asia). He's a very funny guy, a self-professed coward, but the book portrays his deeply heartfelt concern for the well-being of the agents he was sending behind enemy lines. His codes, and methods of transmitting them, could be the only thing saving them from capture by the Gestapo. All too often, they weren't enough. "If you brief an agent on the Tuesday and three days later his eyes are taken out with a fork, it hastens the aging process," he writes.
Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor. When you start to read about the Eastern Front, you realize that much of the conventional western perspective of WWII in Europe is based on the comparatively minor engagements in Italy and France. France lost 350,000 civilians to the war, The Soviet Union lost 15-20 million. Considered purely from the POV of total casualties and total armed forces committed, WWII was primarily an engagement between Germany and the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe, with a number of smaller actions in the western countries. Anyhow, the story of the brutal, grinding siege of Stalingrad, the point where the German tide definitively turned, is a must-read.
Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell. This is Orwell's personal account of his service fighting on the Republican side against fascists during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-37. Basically, this was the war before the war, as described by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Incidentally Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is a fairly accurate, very powerful portrayal of a different view of the same war.
Great book, a horrible and facinating real world account of the Pacific theater --> http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
"Empire of the Summer Moon" is a great read about her and her son, the last tribal leader of the Comanche
Edit: here's the link, I'm on mobile and can't figure out the high-speed way to rename links... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416591060/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Mr50xbSRZVZCR
With the Old Breed is literally named after WWI veterans who accompanied green soldiers into battle in WWII. That is one of the best known WWII memoirs and is taught in colleges.
The story of Henriette Lacks is pretty cool.
I also enjoyed the story of The Girl in the Picture
I have a fondness for british history, in particular the tudor era, the napoleonic era, and the victorian era and those times also have some fascinating women. Elizabeth I comes to mind, I've been meaning to read this novel about her life, having enjoyed the author's take on Hevry VIII. I also watched The Duchess which told the colourful but tragic story of the Duchess of Devonshire.
If you listen to podcasts, you could check out Stuff You Missed In History Class. They've recently done episodes on women like Jane Austen and Yaa Asantewaa. There was a really good one about foot-binding, which wasn't about women in particular but did look very much at how the tradition affected women (and how women propagated this tradition.)
If you want to read a whole book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is pretty much all about this, with a few ethical/political viewpoints thrown in. I've read it. It is a bit dull for me but does give the relevant background.
​
Check this book out. Camanches were gnarly
I'm not shocked. Some people relish hurting others, but a much larger number will go along when there is immense social pressure and a cognitive dissonance defense that they can use to internally justify their actions. The military and the CIA engineer that social pressure and provide those defenses so that people who would never think they would even be capable of committing atrocities actually do. It's what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil. One of the points Arendt makes in Eichmann in Jerusalem is that he did not see himself as "just following orders" but that he was doing his duty as well as obeying the law. He did not see himself as abdicating his role as an active and even moral agent, but that he was carrying out the edicts of Hitler (and thus society) under a seriously fucked up interpretation of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
The health care providers who do this believe they are serving a higher purpose. They are actively helped to create justifications by the people who need their skills to commit torture. Think about it this way: Say I convinced you that if you tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the architect of 9/11) you could get him to give a grain of information that would prevent the deaths of 1 million people in whatever country you live in. Just imagine that you really believed this. Would you do it? Would you feel justified in doing so?
That is the reason that health care providers participated in torture.
Now we know that torture doesn't work and hasn't prevented much if any deaths, so we find it easy to condemn these people. (And I agree they should be condemned). However it's like the joke where the man asks a woman if she would have sex with him for $10 million. She says yes, then he asks if she would do it for $10. She replies with "No! What do you think I am?" The man replies, "well, we've established what you are, now we're just haggling over price."
edit: wurds
Or read the book they were talking about: Gang Leader for a Day.
You could pick up yoga or pilates! Something very easy on the body. I like to read motivational books, for example Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. You can totally read other books too! :) You could also look into taking care of your body in other ways - say learning how to do new braids for your hair, taking care of your skin better (shoutout to /r/skincareaddiction and /r/asianbeauty), learning how to mealprep and try new recipes..umm making collages and fashion boards on Pintrest.
As for the eating, I would say to up your protein and fat intake to help you feel satiated & full longer. I used to make these really large fruit smoothies that were relatively low calorie, and sip on them all morning/afternoon to pass time.
Born to Run
"Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it."
English classes at the university level are usually literature-centered, not so much about grammar and composition. Thus, plenty of opportunity for political questions to come up. My first university English class was entirely focused on experiences of political violence; we read stuff like We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families and selections from Rising Up, Rising Down.
Music theory is a bit more of a reach, but suppression of particular composers and styles of music is absolutely something that happened in China as well as the Soviet Union. So it's plausible that it could at least come up in a certain context.
I suppose calculus is pretty safe, unless one has a strong opinion on Newton vs. Leibniz.
Malcolm X
In no particular order:
Sorry I got tired of making links. I’m on my phone.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
There's a really good book about almost this very subject: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
The TL;DR version: Sierra Leone's civil war destroys a young boy's village, and, after a period of wandering as a refugee, he is forced into the army. At 15, he's rescued by UNICEF—and is sent to a rehabilitation center where he undergoes the difficult process of "repatriation" back into civilian life. When war reaches him a second time, he escapes to the U.S.
So, essentially, there are international organizations who dedicate resources to save and de-program child soldiers. The U.S. military would hand the child over to the UN, and then he would be subsequently placed into a relevant program.
Or Border Control is full of incompetents as a result of new and previous hiring pushes.
Earlier this year a story broke that one of the child detention centers was employing someone who had previously been arrested for child porn. It was widely pointed out at the time that this is what you get when you expand an organisation like this without a real barrier to entry, and do so quickly.
The reason is simple. Most people don't want to put "ran a child concentration camp" on their résumé. The people you attract are, frankly, not their best. You end up hiring people who are okay with the scandals, and that means people who are more malicious and less interested in providing a valuable public service.
The more scandals the agency is embroiled in, the fewer non-shitty applicants you'll see. Who wants to work for an organisation which is famous for losing track of children by the thousand, with the widely reported fear that the children were later picked up by sex traffickers? Who wants to work for an organisation which actively attempts to prevent journalists from reporting on the conditions in the concentration camps? Who wants to work for an organisation which cages children and employs pedophiles to do it? Who wants to work for an organisation which lost a thousand children again?
As the PR situation worsens, the applicant pool worsens too. As the percentage of employees who are terrible increases, the quality of service declines. Declining service begets scandals and bad PR, and the cycle repeats.
You end up building an environment which encourages, at best, laziness. At worst it creates a self sustaining misery generator where the goal is to inflict pain.
https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X this is about a sociology student who had the opportunity to follow gangs around in the ghetto and lead them for a day
>Tak, men det er ikke helt rigtigt. Der er lande der håndterer det fint. USA, Canada osv. Jeg kan ikke tage hele kreditten alene.
1 ud af 3 sorte amerikanere vil ryge i fængsel i løbet af deres liv. Sorte og latino bander der får LTF til at ligne spejderdrenge. L.A. urolighederne med 53 døde. Ghettoer i alle storbyer. White flight. Gated communities. Osv. Ja, det går sgu rigtig godt i USA.
Det går lidt bedre i Canada, men de har også store problemer med ghettoer hvor de etniske minoriteter bor.
>Der kan sagtens blive bygget boliger til 100.00 mennesker på et år
Ja, lad os bygge en masse store bygninger hvor vi kan placere alle disse udlændinge. Vi kan kalde det Gellerup v2.0. Det har vi jo gode erfaringer med.
>Det er ligesom med alle andre varer, mangler er altid et resultat af regulering.
Fordi finanseringen er noget der kommer fra gud?
>http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X[1]
>Bandekriminalitet er bare business, og hele levegrundlaget afhænger af salg af stoffer.
Ja, fordi 1 sociolog har gået rundt og snakket med et par bandemedlemmer og derefter skrevet et par bøger om det, MÅ det jo bare være sådan. Er hans bog og påstande blevet peer-reviewed? At tro man kan udrydde bandekriminalitet ved at liberalisere narkolovgivningen er dybt naivt. Tror du virkelig at Jønke og Lille A vil opgive deres kriminelle levevej, droppe de store biler, dropper magten, droppe pengene ved kriminalitet og i stedet for få sig et arbejde. Kriminalitet vil altid eksistere, og det samme vil bander.
Og hvis man er fræk, kunne man jo spørge, om det var stoffer der fik denne sociolog til at fuske med bilagene som han nu engang gjorde.
If you like reading, here are a few other great books:
I really like Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It's not really a training book, more of a memoir in which he talks about the role running plays in his life.
If you want a serious training book I'd go for anything by Pete Pfitzinger. Even if you don't like his training philosophy he has great explanations of how your body changes as you get better at running, with actual science.
A lot of people will probably recommend Born to Run but personally I was annoyed by his tirades on the evil of Nike and shoes in general.
> trainers
[As if!](
https://smile.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537389910&sr=8-1&keywords=born+to+run)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345350685/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_cLo3xbX00XN4T
Some of my favorites:
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (non-fiction)
Last of the Breed by Louis L'Amour (fiction)
The Purification Ceremony by Mark Sullivan (fiction)
Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta (fiction)
The first two recommendations focus more on the survival aspect than the last two, but I loved all of them.
You might be interested in the book Black Like Me, in which the white author darkened his skin to experience life in the Jim Crow South as a black man. I haven't read it since 8th grade English, but I remember it being fascinating and heartbreaking.
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
It actually covers the twentieth century in total, told through the eyes of the author, her mother and her grandmother. The cultural revolution is covered too.
It's not a history textbook, rather a family memoir, but I assume you've read Wild Swans? It's really good and covers this whole period.
Any of Bill Bryson's books are very good, but in a similar vein try:
Notes From a Small Island, an account of his time in the UK while traveling the length of the country.
In a Sunburned Country his travels in Austrailia.
Neither Here nor There his travels in Europe.
And though it is not a travel book, my personal favorite by Bryson is a A Short History of Nearly Everything, a history of science along the lines of the the Edmund Burke TV show "Connections" that is how every science textbook should be written. Spring for the Illustrated edition as long as you don't want to carry it everywhere you read, it's too big and heavy to be a good coffee shop read.
This is it, yes? I must read this.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Sunburned-Country-Bill-Bryson/dp/0767903862
Pick up Between the World and Me and then get back to me.
Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?
Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.
Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.
Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):
And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. So while it doesn’t scream “happy birthday,” and I guess it isn’t what you’d call inspiring, I found it both interesting and compelling. Very readable. It got kind of trendy, and apparently Oprah did a thing for HBO, which usually kind of scares me away, but it’s a good book all the same.
Here’s the Amazon link.
You should read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
It's the story of the woman whose cancer was the source of HeLa cells, and her family - because her family shares her genes.
William Dear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dear_(detective)
wrote a book about it
http://www.amazon.ca/O-J-Innocent-Can-Prove-It/dp/1616086203
Some of the stuff in the book talks about
-Prior to the killings, O.J.'s son Jason was diagnosed with "intermittent rage disorder" (AKA Jekyll and Hyde syndrome) and was given the drug Depakote to control his rage and seizures.
-Jason abused alcohol, ecstasy, and cocaine as early as age 14. Police reports indicate that he was arrested at least four times (including DUI, driving with a suspended license, and assault with a deadly weapon) while medical records reveal at least three suicide attempts.
-A note titled "Dear Jason" that described the writer as being three persons was identified by handwriting experts as being written by Jason Simpson; he also wrote about killing anyone who hurt his loved ones and how he felt like "Jekyll and Hyde" (in diaries obtained by Dear).
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4f870ec2ecad046b6b000011-1200/a-note-titled-dear-jason-that-described-the-writer-as-being-three-persons-was-identified-by-handwriting-experts-as-being-written-by-jason-simpson-he-also-wrote-about-killing-anyone-who-hurt-his-loved-ones-and-how-he-felt-like-jekyll-and-hyde-in-diaries-obtained-by-dear.jpg
-In January 1994, six months before the killings, Jason went to the emergency room because he heard voices of people who weren't there and said he felt as if he was "going to rage" because he ran out of Depakote. He stopped taking Depakote two months before the murders.
-In his past, Jason had nearly killed a girlfriend (with a knife) and almost seriously injured another in fits of rage (whereas O.J. has been accused of domestic abuse, but he has never been arrested for assault and was not prone to use weapons to settle a dispute).
-The night of the murders, Jason expected Nicole Brown Simpson's family to dine at the restaurant where he was working, but Brown Simpson chose another restaurant (probably without telling Jason).
-The murders took place between 9:45 and 10:05 p.m. Jason was by himself after approximately 9:50 p.m. and "has no alibi that can be supported by anyone else as to where he was while the killings occurred."
-Jason's time card for the night of the murders was handwritten, even though the electronic time clock was working.
-The black "navy watch cap" found at the crime scene contained animal hair and hair fibers that did not match O.J.
-Photographs obtained from Jason's storage locker show that Jason wore watch caps often. One (dated 3/24/93) shows him sitting with his dog while wearing a cap identical to the one found at the crime scene.
http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4f870ba469bedde90500004e-1200/photographs-obtained-from-jasons-storage-locker-show-that-jason-wore-watch-caps-often-one-dated-32493-shows-him-sitting-with-his-dog-while-wearing-a-cap-identical-to-the-one-found-at-the-crime-scene.jpg
-The day after the murders (and four days prior to his arrest), O.J. hired top criminal attorney Carl Jones to represent Jason even though he wasn't a suspect.
-One of Jason's ex-classmates informed Dear that Jason was trained in hand-to-hand combat as well as field knife training while attending the Army and Navy Academy, whereas O.J. hates the sight of blood.
-Based on pictures of Ron Goldman's badly bruised and swollen hands, he must have struck hard blows to the assailant, and he was a 3rd degree black belt. The next day O.J. voluntarily stripped at the LAPD, and there were no marks or bruises that indicated he had been in a scuffle
-Dear bought contents of a storage locker owned by Jason Simpson around the time of the murders and found a knife that matched the description of the murder weapon. "After examination of [Jason's] knife by a world-renowned forensic scientist, the butt of the knife appears to match the blow/injury Nicole Simpson suffered on the top of her head." (Whereas O.J.'s Swiss Army knife and stilleto were conclusively ruled out as the murder weapon.)
-The LAPD found 15 separate unidentified fingerprints at the crime scene. None belonged to O.J., and police never compared Jason's fingerprints)
-At the time of the murders, 24-year-old Jason was on probation for assault with a deadly weapon for attacking his boss with a kitchen knife.
-"Investigators found blood and skin under Nicole's fingernails ... along with blood drops on her back that didn't match those of O.J." (Jason was never interviewed and never gave a DNA sample.)
-Three crime scene experts studied the investigative material and determined that "Jason Simpson should have been considered a major suspect in the murders."
-Four doctors reviewed the investigative material along with Jason's records and determined that "Jason Simpson is psychologically disturbed and in need of help."
-Jason's psychiatrist said that "if Jason was guilty he could never be convicted because of his mental condition."
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f870e99eab8eab51800000c-1200/jasons-psychiatrist-said-that-if-jason-was-guilty-he-could-never-be-convicted-because-of-his-mental-condition.jpg
http://www.businessinsider.com/oj-simpson-murders-and-jason-simpson-2014-6?op=1
Of course there are some people that try to say this is false, like Tony Ortega (Awesome reporter against $cientology)
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/bill-dear-is-full-of-it-and-i-can-prove-it-6684433
There are people on Reddit that have written longer and better posts than this, but looking at the evidence shown, I think OJ Simpson was innocent, and his son did it. It ruined him, and took him on the path to where he is now, in jail.
Also a few more links to sites talking about it.
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/inside-deranged-mind-oj-simpsons-violent-son/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123547/OJ-innocent-Private-investigator-claims-Simpsons-SON-hacked-stars-wife-friend-death--went-trial-cover-up.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10892053/OJ-Simpson-was-he-innocent-all-along.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/oj-simpson-book-jason-simpson-william-dear_n_1397583.html
I know literally nothing about Everest, and have never gone anywhere you can't plug in a hairdryer, but I've read a few books about climbing, and I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near that simple. Mountains aren't perfect triangles. You have to climb up and down and up and down, and sometimes you start climbing down and realize you're facing a crevasse and you have to go back up, or you have to spend days scrambling across a field of rocks.
In this case, the girlfriend fell early on and may have been too injured to walk, and within a pretty short timeframe they both would have been too weak to make it down alive. It probably made more sense to find shelter and wait for rescue.
Edit: Into Thin Air, Dead lucky, and Touching the Void are all really good reads, if you're interested. Lincoln Hall's story was made into a documentary, and the 2015 Everest movie is pretty good.
You say you like Dan Brown, but what's most revealing is that you like fast-paced, short chapters.
Think of it this way: what you like is short bursts of interesting information that make you say "I wonder how that's going to be important." That's what a lot of people like about Dan Brown's books. He doesn't put in anything odd or unusual that doesn't become important later on. That's part of his formula.
You also like a narrative, or story, with your non-fiction, I'm betting. I'm going to go out on a limb here (and correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm willing to bet the books you're reading about mountains have titles like "Into Thin Air" and "Dark Summit". I doubt you're reading "Tourism and Environment in the Mount Everest Region".
If my guesses are correct, then my advice is to approach the way you have to read in the way you like to read. It's not easy, and it's only a beginning to scaffolding yourself to the level of rigor that you NEED to read at.
If you can, create a narrative for yourself for when you have to read textbook material. No one needs to know. You're Langdon's assistant on this particular mystery. He's got to go talk to the great-GREAT descendant of Hieronymous Bosch. He's left you with a chemistry book and said that the descendant is willing to sell you a completely unknown-til-now Bosch painting for one dollar per atomic weight of gold in the painting. In twenty minutes, he needs you to call and tell him whether it's worth it or not. So, what is the atomic weight of gold, and is it worth a dollar? That's complete nonsense, but you see what I mean?
Another thing you might do is cut your text reading down to what you know you will process. You'll have to change your expectations of reading page after page and processing it all. Mark off stopping points of 3-4 paragraphs and summarize in notes, then progress to 5-7 and summarize, then 8-10. You are not a natural reader of extended text and haven't been trained to do so. You're going to have to train yourself, like you would with a fitness or diet routine, or as a beginner mountain climber.
this isn't fiction, but its a great read if you're interested in communist china and how women were and have been treated in china. I'm part Chinese, and it was kinda required reading:
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0743246985
It follows three generations in the same chinese family, showing maos impact on chinese life as a woman.
If anyone's interested, the book is "In a Sunburned Country,", by Bill Bryson. It's fascinating (and hilarious).
I'm really glad you are interested in the topic of race in America. Especially its intersection with politics. It's a serious issue that needs more attention. Here are several books I recommend to get you started:
https://www.amazon.com/Race-Human-Diversity-Biocultural-Approach/dp/0131838768/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1473351402&sr=8-3&keywords=human+diversity
https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473351442&sr=8-1&keywords=coates
https://www.amazon.com/Race-Matters-Cornel-West/dp/0679749861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473351540&sr=8-1&keywords=race+matters
If you don't have the money to purchase one right now I'd be glad to try to find a pirated version for you. If I can't find one (or your not comfortable with pirating) I'm sure some redditors would be happy to crowd fund your curiosity on this subject and buy a few books for you to get started.
If you like non-fiction:
Periodic Tales - Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Dark Money - Jane Mayer
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Yep, I'm supes liberal. Sorry.
In addition to Leckie, who got injured by a blast during the landings(if I recall correctly), a good autobiography is also Eugene "Sledgehammer" Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, which has a significan portion of it about the fighting in Peleliu, which was his first battle as a marine.
Of course, the series The Pacific, has many episodes on Peleliu, as the series is partially adapted from Leckie's and Sledge's memoirs and both are central characters in it. Of course, it is a tv series, so not perhaps as precise as one would want. The tie-in book by Hugh Ambrose, The Pacific, is quite detailed and would at least be a stepping stone. Leckie's book might be more detailed with the information you're after.
you want to read one of THE best books on the pacific campaign, check E.B. Sledge: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge ran 60mm mortars & man, the combat detail is nuts.
If you haven't read it, this is worth a read to get some understanding of the horror which was Okinawa -- With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa http://amzn.com/0891419195
Sure. A new book is being written about her. Here's one article and the book link.
They did try to treat her cancer, using radiation therapy. She had ovarian cancer at first, so they jammed rods of radioactive material up her yoo-hoo. Her cancer was particularly nasty, and even with today's medicine and knowledge it's doubtful there's much they could have done for her by the time she went in.
Her family received next to nothing in compensation for using Henrietta's cells, although they were most definitely aware that Johns Hopkins had taken them and was using them in a business venture. They knew they were being exploited, but were essentially powerless to do anything about it.
Read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for a better understanding.
I'm sorry. I know what you're going through is really hard.
Cancer is part of the reason I started reading Stoic philosophy tbh. To calm that animal fear of death we all carry.
I'm coming to that moment in my own life as well. Someone I love very much is very ill and I suspect it will come to this sooner rather than later in our family.
I was thinking, I'll probably be the last of my little family to die. Everyone I love will die before me.
My mother will die- she's very ill.
My husband is much older than me.
My sister is older w approaching health issues of her own.
And my younger brother is struggling w mental illness.
I'll probably have to bury them all one by one someday. I dunno that anyone will be left to bury me.
On my worst days I'm sad about it. I feel sorry for myself. Why me? I never asked for it.
But then on other days, I'm grateful for the opportunity. It's one final duty to discharge, one last chance to honor someone very special in my life.
Who else would I want to shoulder my burden?
If I'm not the one to bury them all, then it'll fall to my brother. I love him but his life is a mess even in the best of times. Leave my sister to do it? Her big heart might crack under the strain.
We shared a little bit of time together and it's been lovely. I can do my part.
The funny thing is I'll be dead soon, too. Whether it's a week from now or 100 years it doesn't much matter I guess. I must've read it somewhere but can't recall where (Marcus Aurelius probably):
'We're all dead already, we just haven't been buried yet.'
I try to live my little chunk of time in a way that will leave people around me with a good memory and a warm feeling in their hearts.
Take my blessings with you. I wish you well! Say hi if you see me somewhere on the other side.
Edit: I'm a big reader. These are the books that helped me through the worst of it. Maybe they can help you, too.
wiki, author discusses book, Amazon
wiki, Amazon
Rebecca Skloot's book about Henrietta Lacks is a really great read. Whole heartedly recommend reading it.
The New Kings of Nonfiction is a collection of longform journalism edited by This American Life's Ira Glass.
I'm currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It's really interesting, here's part of the synopsis:
>Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
>Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
The Disappearing Spoon is about fascinating stories from the history of the periodic table of elements.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is, even with its flaws, I think a deeply compelling and important read about medicine, medical ethics, and America. (I def did some light weeping near the end.)
Have you read [Into Thin Air] (http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-personal-disaster-ebook/dp/B000FC1ITK/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411590869&sr=1-1&keywords=into+thin+air) by Jon Krakauer? I enjoyed reading this one.
I also read [Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage] (http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing-ebook/dp/B006L74DMC/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411590938&sr=1-1&keywords=endurance+shackleton%27s+incredible+voyage), could not put it down. Would still recommend giving it a shot, even though in the other comment you said you weren't interested.
You could also probably find a book about the [Donner party] (http://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Passage-Donner-Perilous-Journey/dp/0195383311/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411591075&sr=1-1&keywords=donner+party+books). Have not read this one yet.
I actually really want to read more of these true doom/adventure stories as well. Let me know which ones you'd recommend or find interesting. We can swap notes :) (I'm looking up the Franklin expedition right now!)
Edit: another recommendation is possibly books on North Korea? [Escape from Camp 14] (http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey-ebook/dp/B005GSZZ1A/ref=sr_sp-btf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411591287&sr=1-1&keywords=escape+from+camp+14) coming to mind. It's still got that morbid fascination element to it. Another good one is [Nothing to Envy] (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North-ebook/dp/B002ZB26AO/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411591283&sr=1-1&keywords=nothing+to+envy).
Edit2: Saw you wanted to read about that rugby team that was stranded in the Andes, was this the book you were thinking of: [Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors] (http://www.amazon.com/Alive-Survivors-Piers-Paul-Read/dp/038000321X/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411591507&sr=1-1&keywords=alive+the+story+of+the+andes+survivors). The only other book I can think of is [Miracle in the Andes] (http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Andes-Days-Mountain-Long-ebook/dp/B000GCFW6O/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411591638&sr=1-1&keywords=Miracle+in+the+andes).
Mate, you need to buy and read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt and learn about the concept of the banality of evil.
Perfectly normal and sane human beings are quite capable of doing truly horrific things. In fact that makes them far more dangerous than lunatics because the truly insane by definition lack the power to be truly destructive.
http://www.lucifereffect.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310132848&sr=8-1
Actually, we do comprehend evil of this sort very well. It's alot easier to describe the Nazi's and their atrocities as an incomprehensible evil than for us to recognize that it's something that even the best of us are capable of given the right environment.
Chia seeds got very positive press in Born To Run, which is an excellent book whether you enjoy running or not. Additionally, chia seeds are a somewhat balanced source of protein, carbs, fat, and fiber that have the ability to absorb water and turn it into somewhat of a viscous gel. That can be useful if you want to add them to a smoothie to get a thicker texture or make a "pudding", for example. However, never sprinkle them on a salad as they'll generally turn any dressing into what feels like mucous. Overall, I've used them on occasion but am not a fan. YMMV.
In the book Born to Run, the auther concludes that humans were built for slow paced, long runs. There is some evidence that humans used to participate in persistence hunting - essentially chasing animals until they die of exhaustion. I would think that an in shape healthy adult could easily run on the plus side of a marathon without too much discomfort if they were raised in a running culture and their pace was slow enough. If you haven't read Born to Run you should give it a shot. It's really an interesting read.
If you're a fan of Dumas, do yourself a favor and read Tom Reiss' The Black Count , the biography of Dumas's father, and the inspiration for a lot of his writing. It won the Pulitzer last year for non-fiction, and is a great read.
I like to tailor my recommendations to what I know about people, so a request like this leaves me a little at a disadvantage. Basically, I believe that there may be no such thing as a universally applicable book, and to that end, whether or not a book is really a "must-read" for any given person depends on the circumstances of that person's life. So what I'm going to give you instead is this: a list of the ten books that I've read that I think (at the moment) have the best chance of having an impact on any random English-speakers life. Make of it what you will.
Ahem. In no particular order:
You bring up a really important factor in current African politics - that modern nations were drawn without any concern for ethnic nations within their geographic borders, but I think Rwanda is not really a good example of what you're talking about.
No one is really sure where the Hutu and Tutsi come from (!). It is often said that the Tutsi were herders who came to Rwanda from Ethiopia while the Hutu were native farmers, but there is little actual evidence to support this claim. Instead, it gained ground when European race-scientists put it forth. Ethiopians were seen as Caucasian (and therefore ,superior), so there was an attempt to attribute any good aspects of African culture or societies to them instead of to 'lesser' Africans.
Anyway, regardless of where the two groups came from, there was, over generations, lots of mixing between the two groups. By the time the Belgians got to Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsis spoke the same language, had the same religion, lived in the same communities, married eachother, had kids together. There was a general idea that Tutsis raised cattle while Hutus farmed, bu in reality both groups did both. Basically, there wasn't that big a difference between Hutus and Tutsis. The genocide couln't have been avoided if the Hutus & Tutsis were separated because, really, they weren't even different groups.
When then Belgians came, they came with their own mindset and world view. Belgian society was one with rival ethnic groups - the Flemish and the Walloons - and that rivalry came across in the make up of the Belgian government. When they set up a government in Rwanda, they set it up with that model. They saw the Tutsis as descendents of Caucasian Ethiopians and as superior to the Hutus. They made everyone have an ID card saying if hey were Hutu, Tutsi, or pygmy. They gave the Tutsis more power and more access to education and better jobs. They basically created tribal conflict where there hadn't been any.
Fast forward to Rwandan independence, and the Hutus, who had been disenfranchised under the Belgian system, were (understandably) pissed. Over the years, they began to disenfranchise Tutsis. And in 90s, it erupted into full-fledged genocide.
Clearly, this is an oversimplification. And I'm too lazy right now to go upstairs and pull citations out of the shelf full of books I have on the subject. But, for an awesome read about the genocide, its origins, and its ramifications, check out We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch. You might also check out Rene Lemarchand's writings, especially Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice, and & The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa*. I don't know that those can be accessed online, but this article of his also discusses the complexities of the Rwandan genocide.
And, since this is ELI5, here's the TL;DR:
When Europeans drew borders in Africa, they didn't care about the people there. Lots of times, this lead to later civil wars because two groups that were enemies had been lumped in together or because one group was split up between two different countries so they'd try to leave and make their own new country. But what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s was a little bit different, and a lot more complicated.
This is especially true when times are challenging. It's also self reinforcing.
So say you have two groups that live near each other and get along well. Then there is a famine and people are starving.
Group A starts looking out for their own because they empathize with them more, or they are more closely related, or whatever. They then start to fight over the resources to make sure their group is taken care of. Maybe they steal from the other group or maybe they think (real or not) the other group is stealing from them. You get people just wanting to "protect ourselves" and this idea of us vs. them really sets in. Toss in a few murders or maybe Group A riots and burns down an area dominated by Group B.
Now even after the hard times have passed things can't easily go back to the way things were before. Group B has legitimate reasons to be mad at Group A. They burned down their houses and killed a bunch of their people. Group A knows Group B hates them and is out to get them so they had better act first.
Group A maybe feels guilty about burning so many people alive but some rationalization will help with that. Did you know Group B actually set the fire in the first place and they are just trying to blame Group A? Did you know Group B are all thieves so they only got what's coming to them.
It's very easy for this to spiral out of control and very hard to pull back from it.
If you want to read a book that highlights how badly things can go I'd recommend, [We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda] (http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359)
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda and Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.
Also Survival in the Killing Fields
Check out The Autobiography of Malcolm X! It's great because Malcolm X's imagery is incredibly vivid and engaging. He provides an interesting point of view from which to see the Civil Rights Movement. It'll help students get into the reasons for his beliefs and how his own views have changed throughout his life, from before he joined the Nation of Islam and until he left it (and got assassinated).
The autobiography was essentially compiled by Alex Haley from a series of interviews he had with Malcolm X. It's written in Malcolm X's voice, so authorial intrusion isn't an issue with this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Alex-Haley/dp/0345350685
> Вот только левацкой мрази из ООН на это наплевать и ничто на этот счет сделано не будет.
> More than 100,000 children have been released and reintegrated into their communities since 1998 in over 15 countries affected by armed conflict. In 2010 alone, UNICEF supported the reintegration of some 11,400 children formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups along with 28,000 other vulnerable children affected by conflict.
> Since the mid-1980s, UNICEF and its partners have advocated for, and secured the release of, children from armed forces in conflict-affected countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.
https://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58007.html
Про Сьерра Леону есть достаточно интересные воспоминания бывшего мальчика-солдата, который прошел через реабилитационный лагерь ООН.
One of my all time favorites is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, about a climbing season on Mount Everest where a lot of things went wrong.
I also enjoy Mary Roach - she has a great gift of being able to convey information while being really entertaining in the process. Stiff is my favorite of hers, but I also really enjoyed Packing For Mars.
Read this book. It covers all of this: https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YKNFJM4EPA05&keywords=hannah+ardent&qid=1569378231&s=gateway&sprefix=Hannah+Ard%2Caps%2C165&sr=8-1
They tried
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
and a couple books worth reading to contextualize all this
http://www.amazon.com/The-Yellow-Wind-Afterword-Author/dp/0312420986
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881
Read Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Standard conservative nationalism and xenophobia can easily transform into violent extremism.
>Gangs are for adults who never grew up
If you have any interest in actually understanding the composition and function of gangs I recommend reading Gang Leader for a Day. Here is a brief article about the book.
For me, it was a hipster friend of mine. We would debate politics and I had an answer for everything but really I was just repeating things I had heard my whole life. He finally said "You know what, you are a horrible person!" I was like wtf and he just walked away. Rather than feeling like I had won the argument, my feelings were hurt and I went home and thought for a long time about why he would think I was a horrible person. I started to notice things that I did and the way I treated people. I really was an asshole. I started to question my view of the world. I had traveled half way around the world and had seen a bunch of things that I now realized didn't really jive with what I had been taught.
Before that I had never questioned what I had been taught but the more people I met (especially educated people) the more I realized that my ideas of people and cultures and race were totally fucking wrong. It took a lot of effort to "reprogram" myself. You have to pay attention to your thoughts and question them and analyze them. It was a bitch at first but you get used to it. That was about 11 years ago and I still have to check myself sometimes.
Edit: A friend of mine in grad school recommended a book. It was the first chip in the wall for changing my view of black people. I realized that people, regardless of their race, are just going through their life and trying to make the best of their situation, just like me.
Gang Leader for a day
I'm going to respond to this in pieces.
> What I mean by that is when someone has an addiction or commits a crime, they want to blame society instead of themselves. It's always someone else's fault.
I'm not sure which way to interpret this. Are you saying that the criminal is blaming society, or that the liberals are blaming society for that criminal's behavior?
If it is the criminal, then yes, that's an issue, but that's an issue regardless of party.
If you are saying that the liberals want to blame society, then I don't think that is quite correct. If someone commits a crime, then they should be caught, evidence gathered, and if found guilty they should be punished and then rehabilitated. There's argument over the ratio of punishment versus rehabilitation, as to an extent those are separate things.
If there is an upward trend in crime, particularly among a particular group or area however, then we need to ask the question of why. All to often society is a factor here - poverty increases crime in two ways:
Neither of those points releases the individual who committed the crime from responsibility, but it's also important to acknowledge that so long as the factors exist that promote crime within that group/community/area, then it will continue to be a problem.
I strongly suggest reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X - it gives a very in depth view of how poor urban economies work, how it promotes crime, and really highlights the balance behind that issue.
> If someone tried breaking into your house and you shoot them, they seem to want to blame you for something.
I've seen a few cases of this, but really not many. Most of the time it seems to be more of a people thing than a particular party thing - for the flip side, any time there is a police shooting of a black male, the conservatives try to paint him as a thug, a criminal, or a gangster.
> If there's a shooting, people want to blame the gun and not the person wielding it.
For this one, the only response I can make is OH HELL NO. This is pure NRA/FOX News pandered bullshit, and not the view of anybody but the outside fringe of the left.
Guns, like all weapons, are a force multiplier. Nothing more, nothing less.
For a mass shooting to happen, three things need to exist:
If one of those things does not exist, then there can't be a mass shooting. Both of these break down further into different factors:
can mitigate it without infringing on the rights of citizens is to keep relationships between the government and various communities positive - most would be terrorists who are caught are caught because of tips from their friends or family.
The force multiplier thing is another "Where do you draw the line" issue. We can pretty much all agree that random people on the street shouldn't have easy access to ICBMs with nuclear warheads - that would be both absurd and insane. Likewise, we can all pretty-much agree that we don't want to live in a world where kitchen knives have regulated maximum sharpness and require licenses to own. That would also be absurd. The question is, between those two absurd extremes, where do we draw the line?
Another factor to consider is, where it makes sense to draw that line? Varies regionally. Particularly, urban versus country.
Mental health issues are similar between the two, but terrorists are going to be more drawn to urban environments (Bigger targets, more impact), and likewise there is more opportunity in urban environments. So intent and opportunity are both bigger factors in urban environments (which run liberal), and there's little we can do about that (We're trying). Therefore, the Effect is what is getting attention. This is why the point that makes sense differs between urban, suburban, and rural - and where I feel the biggest national divide on gun issues lays.
Policies that make sense in urban environments make little sense in rural environments, and vice versa.
We know that there will always be bad actors, there will often be intent, and there will almost always be opportunities - so we want to mitigate how effective these mass shooters can be. You have to get pretty close to the left fringe before that line is "ban all guns".
...
Ah, sorry to talk your ear off here - but I think you are operating under a misapprehension about what the liberal stance actually is in that regard. I know we get portrayed that way, but it's no more accurate than the "All conservatives hate women's rights" stereotype.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets is a great book. It focuses on a Chicago gang.
Check out Gang Leader for a Day
While it might not get in to specifics for your project, you may find more resources. If you do have the time, it's a great read.
good book on this general topic
he asked people and families that, their answer was that the projects are what they know, where their friends and family are, where they fit in. some tried moving to the suburbs and didn't like it.
I think you'd really enjoy this book then; it's about a grad student who spent some time observing the gangs at the Robert Taylor homes for his research.
Born to Run is a great read about human performance reads like a novel. I'm making my way through The Story of the Human Body it's more an evolution perspective of the body and I have to say it is going slow but interesting.
Check out the book Born to Run. The main problem is not shoes, but thick shoes like sneakers that don't let your feet flex and bend while they encourage you to strike the ground hard on your heel and not softly on your toes. This has been a much more recent thing. Like the 1950s with the rise of Nike
This is the Born to Run you are looking for.
There is a big split in the running community between those who think you need to go to a running shoe shop and get fitted for orthotics and shoes with massive padding and the other side that thinks that your body is designed to run, and you should let it.
I have found that wearing some minimilist shoes and landing on the front of my foot, rather than the heel has changed everything. I used to have knee pain from just standing up all day (I'm a teacher) but since I started running on the front of my feet, it has gone away.,
I heartily recommend a book called Born to Run which you might hear people here talking about. Read that. It'll change everything.
Read the book, Born To Run. Not only is it a great book, but it addresses barefoot running and the evolution of the running shoe. Humans aren't designed to wear shoes.
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
well. A book that changed my life back when I was 15 was Walden from Thoreau. I threw away everything I owned. yeah I mean everything even my bed. I own nothing that dates from before I was 15. Would this have the same effect today? who knows.
back then, the book Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche had something to to with me ''taking a break'' from school, contributing too did: genealogy of Morals, into the wild, Adorno - dialectic of Enlightenment ( had no idea what that guy was talking about back then but made me real queasy about the world nonetheless.)
books that changed my life recently: Lying from Sam Harris. Steven Pinker - Enlightenment now made me pick a lot of fights with people who like to hate this world.
Insanity of Normality made me forgive some people I had real bad feelings toward, though I'm sceptical now of what is said in the book
unless you understand german you won't be able to read this: Blödmachinen , made me a snob in regards to media. Bernard Stieglers books might have the same effect in english
oh and selfish gene by Dawkins made me less judgmental. Don't know why. I just like people more
EDIT
oh lest I forget: Kandinsky - Concerning The Spiritual in Art made me paint my appartement black blue; Bukowski and the Rubaiyat made me drink more, Born To Run made me run barefoot, Singers Practical Ethics made me donate money and buy far less stuff.
That's a great deal for the Bikilas! I've been running in mine for about a year now and I love them. As long as you start slow and get used to the new form, I think they're really good for you. I had some pretty bad knee and shin issues when I was running in traditional shoes, and all of that went away with my Vibrams.
If you haven't already checked it out and are interested, you should check out Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It's a really interesting book for a runner.
I'm sure you've either read or been recommended these, but here goes:
Eat & Run by Scott Jurek
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.
The Oatmeal's Book
Born To Run by Christopher McDougal is all about the virtues of running barefoot and some great storytelling too.
Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger by Michael Matthews are good books that cover a lot of basics thoroughly. I would recommend only getting one of Matthews books as I've heard they are basically copies with pronouns swapped to be geared toward a different audience.
So, I completely sympathize. I am a crappy runner and am really self conscious about running with just about anyone because they're going to be faster than me and I don't want to slow them down. I agree that your boyfriend should be more understanding and supportive and with everything that's been said so far.
But! Your other question is about motivation. Understandably I've never liked running because I'm not good at it. And I never had any desire to be good at it. That is, until I read this book. The freedom and joy derived from running ultra marathons by the people in the story is inspiring.
I'm still not a great runner. I'm still really self conscious about running. But goddamned if I don't really want to love running now.
If you like this, you guys would love reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Unreal story and super motivational book.
Basically what souzaphone711 said.
Overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibram_FiveFingers
Vendor: http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/index.htm
A cool info site: http://www.youarethetechnology.com/
The MOST IMPORTANT thing if you decide to give these a try is to EASE into using them. Luckily the guy who sold me my first pair was a true believer and walked me through it. My wife also. Do NOT put these things on and go. Your foot is weak from years of having been encased in shoe support. It takes some time build the muscles back up. If you don't already spend some time in your bare feet start doing so.
Sub-reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/BarefootRunning/
Sub-sub-reddit (for hardcores who want NOTHING on their feet, at all - too extreme for me): http://www.reddit.com/r/barefoot
Read "Born To Run". Though not the focus of the book, this is the book (plus a guy I know who bought some shoes) that got me to try the shoes out: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189/
The shoes did not just work for me - they helped my wife also. She'd had shin splints, plantar fasciitis, shoe inserts, etc. and she now has six pairs of FiveFingers. She runs much farther than I do (I only go a few miles, she'll do five or six).
If you try it you'll find that people seem to have strong opinions pro or con. The longer someone has been running and buying super expensive shoes and/or been educated in the status quo the stronger they will react.
Read Born to Run by Chris McDougall. It is a great book and quite insightful. After you are done, get your friend to read it. When he is done ask him when he wants to go running with you.
Honestly, I wouldn't read sales books for motivation. I'd read sales books if you need help on tactics and strategy, but if you need help picking up the phone you won't find much besides "for every 100 calls, you'll get 10 prospects and one close!".
Like sufi_surfer, I read biographies for motivation. This is fantastic and very motivational. I'm also reading this at the moment. It's half business, half bio. And very fucking good.
I highly recommend reading The Black Count about Dumas' father, whose life The Count of Monte Cristo was based on. Truly an amazing and captivating story, and a very interesting peak into the history around the French Revolution as well.
Once finished with those, I'd highly recommend The Black Count if you want to hear how Dumas' characters were created.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda is a powerful read about the Rwandan genocide.
Shake hands with the devil A very detailed account of the Rwandan genocide and the problems the head of the UN mission faced to get the world to try and care about what went on.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Stories from the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda. Gives another side of the story to compare and contrast against Gen Dallaire's account.
Auschwitz : The Nazis & The 'Final Solution'
The title says it all...
Good book covering this grim event We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families
About the Rwanda genocide. One of the best I've ever read.
we wish to inform you...
Biographies of the Prophet (peace be upon him)
Martin Ling's "Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources"
| Amazon
| PDF
| Audiobook
Sheikh Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarkpuri "The Sealed Nectar"
| Amazon
| PDF (Older edition)
Autobiographies
Muhammad Asad "The Road to Mecca"
| Amazon
| PDF
Jeffrey Lang "Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America"
| Amazon
| PDF
Alex Haley and Malcolm X "The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley"
Amazon
| PDF
Other recommendations
Firas Alkhateeb "Lost Islamic History"
Hamza Tzortzis "The Divine Reality: God, Islam & The Mirage Of Atheism"
Given your background, some speakers you may find beneficial:
Sheikh Hussain Yee - From Buddhism to Islam
Abdur-Raheem Green - How I Came to Islam
Joshua Evans - How the Bible Led Me to Islam: The Story of a Former Christian Youth Minister
It's simply entitled The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I am a few years older than you and I have been going hard with books lately. It's not amazing, but I am on track to finishing about ~400 books by the time I am 30. I am also going for quality more than quantity. As in, if I feel like I didn't digest a particular book, I will keep at it and put other books on hold.
In any case, here are my top 3 recommendations:
1.) The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
2.) The 48 Laws of Power
3.) The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Also, Influence by Robert Cialdini is excellent. One of my favorites.
A little cautionary warning about asking people for recommendations though: Be careful about following other people's lists because those book won't vibe with you the same way. Each of us had our own unique life experiences, so you should be ideally choosing your own books. Lists are good for clues/inspiration though. Frequently, books choose me, not the other way around.
Also, try to keep track of the books (and knowledge) you read. I keep a single page HTML page with all the books I read along with a short note in reverse chronological order. I also have the option of putting this list online in the future if I need to.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Because it is lazy activism. Anyone that really cared about topics like Kony knew about it without having to be taught by a video whored around social networks. I remember when this came out the author made the talk show rounds, even appearing on the Daily Show a few years ago talking about the horrible plight of child soldiers. Some people got upset for a few months then it died down, most likely not making any difference.
If television or Facebook is what it takes to get you socially active you probably aren't that committed. You need to be more in touch with the world and the issues you are interested (and hopefully able to make a difference) in.
There's a ton of cookie cutter quotes that I could throw out your way here...but none of them would cover exactly what I'm trying to say...so here goes...
Our capacity for pain and loss...our ability to recover from trauma and damage, is limitless. Just as is our capacity for love and joy.
If it was not, there are many "great" people who would never have attained that lofty title...Otto Frank, The Dhali Lama, Ishmael Beah, not to mention all the day to day heroes, whose will to go on, and to keep pushing, and keep striving, show a resilience not only of mind, but spirit and heart as well.
That may feel like a comparison....saying your pain, or your loss is not as great as many other people, and look what they have accomplished....and to be honest, to an extent, it is. It is not, however, intended to belittle your loss, as each loss is different, as is each person carrying that loss. It is intended to say this.....the option to live and love greatly still exists, and it exists for you. You are the only person in the entire world, that can prevent yourself from grabbing life, and savoring it to the fullest....from finding love, and happiness, and pure joy again. It simply requires you to commit EVERYTHING you are, back to the cause. If you hold back, if you hide away that part of you that's hurt so badly, you only do a disservice to yourself.
I believe you will find this life one day..that you will rediscover true joy, and love. Yes, you may suffer another loss someday, and yes it will hurt, but once you've found your way back to the path once, it becomes easier again, and again. This is the secret that those "great" people hold......"There is no loss, that cannot, with time, be healed; There is no spirit, that is better for remaining isolated; and there is no heart, that is made whole again, without love"
I think you've got the title of the last one wrong.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is the autobiographical story of a (male) child soldier in Sierra Lione.
It looks like your teachers are going for a world lit kind of vibe - three of these books are about black Africans, one about Chinese-American women, one about Hatian women, and one about Jews during the Holocaust. While there are a number of female protagonists, it seems more likely that this was a side effect of trying to give you a (limited) view of world literature.
I agree with this list of Top 10 Documentaries on Mountaineering. Not exactly on point for what you wanted. Not sure it really exists at this point.
​
I really liked Meru. If you don't mind reading here are a few books that got me into it:
​
Into Thin Air.
No Shortcuts to the Top.
The Climb.
​
Training Books:
​
Training for New Alpinism
Climbing: Training for Peak Performance.
>Are you saying that those conditions are so bad that there was no chance the guy would have survived?
Yes
>Are you saying that those conditions would have put whoever tried to help him in physical danger?
Yep
Lots of experienced climbers passed him that day, mostly sherpas who had summitted many times before. They knew there was no hope.
A real rescue attempt of a frozen person like that would have taken days to get him down to base camp. Dozens of people would be required plus all the oxygen tanks and water and food to keep all those people alive. It's very probable someone else would be injured in the attempt and that even if he was alive when they started he would be alive at the bottom.
Really, I'm not trying to be glib or dismissive, but read some books about Everest disasters like Into Thin Air or The Climb.
There was an IMAX crew on the mountain on the same trip. They had to abandon their documentary to try and save people's lives. Eventually, they put the footage together and made a doc about the disaster. So, same event, two accounts.
Hereis the book: [http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/0385494785/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382961090&sr=1-1&keywords=into+thin+air]
You can get it used for one cent plus 4 bucks shipping. It was a huge seller and trust me: Is is a VERY good read. You will feel chilled to the bone reading it.
To be honest, there's a lot of stuff that isn't explicitly social justice stuff that will give you the same basic information. Most of these issues have been around (and known) way prior to the recent rise in activism. Some of the books that were most useful to me were:
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
The officer suddenly discovered his minority status as an adult, without the years of dealing with prejudice, discrimination, racial jokes, denial of the benefit of the doubt, and the coping mechanisms that come from going through that on a daily basis.
It's like an IRL version of the movie "Black Like Me". Wikipedia. Summary. Amazon.
The Kindly Ones by Jontahan Little.
A masterpiece - I've read it several years ago and some parts of it still haunt me. A truly dark and powerful book - don't think I've read anything else quite like it.
Also Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.
I guess it's not surprising books taking place during ww2 and in Soviet Russia fit the bill of making the outside world look like a Utopia - other of this genre will probably make good candidates - Anne Frank's diary
and the Island on the Bird Street would also crush any heart as would many others dealing with the darkest time in human history (quite an achievement - humanity has had a lot of dark periods).
I especially liked In a Sunburned Country. I find that his European travelogues are much less snide than his American ones.
[OP didn't write that but you're still in luck.] (https://smile.amazon.com/Sunburned-Country-Bill-Bryson/dp/0767903862)
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nahesi Coates
Written as a memior, but ending more as a personal essay on race and growing up. If you liked Amos Oz you'll like this.
Album, including abandoned artillery and tanks
This building was where the generals planned much of the Japanese operation in the Pacific. The Japanese kept what was thought to be a highly strategic airstrip on Peleliu. This led to one of the bloodiest battles of WWII, and one that has sadly escaped much public recognition. Even more tragically, it eventually became clear that the battle for the runway was mostly for nothing because the runway was not as important as the Americans had thought.
My wife and I traveled there for our honeymoon after reading the excellent and grisly account of the battle, With the Old Breed.
I think everyone should read With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge. Even if they're not "in to" war or anything like that. It is an excellent story from the perspective of an infantry Marine about the battle of Peleliu and Okinawa in WWII. They were possibly the bloodiest battles of the island hopping campaign. I don't think there has been any other book of similar nature has had the same effect on me.
For people who are "in to" non-fiction war books I suggest The Bridge at Dong Ha which is about John Ripley, a Marine in Vietnam who essentially saves the day singlehandedly. He's also the only Marine to be inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
For fictional war related books one of my favorites is Fields of Fire. Excellent story telling and I found myself really connecting with the characters. It has a great way of giving non-soldiers an understanding of the many reasons why people choose to serve, how they serve, and the struggles within.
If you're keen to learn more, there is an excellent book about the woman whose cells were used to create the HeLa line - 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.' When I did research we worked with HeLa cells and it was pretty interesting to hear about the person who 'donated' them.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
That's pretty tough... I think if I had to pin down one book that really affected me it'd have to be The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Extremely well researched and fantastically written. A great example of well done literary nonfiction!
How creepy you into? One of my favorite books of the last year was People in the Trees, but it's a little hmmm... dark.
Also recently finished this Henrietta Lacks non-fiction which was good.
Currently reading a shitty crime novel that's pretty addicting, before I get into some 800 page shit I have on deck.
'HeLa' is a reference to a strain of human cells that labs use for testing. I can strongly recommend this book about their source. It's absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking:
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burial_mounds_in_the_United_States
The Mississippian culture built cities, only a few of which survived. These kingdoms covered the area of the midwest and most of the American Southeast. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture) By the time Europeans came, they were already practically gone, but smallpox did the rest of the job for them.
--
One of the problems with discussing pre-Columbian North America is that with South America and Central America, European explorers were largely just hitting the cultures as European diseases were. The explorations into the heart of North America happened after those diseases had already ravaged the area.
The people of the Iroquois confederacy farmed with stone and wood tools (mixing crops to keep the soil from going bad) had a participatory democracy and ideas of freedom that must have been very alien to both Europeans and their southern neighbors.
People like the Comanche don't even show up until the horse is introduced and their quick adoption of it allows them a huge advantage over their neighbors (see Empire of the Summer Moon as a better history, but be prepared - the Wild West was far more brutal than Hollywood has even remotely shown)
Early European accounts are heavily biased and for ages it was assumed as fact. Today historians have to shoulder their way through biased narratives and counter-narratives to try to figure out the truth. As an amateur history buff, I wish them the best of luck.
I've just finished an incredible book of a man I knew nothing of but found fascinating. It was Quanah Parker and focused on his people (the Comanches) who were among the biggest and most violent tribes of all. They constantly fought with almost any other tribe and were among the first to truly master the horse.
https://www.amazon.ca/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
A great read and exactly what you're asking about, is covered in this book.
My favorite non-fiction book of all time is Empire of the Summer Moon. Early Texas history and Native American history at its finest.
Empire of the Summer Moon
Great book about this sort of thing.
I REALLY wish this was the highest comment, because everyone in this thread would love Empire of the Summer Moon. It reads a lot like science fiction. When the colt revolver emerges it feels like something Tony Stark invented.
It. Is. A. Must. Read.
Turns out my community college has a fuckton of books about American Indians.
Empire of the Summer Moon is very engaging and very disturbing. There's a copy of The Great Father I want to dive into when I have a month or so of free time. Plus a bunch of assorted books about assorted peoples (Very little on the Shoshone though.)
I'm reading Gwynne's book Empire of the Summer Moon about Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker and the Comanche tribes in Texas. Astonishing and captivating read for those interested in early Texas history.
Well i've also read a ton of books by people that think O.J. is innocent(and i've read all the ones that think he's guilty) like these(all of which i'd highly recommend):
https://www.amazon.com/J-Guilty-But-Not-Murder/dp/0970205805
https://www.amazon.com/J-Innocent-Can-Prove/dp/1616086203
https://www.amazon.com/Double-Crossed-Blood-Constitutional-Suppression-Perversion/dp/1881524884
https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Defeated-Victims-Simpson-American/dp/1434372227/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=OJ+justice+defeated&qid=1565219697&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Exhibit-Simpson-murder-trial/dp/1456313169
https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Time-Investigation-Unsolved-Murders/dp/0028613406
https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Evidence-Prosecution-J-Simpson/dp/0688144136/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=ZAGNY4RKECR5QVKZDM0B
https://www.amazon.com/Madam-Foreman-Armanda-Cooley-ebook/dp/B007EHCEZG/ref=sr_1_15?keywords=O.J.+simpson+trial+jury&qid=1565219443&s=books&sr=1-15
https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Simpson-Mystery-Christopher-Springer/dp/0964964961
https://www.amazon.com/Frame-Century-J-Neil-Schulman/dp/1584450606
Honestly the O.J. trial is where white rage towards minorities really became obvious as even liberals failed badly with how they covered the trial.
There's a few other good books about the case but they are VERY pricey:
https://www.amazon.com/If-Oj-Didnt-Shocking-Answers/dp/0964964910/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=If+O.J.+Didn%27t...%3A+The+Shocking+Answers+the+Trial+Did+Not+Give+You&qid=1565220016&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Oath-Conspiracy-Murder-Simpson/dp/1568250584/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=blood+oath+oj&qid=1565220057&s=books&sr=1-1
William Dear was a reporter who covered the OJ trial from the start. The book looks back on the case, the media, the evidence, etc and he is convinced that OJ more than likely covered-up the murder, but didn't necessarily commit the murders.
Good read: http://www.amazon.com/O-J-Innocent-Can-Prove-It/dp/1616086203
There is a lot of evidence that points to Jason Simpson, OJ's son.
EDIT: Copy/Paste my old comment on this:
There is strong evidence to suggest OJ actually didn't kill Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. It may very well have been OJ's son, Jason Simpson. Pretty fascinating, recommend googling it.
At the very time of the Nicole-Ron murders, he was on probation for having attacked his boss with a butcher's knife and in a "rage-triggering snit" because Nicole had changed the venue of a celebration dinner
Touching the Void
I'll second The Push
Into Thin Air
http://multipitchclimbing.com/ is probably my top climbing resource ever
You can watch a few Reel Rock films
Also, you can hang out on the Mountain Project forums. There's some gold from rgold and then everybody else.
The old RK surgery had some very strange effects in high altitude climbs. "Left for Dead," is an account of a climber who had vision challenges on Mount Everest. Another account, "Into Thin Air" details the experience of another climber related to eye surgery.
Granted Rainier is not Everest, but climbers need to be mindful that some eye surgeries can cause some climbers problems at high altitudes. Certainly not all surgeries and certainly not all climbers, but it is always good to ask your eye surgeon and other climbers who have had that particular surgery before a serious climb. Rainier is a climb in its own right, but is often a prelude for this list
Agree. The Clipper Round the World Race is the Mt. Everest of sailing, and by Mt. Everest, I mean the [Into Thin Air] (https://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/0385494785) version. An interesting article on the race: 40,000 miles of open ocean — and a boat full of rookies
I enjoyed Ed Viesturs book: No Shortcuts to the Top, it was a self focused memoir, yet he shares his views and opinions in a way that came off genuine and down to earth. It is probably different than something you are writing since the focus of the book is entirely on something that made him very famous (First American to climb all 8000m peaks)
I like John Krakauer's books. Into Thin Air was a great firsthand account of a major disaster. It has some controversy, but like anything else firsthand accounts rely on the writers memory of events and those can change wildly from person to person.
Into the Wild is obviously another one of his more famous works. I liked it writing style and level of research, but I disliked the man the book was written about with a passion. Hardly the writers fault there though.
Oh, also the Maximum Ride series! Should have thought of this one earlier. It's not really short, but it is fast-paced with plenty of action.
You could also try something like Between a Rock and a Hard Place (the book that the film 127 Hours is based on). Several of my junior boys have really gotten into Into the Wild. Into Thin Air, also by Jonathan Krakauer, might also fit the bill, if real-life survival/adventure stories would be interesting to him.
I'd also recommend Chris Crutcher as an author. He tends to write a lot of sports stories (not sure if that's something that would interest your brother), but they're entertaining, realistic, and funny. And quick reads!
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks - Mark Buchanan
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles - Robin Baker
Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band - Neil Strauss
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster - Jon Krakauer
The Climb - Anatoli Boukreev
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner - Dean Karnazes
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I'm a fan of time-travel, and history, and I was completely sucked into it. She's got a number of books in the same universe- some comedic, some very dramatic, but The Doomsday Book is my favourite.
If you're at all interested in high fantasy, I'd recommend either Tigana or The Fionovar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. You either love his prose style or hate it, but if you love it, it will definitely take you away.
If you like SF and haven't read them, I'd try either Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, or David Brin's Uplift Series (I'd skip Sundiver until later, and start with Startide Rising.)
If you're looking for more light-hearted/quirky, I'd try Christopher Moore- either Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal , or The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror. If you're into a mix of horror/sf/comedy, try John Dies at the End. They're not deep, but they're fun.
Non-fiction- if you haven't read it yet, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is very difficult to put down. If you're travelling with someone who doesn't mind you looking up every few pages and saying "did you know this, this is awesome, wow-how interesting", I'd go for Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants or Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. They're all very informative, fun, interesting books, but they're even better if you can share them while you're reading them.
This last week I watched Everest about the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy and I've been obsessed with it since.
I've watched 3 documentaries about it and currently reading/listening to Into Thin Air
Pretty haunting to be stranded at the peak of the world (29,000 feet high. For perspective, planes cruise around 33,000 feet high) where the air is so thin and lacking oxygen but you're trekking up near-vertical terrain in -10^o F temperature. Then a storm comes and you're hours from camp. You can't stop or you'll freeze to death but you can't see because everything is white.
Was he inspired by this? https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451234219/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_t4Fnxb2EB1PDP
Black Like Me absolutely change how I see the world and understand human experience.
I loved Dreams from My Father and [The Color of Water] (http://www.amazon.com/Color-Water-Tribute-Mother-Anniverary/dp/159448192X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417378244&sr=1-1&keywords=the+color+of+water), and they're relatively recent.
There are reasons some books become classics though - you should check out [Voices in the Mirror] (http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Mirror-Autobiography-Gordon-Parks/dp/0385266987/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417378538&sr=1-1&keywords=gordon+parks+autobiography), [Black Boy] (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Boy-Record-Childhood-Youth/dp/0061130249/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417378427&sr=1-1&keywords=black+boy), [Invisible Man] (http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417378361&sr=1-1&keywords=invisible+man), and [Black Like Me] (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Like-John-Howard-Griffin/dp/0451234219/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417378875&sr=1-1&keywords=black+like+me) for instance
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Like-John-Howard-Griffin/dp/0451234219
Would you like to read something that shows what happens when countries are governed by fascist despots, liars and thieves? Like now in America?
try this
Again, to anyone reading this questioning whether they should continue their education - I point you to these comments.
These are the thoughts of someone who is intellectually bankrupt. I can't imagine the anguish and utter hell you must live in, to be either fully incapable or fully uninterested in learning a bare bones outline of the history of the last century. But then again, they say ignorance is bliss.
Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia with exclusively free content and no ads. It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Walters
Further reading:
https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Frank-Diary-Young-Girl/dp/0553296981/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BGTU1OTLE40S&keywords=anne+frank+diary+of+a+young+girl&qid=1556809315&s=gateway&sprefix=anne+frank%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Martin-Luther-King-Jr/dp/0446676500/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=martin+luther+king+jr+biography&qid=1556809342&s=gateway&sr=8-2
This a great contest! Sadly I can't enter as I have for books. I hope the person that wins receives a totally rad book! Heart everyone
Edit: Because I've told... I don't know how I've never managed to read The Diary of Anne Frank, but I really want to. <3
Originally as others have noted he was trying to purge china of the four olds. Basically their culture,history etc the closest equivalent would be what the Khmer rouge attempted with year zero. However towards the end though the original aims and goals went out the window, as the party tried to make Mao irrelevant, they wanted him to be a godlike figurehead someone revered but neutered concerning actual policy and control. That's when the greatest excesses of the cultural revolution occurred because Mao retaliated, he more or less gave his wife in others like the red guard who were loyal to him free reign to do what they pleased, at certain points mini civil wars were occurring throughout china. During the cultural revolution, china's government for better or worse was non existent in concerns to controlling what was going on. I still feel sadness reading about the destruction of millennia of history in a few short years. Temples, artifacts all gone, i believe at one point some people even tried to target the forbidden city for destruction which point only due to the some elements of the Chinese PLA intervening was this prevented but it's been a few years since i read up on that incident so i may be a little off.
There's a really good book i read called the wild swans. It not only goes indepth into the history surrounding the horror of the great leap forward and cultural revolution but also gives a nice view of china during the warring warlord period, the japanese vs communist vs nationalist period through the eyes of three generations of women in a chinese family. The author was a red guard when she was younger, her father and mother were top communist officials who ended up being denounced during the revolution, her grandmother was a warlords concubine who had her feet binded it's a fascinating history i recommend if you want an in-depth and easily accessible read concerning the history to pick up the book for a first hand account of Mao's lunacy http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0743246985/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1454251993&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=china+red+guard
For anyone wanting to go to Oz, you should read Bill Bryson's [In a Sunburned Country] (http://www.amazon.com/Sunburned-Country-Bill-Bryson/dp/0767903862). This man writes travel books and he has a wonderful way with words.
Its funny because I actually came here to suggest another Bryson book called In a Sunburned Country which chronicles Bryson's visit to Australia- thought this was relevant as OP's love interest is either en route to or already in Australia I figured she'd get a kick out of it.
If you want something that has a mix of love/romance, action, thrill, check out The Shadow of the Wind. I thought this was a good book and is very well written. Zafon is able to paint images with his words in a way that puts you in the story like no other author i've encountered.
One big I go back to when I'm feeling down is Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country. Hilarious, very informative, and it really draws you in.
I would recommend any of his travel books, but this one is my favourite by far.
Well... Using your definition it seems that the quote I provided proves Trump guilty, no? They're ALL rapists, remember? Clearly they're not, he only said this to give people (like you?) a reason to feel superior to them. America is no longer great because of immigrants. Isn't that the point? Their fault, not ours.
You really haven't provided any actual premises to back up your arguments.
Racism is complicated, I suggest this book (although I know my suggestion will be ignored because you don't seem to give a fuck about any point of view that may begin to remove those blinders you have on): https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543
Make attempts to learn about the experiences of lives that are unlike your own. Assuming you are not black/African-American, I suggest reading "Between the World and Me".
http://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1464158241&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=between+the+world+and+me
Oui, ça sert juste à mettre en lumière ds situations sociales difficiles vécues de manière disproportionnée par un groupe social en particulier. Ça n'implique pas que ceux et celles qui n'appartiennent pas à ce groupe particulier sont directement (mais ça peut être le cas) des causes de ces situations difficiles, des vecteurs d'injustice envers d'autres personnes.
Ça attire l'attention sur des trucs moins visibles et, personnellement, ça me donne le goût de savoir comment je peux utiliser mes privilèges pour améliorer les choses pour d'autres qui ne jouissent pas de ces privilèges-là.
C'est un concept abordé par Ta-Nehisi Coates dans Between the Wolrd and Me quand il parle du "Rêve blanc" (il va par contre plus loin en soutenant que celui-ci, aux States, est construit et possible étant donné l'oppression d'autres citoyen.ne.s qui n'ont pas accès à ce Rêve de la même manière).
Nobody but you is claiming race should be the only factor. If you don't understand the historic roll race
(and racism) has played in America, and how it impacts us today, and why it's important we attempt to fix the systemic issues it has caused, that's on you. Maybe go read a book?
His book is - http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410533275&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=with+old+breed
Its a great book. The book was used for HBO's "The Pacific". All of these guys that went and fought are heroes.
With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge. The author was there and the book is said to be one of the best accounts by an enlisted soldier (non-officer) of the war.
“In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge’s. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it actually was like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals’ safe accounts of—not the ‘good war’—but the worst war ever.”—Ken Burns (from the amazon page)
War memoirs are extremely interesting to read, you should read the two books that the TV show "The Pacific" is based on! I totally loved reading the memoir of Dick Winters and Eugene Sledge, going to work through Robert Leckies book soon!
A helmet for my pillow
With the old Breed
"The Pacific" HBO series is based on a couple different books; one of them is With The Old Breed At Pelilau and Okinawa
a really good book that portrays infantry combat is "with the old breed" http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
Reminds me of With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge. He did his mortar training before deploying at Camp Elliott. Lots of ordnance fired in the Mission Trails area.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It was fascinating and read like fiction, despite the fact that the whole thing was non-fiction.
The Rebel Sell: Why The Culture Can't Be Jammed by Joseph Potter and Andrew Heath
The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," The Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines. A really awesome history of the medicalization of women's orgasms and sexual issues.
I love these lists that everyone has compiled here, I've seen some amazing books that I've read and have yet to read. But since no one's mentioned this one, I'd to add a book that I think is really significant to AskWomen and the state of our society today:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It's about how a black woman died of cervical cancer in the 50s, then doctors took her cancer cells to experiment on without telling her family, and they're basically the only human cells to be replicated in the lab without dying so they've been used in all of medicine, including to develop vaccines like polio -- and yet her descendants live without healthcare. It's an amazingly well written, interesting, and exciting book.
Other than that I recommend Mary Roach as an author, she is very fun to read. My favorites are Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:
I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.
I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.
I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)
The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.
Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.
The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.
The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.
I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.
Have fun!
Almost anything by Oliver Sacks is fantastic. On The Move was great. I listened to it as an audiobook in lab. Very motivating!
Not a new release, and I know there is some controversy, but I loved The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Middlesex. Fiction, not a new release, but a great story with some science mixed in (I may be biased because I happened to be reading this while taking developmental biology and learning about sex determination).
Very much liked
The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat - a book about the discovery of penicillin that aims to correct decades of misinformation
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mold-Dr-Floreys-Coat/dp/0805077782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1341580039&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=mold+in+dr+floreys+coat
Also, for a bioethics book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is great
http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1341580111&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=henrietta+lacks
I pretty much only read non-fiction, so I'm all about books that are educational but also interesting :) I'm not sure what your educational background is, so depending on how interested you are in particular subjects, I have many recommendations.
Naked Statistics and Nate Silver's Book are both good!
Feeling Good is THE book on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is good, as is Eating Animals (granted, Eating Animals is aimed at a particular type of eating)
Guns, Germs and Steel is very good.
I also very much enjoyed The Immortal Live of Henrietta Lacks, as well as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman :)
edit to add: Chris Hadfield's Book which I haven't received yet but it's going to be amazing.
Came here to say Oliver Sacks (neuroscience).
I picked up a used copy of the DSM-IV casebook; it's very cheap since the DSM-V has come out. Diagnoses may be outdated but the stories are still there!
There are casebooks in other fields, too-- Surgery, multiple specialities, medical ethics, [pediatrics] (http://www.amazon.com/Files-Pediatrics-Fourth-Edition-LANGE/dp/0071766987/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_9_EQ6W?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=1WJ16SB6971PCJ94TK2S). Your college library ought to have new-ish ones you can read for free.
I'm also encouraged by reading scientific journal articles in medical fields (research is exciting).
Other stuff: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks isn't about a doctor, but it's about a patient and the HeLa cell line that's been so important to medicine. My decision to go into medicine was affected by The Plague, a novel by Albert Camus about a plague-stricken city. (Main character is a doctor, though not exactly a modern MD.)
>Isn't every living thing?
No. I'm actually reading a book about that right now. Good book, pretty entertaining and informative, I recommend.
the book
This is the best book about those times that I've ever read.
Cynthia Ann Parker's son was Quanah Parker. The John Wayne movie The Searchers was either 'loosely based' or 'suggested by' the Parker kidnapping, depending on how you want to view the movie.
I'm currently reading 'Empire of the Summer Moon' by S.C. Gwynne. Read the blurb here to see what it's about - it's really interesting and I'm loving it.
It's a lot more complex than you might think. I'm not an expert by any means, but it's worth reading some history books to learn more. One I just read that was very interesting was Empire of the Summer Moon
Not 100% relevant, but it keeps coming up in this thread. Apparently there's a new book by a PI, who is famous for solving other murders, which claims that OJ was innocent.
Thanks for the contest :D
I found out about Brandon Sanderson from this sub and really enjoyed these two series:
Mistborn
The Stormlight Archive
I also can't recommend Jon Krakauer enough.
I went to this guy's TED talk, which you can find here.
He also wrote a biography on it.
You may be interested in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil by Hannah Arendt. Arendt uses Eichmann (considered by some to be one of the cruelest men in the Third Reich) to show the Holocaust was brought on by complacency more than evil intent.
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881
You may also like The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. I haven't read this one, but it seems pretty cool.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Nazi-Psychiatrist-Hermann-Douglas/dp/161039156X
Excellent. Thanks for posting this. For anyone interested in learning more, I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Penguin-Classics-Hannah/dp/0143039881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1370142085&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=eichmann+in+jerusalem
This book! http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1321518551&amp;sr=8-1
I'm a freshman in college and had to use the money I had saved for a speeding ticket, so now I'm broke. :c
If you have not read it, may I recommend Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt. On the one hand, it's an interesting story of the last major trial resulting from Nazi atrocities. Additionally, it's a thought-provoking treatise on the ubiquity of evil.
Yeah, I think I read that one. About 180 degrees from our situation here, at least my building/neighborhood. At least as far as I know - I just might be a blind idiot, but I don't think I could be quite that myopic.
>So he failed to consider that those crack dealers or drug dealers or gangsters are trying, in some twisted bumfuck way to try and get themselves out of the situation by slinging crack at the corner. Nobody was born with a desire for a hard life. When your whole family is in tatters and there is no generational wealth to inherit except bloodshed and poverty and undereducation, when the only option to get out of the hood is via a body bag or peddling dope, when the only heroes one has growing up is either in jail or absent and the whole neighbourhood is a fucking ghetto spliced with the thunderdome, how does one expect to have upward mobility?
I seriously think people fail to understand that for many people who grow up in these situations, selling drugs and a life of crime has more opportunity in it then going to school and getting a job. The book [Gang Leader for a Day] (http://www.amazon.ca/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X) by [Sudhir Venkatesh] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudhir_Venkatesh) has an in depth description of a man who grows up in the ghetto, goes to college, gets a white collar full time job and then comes back to his home because he see's no opportunities for him to make real wealth at his full time job. More importantly, his book shows you how fucked up and intricate gangs are to both supporting and bringing down these communities. I really suggest anybody read it who wants to have a better understanding of why a life of crime looks like a better option for so many young people.
Ultimately this video, and anything that says "if black people just stopped _ then __ wouldn't happen" is simplifying something that is so much more complex. Life is not black and white (no pun in intended).
chicago has been shit like this for decades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sandifer
its like fucking mad max with a quasi criminal warlord state in the ghetto there. if you want to read an interesting book about the batshit insanity of it, check this out
https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X
If this interests you, then you should read Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, the book written by Sudhir Venkatesh (the sociologist from the article) about the Black Disciples (the gang from the article.) I just finished it a month or so ago and it was fantastic.
With your question framed specifically in the context of a totalitarian state, not sure how different you'd want it to be from North Korea. For what its worth, you might want to check out the works of Sudhir Venkatesh for a more academic treatment of illegal economic systems. Here is a short TED talk from his academic co-author, Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame, talking about what its like to be a drug dealer in an inner city gang.
"Horns"is a terrible movie, but not as bad as "Tusk". "In the Name of the King is the worst movie I've ever seen, derivative drivel of plot craters and just terrible storyline, script, acting, and directing. I was so disappointed. It's kind of funny how both Ray Liotta and Jason Statham started their careers in awesome movies and then just couldn't maintain consistent quality.
Sorry for the rant.
"Gang Leader For A Day" gives a glimpse of life in a gang controlled project tenement in Chicago. A sociology student at University of Chicago befriended the gang leader and got unrestricted access to the inner workings and daily life.
It's not just about the gang, although the author led the gang leader into thinking he was doing a biography on him. The book is also about the day to day lives of people living in poverty in the inner city.
This book may interest you: http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X
No affiliation with it, other than I read it a few years ago and it was really interesting.
I'm going to recommend Gang Leader for a Day. It's a memoir of a sociology PhD student studying the Chicago projects. His highly personal interactions with its residents -- who ranged from drug dealers and prostitutes to store owners and mechanics -- allowed him to gain unprecedented access to a world that those outside of it barely understood.
His anecdotes brought his cast of characters life: JT, the regional head of the Black Kings gang who justified his crack-cocaine deals were good for his community because he was taking money from society's dregs and redistributing it to the project; or Autry Harrison, a former pimp who severed his formal gang ties to become a Boys & Girls club director; or Officer Jerry, the crooked cop who stole from the project's residents and even threatened Sudhir on numerous occasions if he ever published his research; or Taneesha, who attempted a career as a model while attending college at night before her jealous "manager" beat her badly for signing a contract with a legitimate agency. Although I felt like I was reading the script to a movie at times, this highlighted to me my ignorance of what life in the Robert Taylor Homes project was like.
My primary issue with the work was a lack of discussion about his research itself. He would write, a few times, something like (I'm paraphrasing here) "everything about sociological theory says X, but what I've witnessed is Y" without delving into the details. These moments peppered throughout his narrative would have allowed for a somewhat more formal discourse by introducing some interesting ideas about what sociologists think and how his research differs. His published research must discuss these issues at depth, but an informal, less pedantic approach could have been incorporated into this book.
Honestly, I think pacing is one issue but the main problem is people aren't willing to be uncomfortable. No shame on someone who doesn't have the fitness to run 30 minutes -- after years of not running, lots of people don't currently have that ability -- but I think many more people stay far short of their capabilities because, to borrow your phrase, they don't know how to exercise. I'll frequently see people resting as they walk up a flight of stairs because their heart rate is elevated; if you run for 30 minutes, that level of minor discomfort is something you'll have to accept for 29 minutes. Middle schoolers can do it because no one told them they couldn't, but as they get older people convince themselves that breathing heavy is a sign of impending disaster. And I think threads like this, treating running as some herculean effort when we're all born to run, contribute to the problem.
Source: I live in a city that is far, far from "most active."
While I was too into running, I stumbled upon Born to Run and I found it very wholesome and entertaining, it's non fiction but you learn lots of things about running as well other cultures.
If your a book reader check out "Born to Run"
Its entertaining, educational, slightly biased, and loaded with hyperbole, but its worth the read for sure.
Haha. I totally fell for the hype after reading Born to Run.
The jury is still out as far as concluding whether they are really the life-changing superfood that many like to believe, but it is a fact that they contain a lot of nutrients absent in the rest of my diet. That, and I can personally attest to the effects of the tremendous amount of fiber contained therein, ifyouknowwhatImean.
When I started running a couple years before HRT it did the same. Your muscle are just not used to it.
I had stopped running due to an slip injury mid-Dec 2016. I started running again 3 months ago, at the same time I started HRT. The first two weeks were a bit hard, but it's normal after a 3-month break.
Now I'm back to outrunning ladies on bicycles and kids in roller blades. HRT doesn't stop you from that. Just work your way up, and remember, it's all in your head. One foot in front of the other, till the end.
I usually run 10k a day on my lunch breaks. Everyone says it's too much, but I remind them that to them, it's overtraining and to me, it's just a walk in the park! Also, I've found that since switching to 5finger shoes, I don't have shin issues anymore, as they force me to land correctly on my feet instead of my heels like regular running shoes.
Edit: Check out these two books, they've helped me tremendously:
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen:
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life:
https://www.amazon.com/Spartan-Take-No-Prisoners-Overcoming-Obstacles-Performance/dp/0544286170/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495168868&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=spartan+up
This is a pretty good book that really popularized a lot of what running has become. It's a good read too.
I was a test subject for Altra running shoes, and they are a pretty good example of the newer trend. (Even though I don't wear them)
Here are the main points:
It's pretty simple. You have shock absorbers in your feet. The way we currently run (because of bad shoes) is terrible. You're basically taking a hammer to your heel, knee, and hips and ignoring your feet, which doesn't make any sense.
Does that help?
PM me if you want some more info and don't want to dig through books. I've written papers on this, been in studies, and understand it pretty well for a layman.
I reccommend this book if you are interested in running. Not striking your heel uses your calf like the spring it's meant to be and allows one to run much more efficiently.
Yes you land much more gently if you're forced to do a mid or forefoot strike. I had terrible knee and ankle pain running in traditional shoes--they were prescribed by the fancy running store after watching me run. Pair after pair sucked. Now I use the barefoot style shoe and like running. YMMV
I learned about after hearing an interview with this writer https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Superathletes-Greatest-Vintage/dp/0307279189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1300140631&amp;sr=8-1
http://www.chrismcdougall.com/
Barefoot is better!! All of your joints will thank you... Get a nice pair of some New Balance runners, or whatever brand suits you. I've been doing the barefoot thing daily now, work shoes as well as running shoes. It solved some weird knee pain that I started feeling - and my pace has actually improved. Barefoot shoes cost a bit more, but are well worth the price in my opinion!
Also, THIS BOOK has been recommended to me time and time again, and I really need to read it, myself.
You didn't mention anything about how you run or what kind of shoes you run in. If you land on your heal when you run then my suggestion would be to read Born to Run and Tread Lightly and then consider changing the way you run.
Also, keep in mind that X-Rays will not show soft tissue damage (ligament, tendons, etc) so unless you have a broken bone, they are pretty useless.
A huevo man! Bahuichivo, Cerocahui y Urique son la mamada. Yo tambien me pase 3 noches ahi. Me salia todos los dias a subir una nueva montaña y ya que llegaba me acostaba en alguna piedra a ver el paisaje y las aguilas volar. Me quede en un luigar que se llamaba La Posada del Oso en Cerocahui y casualmente conocí a un wey que le dicen Caballo Blanco. Es un gringo que organiza un maraton con los tarahumaras y escribio un libro que es super famoso y ha inspirado a mucha gente. El libro se llama Born to Run. Murio el año pasado el wey creo.
Suerte en tu regreso al jale!
Although the thesis about barefoot running is controversial, try reading Born to Run if you want to change your attitude on running. Running doesn't have to be a grueling battle with your body.
Socks is incredibly nice to get. I also enjoy any running material....if he's newer to running then perhaps the following books (which are super cheap) would interest him:
There's plenty of others....but a good read is nice after a nice run.
well just incase you still need a suggestion I would check this book out:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Count-Revolution-Betrayal-Cristo/dp/0307382478
Its a couple of years before the timeline, but I wouldnt be surprised if your Professor could let you. Its about a Slave that somehow rose through the ranks of Napolean's army to become a general and was the father of Alexander Dumas (the guy who wrote Three musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo). Its dense looking but an easy read.
For WW2 you could check out Band of Brothers, Army at Dawn (big book, but damn does it read well)
And if you want a great follow up read to The Count of Monte Cristo, I highly recommend The Black Count. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307382478/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0JooDbQ10BCTY
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599.
If you want to read an incredibly powerful and gut-wrenching book on the Rwandan genocide, I highly recommend Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
Find and read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359
There's also the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevich.
Man, that whole list is completely wrong. The list should be edited to anonymous, pseudonymous, and pseduepigrahs.
But on topic, if we are to accept that there are many biblical authors, We know that god has interacted with them all. I believe some, if not all directly. The only silent covenant I'm aware of where God beamed something into someones head, is Josiah, but he didn't write any books.
So god is directly involved with the authors if we are to accept the traditional attributed authors. So he's sort of coauthoring a book. Like what celebs/important figures do now when they write a tell all book. Like "The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley"
Start here: https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Alex-Haley/dp/0345350685
Once again, just reiterating what was clearly explained above, and somehow making it a counterargument...
> Your Line: Like what the fuck are you even talking about niggas have BEEN trying to invest in their fucking future
> for decades and have been shut out at every opportunity. Community growth is borderline impossible when
> America has helped to create a permanent underclass.
> My Line: Unfortunately, the black race has not reached this level of communal success. This is due to many
> factors that are tightly interlinked with history (slavery creating a class system based on race), economics (race
> then making upward mobility an impossible task), and psychology (racism causing self-hatred among the black
> community).
Consensus: Same thing explained, but repackaged as a weak defence.
Bro, either your comprehension skills are low, or deductive reasoning is not your strong-suit, but you are missing all the points. Not trying to end careers today, so I'm going to drop this. Tonight go to your local bookstore, pick up the Malcom X Autobiography. Read it. Valuable information on this whole topic. If that's too daunting, go on the internet, read the lyrics. Slowly this time.
Clearly, "The Story of O.J." is too intelligent for some.
You've accused Malcolm X of inciting genocide, acting unjustly, and committing treason. Can you give a reference that supports any of those claims?
> No, he just wanted to kill whole ethnic groups, not enslave them. So much better.
The Wikipedia pate that you've linked does not say that he wanted to kill whole ethnic groups. I think you're misunderstanding his core message, which is that America has failed to promote the general welfare of Black people (as promised in the Constitution), and that failure should be immediately addressed. The group that played the biggest role in this failure is the "White man". Later in his life, Malcolm X extended this view to say that imperialism, in general, has failed the majority of people on earth, and human rights must be restored to all persons to continue playing this game that we call civilization. I recommend that you read more about him and his message. Alex Haley's biography of Malcolm is a good place to start.
> In other words "It's different when I do it." Sorry, but no, it isn't. Everyone thinks their side is on the side of justice. Actually being on the side of justice means remembering that, treating the other side fairly, and not excusing your own side when it acts unjustly.
How did Malcolm X act unjustly?
> Nope. I'm arguing that treason doesn't stop being treasonous when you like the person doing the treason.
I'll grant you that Malcolm's rhetoric was hostile, but in what way was he treasonous? CSA straight up waged war on the Union right after Lincoln was elected.
This one?
I have a quick trigger finger on Amazon... haha. Have you read A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah - pretty amazing story.
Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.
Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)
No Picnic on Mount Kenya
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Collapse
The Closing of the Western Mind
What is the What
A Long Way Gone
Alliance of Enemies
The Lucifer Effect
The World Without Us
What the Dog Saw
The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)
One Down, One Dead
Lust for Life
Lost in Shangri-La
Endurance
True Story
Havana Nocturne
I don't get upset by any of it because if I did I would be upset by all of it and wouldn't be able to function. I read this book http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1311457412&amp;sr=1-1 and it made me care too much so I made a decision to not care at all as crass as that sounds.
A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) by Ishmael Beah. Firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s) The last few pages, I just read one per day, an effort to delay the inevitable ending of a good book. *edited link from wiki to amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269
(the author didn't rape anyone but killed a ton of people. it's a fucking wild story)
You know, I was honestly hoping that you'd be wrong. I accept that it's a different style of game. But hell, if it's going to be heavily story based, make it internally consistent.
I get that it's a story, that dramatic tension is the name of the game. But so much of it was so very poorly done and painfully forced to increase dramatic tension, that the immersion was not broken so much as non-existent. The video posted above of snowy new-york was a little better in this regard, but not by a ton. Overall I don't have particularly high hopes for this game, even though I love story-heavy games in general.
Also, to gain some further insight on child soldiers, as well as the situation in war-torn countries where said soldiers are used A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier is pretty informative and a good read. That kid would be coked up, brainwashed and trigger happy, and commanded to kill white people on site as often as not.
I received his book ("The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind") as a gift last year and read it. Its a very captivating read, and he talks in detail of having to stop going to school, beginning to go to library to learn, and the ridicule he faced in his village for building his windmill out of junk he was able to salvage. It goes on about how reporters discovered him and how ended up speaking at a TED conference. A really inspirational read.
I highly recommend his book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, that explains in greater detail the circumstances that led to his inventions.
This is a really good point. One of the reasons that you see famines in places like Africa and not the developed world is that they don't have the irrigation infrastructure to weather droughts. In many cases, it's not even a lack of available water; it's just the hardware to get the water to where it's needed. The electricity and economic activity generated by a project like this could do a lot to help people (assuming it were used responsibly and not sucked out of the area the way a lot of oil projects are).
There's an amazing (and true) biographical book called The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind about a young man who grew up in Mali. His family was middle-class for the area in that they owned some land, but it was basically a subsistence farming economy, and no one had any money to spare. Part of the book deals with a horrible drought-caused famine that strikes the country, killing many people in the area, including members of his family - it's heartbreaking to read.
Anyway, the gist of the book is that his parents aren't able to afford school anymore for him, but he he finds some old science books and through trial-and-error, teaches himself basic electrical principles and builds a windmill out of old tractor and bike parts from the junkyard. At first it's only enough to light some small lights, and people sort of make fun of him for his crazy science project, but eventually people from all over town are visiting him to charge their phones and radio batteries, and he winds up getting the attention of some folks overseas who get him a scholarship to go to an engineering school. He returns home and comes up with a cheap design for a windmill that can run a water pump to move groundwater to the fields. This allows people to harvest two crops a year instead of one, and prevents them from starving if the rain doesn't come. It completely revolutionizes the local economy. Super inspiring read. And now I've spoiled the ending :)
There's a book about it, I highly recommend it for the full story http://www.amazon.ca/The-Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind/dp/0061730335
I've read his book, it is one of my favorites. Truly inspiring, I'll read it again for sure, someday. There are several parts of the book that are really thrilling. Link to his book -> http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Who-Harnessed-Wind/dp/0061730335
There's a great book about this called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
I read it years ago but I remember one year that there was a drought the people thought that the windmill was creating "Black Magic" and attempted to destroy it to appease the witch doctors.
Also the witch doctors supposedly kidnap children to play Soccer with their heads.
His book was required summer reading at some of our schools here.
Here's a link to a book about William.
Stories of people doing amazing or even just proactive things while in poverty are extremely inspiring and motivating for me. The book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a great example.
I really liked Man's Search for Meaning. I found it directly after reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jeruselem. You might try it out. They're not the same exactly, but I found Arendt's writing style similar to Frankl's. It was direct, immediately accessible, and philosophic.
Here is the mobile version of your link
If you would seriously like to learn something of the mindset and daily life of a Chicago gang member I would recommend the book, Gang Leader for a Day.
It is basically a sociologist who spends time with a black gang on the south side of Chicago and details the environment and mindset.
Ghost in the Wires - The story of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick
Any Mary Roach Book if you like Science
In the Heart of the Sea - The true story behind Moby Dick
The Omnivore's Dilemma - A great walk through our food landscape
Gang Leader for a Day - Behavioral Economist embeds with a Chicago Gang
Shadow Divers - My first audiobook. It's a thriller about a scuba discovery of a Nazi Submarine on the Eastern US coast.
The Devil In The White City - A story about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893
Nice! I am glad they are not fronting with it. The chicago book was written by a sociologist who spent time with a gang that was deling crack. Very interesting. Glad you don't see it. In his case the whole neighbour hood knew about it and you couldn't really separate their lives from the crack gang.
Edit: This is the book im referring to: Gang Leader for a day
Crime has been down so far this year, but that's due to the weather, not policing. In Chicago shootings are correlated to temperature. It's unfortunate, but immediately after thinking about how nice the weather is, "how many people will get shot tonight?" is in the back of your head.
There are a few programs/organizations that temper the violence. [Cure Violence] (http://cureviolence.org/)(formerly known as CeaseFire) and Blocks Together both try to intervene to prevent escalation. But this problem is too big for any not for profit or politician's pet project.
The violence in Chicago is one of the many layers (or symptoms) to systematic social inequalities. Chicago politicians have been very good at throttling money going into developing these neighborhoods (the CPS school closings for instance), and draining any money that does go into these neighborhoods. Chicago is a microcosm of the relationship between the IMF and "developing" countries.
edit:
Check out these books if interested in learning more -
Great American City by Robert J. Sampson and Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
Random books off the top of my head...
'The Movie Goer'
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
Gang Leader for a Day
Ender's Game series
Pre-order Mindy Kaling's book
For some reason, reading this and the comments/questions below made me think of the book Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Some really interesting insight on the sociology of gangs in Chicago and it reads really fucking well for a non fiction book. I felt like I was just reading a story instead of some dry set of facts. I highly recommend this book.
Gang Leader for a Day is now on my must-read list, but it's not the book I was thinking of. This was 2003-4 that I took the class.
The cover is brighter. Like a vibrant contrast-y orange/yellow and bright lighter shade of blue.
Maybe this doesn't fit, but if you're looking to learn more about it Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets provides some really great insights into the gang community and how the day-to-day is run as well as the community efforts the gang bring in an effort to deter being reported to the police
> Hope the elders of those cliques squash this shit soon.
Seriously, even the gang leaders that ran robert taylor homes and cabrini green understood that shootings are no good for anybody.
edit: for chicagoans that haven't read gang leader for a day, I suggest it. Good read of how an understaffed Chicago PD and gang members used to work together to make a "uneasy pact" of sorts.
If I recall correctly, Sudhir claims that 54% of users he observed in the South Side of Chicago back in the 1980's were actually functioning. https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Sudhir+Venkatesh+gang+leader+for+a+day&qid=1571162955&sr=8-1
These and lots more questions are answered in a very interesting book, Gang Leader For A Day whose author literally went through the account books of a gang. Fun fact: they often pay for the funerals of people they've killed.
As others have said, the primary reason is gang violence. There are areas where you have no choice to NOT be in a gang. By simply living on a particular block, you are associated with a certain crew.
To get a better idea of what it is like in some areas, listen to This American Life, Harper High School
Also, try reading There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz and Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to The Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh
It isn’t exactly the same, but “Gang Leader for a Day” is fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X
If you're really curious about gang life in Chicago, a UofC professor basically embedded himself with Chicago gangs for seven years to observe them and wrote a book about his observations.
jaja, no es de medico es de "corredor". Supuestamente este tipo dice que todas esas afecciones se te van despues de correr como los indios tarahumara (es decir descalzo y pisando primero con el frente del pie). Ahora, parece que no es tan asi.
Brett Sutton, entrenador de triatletas de elite (Chrissie Wellington, Mirinda Carfrae) dice que:
>Sutton: The most important thing running in Ironman it’s that it’s more efficient to land with mid-foot strike. Not on the ball of the foot. So, I like the shoes to be low in the heel, not built up and with stability plate. That’s injury city. But don’t worry, no one listens to my thoughts there.
Ahora tambien, si te fijas en maratonistas de elite pisan primero con el frente, pero no creo que vos ni yo corramos una maraton a menos de 3 min/km.
ademas si queres un tip podes comer muchos carbs siempre y cuando sean complejos y vengan acompañados de fibra, y entrenes mucho :)
Check out Ann Transon, and other documented female 100mi. runners. While men have outperformed her, she did hold the record for a time and even now her record is only beat by about a minute, which is negligible over the course of 100 miles. While men will tend to outperform even in these cases, the time differences are multiples smaller than they are in sprinting and marathons.
Some of the theory behind why can be found here. He wrote a book on it called Born to Run if you're interested in looking into the original source materials or criticisms against his methodology. I have the book on order, but I find the theory behind why this might be the case pretty compelling.
*edit: let me go ahead and caveat that by saying while a minute is anything but negligible for athletic purposes, it's more than sufficient to make my point about men and women hunting or at least traveling for the hunt together. While many results are less fantastic, it seems that it's not uncommon for the long distance men and women to be only a few minutes apart.
I ran a LOT in high school but switched over to mountain biking because of frequent injuries. Always though running was rough on the joints but then i read Born to Run. Blew my mind and did it's job of convincing me that running shoes are the problem. I could discuss for hours why flat soles are better, it's just evolutionarily sound. Neanderthals were stronger and smarter than we were but less adept at endurance running. Essentially after the ice age it was more advantageous in gathering food and killing prey to be able to move farther and faster than it was to kill the large game Neanderthal was used to. And for those too lazy to read the book just check out the Tarahumara. They'll run 200 miles at a time through canyons on a thin piece of flat rubber tied to their feet.
You might not be so off about the barefoot thing...
Could also be your form too. Aim for light, quick steps, almost like you're running on coals. If your steps are too long or heavy, it takes more force per step, which kills your legs.
Don't know if you like reading, but this book is a great one that helped me develop a passion for running: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
If you've ever been into running Christopher McDougall's "Born to Run" is a real page turner. Well written and a very enjoyable read, I went from cover to cover in 2 days on my first reading. Link to book
Honestly, clean concrete or asphalt is probably the easiest surface to run on. I didn't believe it either until I got the technique down. But, it's true.
When I started barefoot, I ordered a couple books and did some reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
and
http://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Running-Step-Shoeless-Technique/dp/1592334652/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=1WV43D698B0HHYCVA8FJ
The first book is entertaining. The second book is instructional, and the most help in understanding the mechanics. Telling someone how to run barefoot is like trying to explain to someone how to chew. Think about that for a second, explaining a basic body mechanic isn't that simple to do because people just do it.
Barefoot running, when you're doing it properly, is like that. If something hurts, you're doing it wrong.
Now, I wont say that I run 6 minute miles. Again, I like running, but I wish I were more into it, I have a desk job and I'm old. My best mile is probably around 10 minutes or just under it. But, I usually keep that speed or around it the entire run. I can usually run the fastest at the end of my runs, after all of the joints have loosened up and my form is at it's best.
Buy a book and read if you're interested in it.
This is a great book about running, mainly ultras:
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
I read it in one night. Couldnt put it down. I dont particularly like just running (I like to be playing a sport), but this really changed a lot of my thinking about running.
The book Born to Run is a good read on the subject.
Also for those interested in documentaries, Journey of Man contains interesting histories and amazing endurance in a polar climate.
Awesome post. I read Born to Run—a book focused on the benefits of forefoot running and it doesn't argue as well as this post does. The comparison between Westbrook and D. Rose with those pictures really make it clear.
I also have an autoimmune disease. Mine is MS. So my symptoms are not as bad as yours. All MS cases are different, and I'm lucky that my only "issue" is exhaustion.
So CICO has really helped me. I also go to a personal trainer twice a week (it's a mental thing with me...I don't like to let people down, so having accountability with my trainer has really helped. Also it's harder to skip a workout if you've already paid for it.)
About 8 years ago I read Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen and it really got me hyped for ruining/jogging (something I'd never consider doing previously)...But that was well before my diagnosis. I might need to read the book again. At my current state, I'm just too tired to walk extra let alone run.
> Disclaimer: I wrote this being very tired. Honestly I'm surprised it will make any sense
If you don't run barefoot, but think you could be interested, I suggest that, as it will strengthen your feet like mad...but take it easy and pay attention to what your feet are telling you. No pain, no gain, won't pay off here, just make you miserable. Before beginning a running routine, I'd suggest reading Born to Run for a fun, interesting, and enlightening true story read...it is very motivating, and will lead you to the rabbit hole. To go down the rabbit hole, I highly recommend reading Barefoot Running: Step by Step...do this before starting any barefoot running. This book the real deal, with very helpful and accurate information, with references to literature and research for you to follow deeper. The explanations of what to do, how to do it right and wrong, and why, but in very easy to understand language. IMHO and professional opinion. The only drawback is you have to wade through his personal story, but's still worth it.
For the issue of some or a lot of people having problems with what you do with your feet. Educate them, if that is a possibility...win them over with a dose of red pill. If not, and for other reasons, such as misguided store owners, restaurants, etc...I recommend Xero huarachas. The Ventures are the next best thing to barefoot me. They are inexpensive, and you can buy kits for DIY. I started with Ventures, then a kit. Nowadays, I make my own from scratch with my design improvements. Any of these suffice for shoewear where it is required. I've never had someone snicker at my sandals, rather I get positive comments, and "where can I get a pair".
If education doesn't do it, and your tribe/village are too intolerant, find new ones. I know, it's easy for me to say this...I live in an incredibly tolerant city (Asheville NC) where it is almost impossible to stick out like some weirdo. I was initially concerned about what people thought of what I have going on below my ankles, but with experience and time, I grown in confidence, and my care for what others think has unraveled to nothing...if they don't like it...pffft! It's their problem. I'll still be running when they are likely hobbled by knee replacements, thousands spent on crippling shoes and foot orthotics, and otherwise buckets of pain. I'm 51, and do about 20 miles a week, and only saw the light 3 or 4 years ago, thanks to the books mentioned above. I now hike barefooted, even a late summer trip up to a glacier field in Alaska last year.
I read a book; https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
The company I got them from is here; https://xeroshoes.com/shop/
I went with the sandals, can't comment on the shoe versions, but the sandals are great. The shoes are well reviewed and I plan on picking up a pair in the future, I just have no personal experience with them.
It's important that you convince him to make changes by expressing your desires, and through reason.
If he is unwilling to grow, then you have to grow first; be willing to learn more than you previously wanted, provide opportunities.
This isn't about you, it's about empowering your husband.
I am a direct support professional, and I work with the developmentally disabled; I've learned that getting people to do what you want requires them to really feel free to choose.
Sometimes what you want is going to have to change, because what you pictured wasn't sophisticated enough.
Anything worth doing is going to be difficult.
Start with r/intermittentfasting
Here's some things I found interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
https://www.amazon.com/Move-Your-DNA-Restore-Movement/dp/0989653943
Similar to "move your dna"
https://youtu.be/jOJLx4Du3vU
https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world?utm_campaign=tedspread&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=tedcomshare
Check out podcasts. Consider all kinds of things. Cbd oil may help with pain, and so will posture/better-movement, and better diet.
Here are some books, but nothing specific to injuries.
If she likes the Oatmeal, this is a must-have.
The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances
The classic. It's a good read. Take the science with a grain of salt.
Born to Run
Bill Rodgers auto-biography. An entertaining read, but not greatly-written.
Marathon Man
If she's science-oriented, this is a great book. I love this thing:
What Comes First, Cardio or Weights?
I don't recommend running barefoot, because going from uber-soft super-padded cushioned running shoes to nothing is like a guy who hasn't used his legs in 20 years suddenly deciding he'll run a triathlon.
However, there is One Right Way™ to run, and it doesn't involve pounding your heels into the gravel. Also, the arch is supposed to support itself. That's what an arch does; that's why they're used on bridges. However, if your arch is atrophied from disuse then you'll have weak arches and you'll need "arch support" to compensate.
The human body is a miraculous thing. Humans and now-extinct hominids have been running obscene distances for hundreds of thousands of years. The "traditional" Nike-esque cushioned running
shoefoot cast has been around for less than fifty.Born to Run
walking is good. walking barefoot (or with Vibram Fivefingers) is even better.
check out this awesome book, one of the most interesting books i have ever read -
Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307279189/
And this is an interesting one -
Walk Yourself Well
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0974779113/
I've read born to run while on a beach, it was a good interesting read. Also bought The Animal Dialogues while camping in yellowstone and it was also a great read.
Relevant Book
What is the deciding factor you refer to, max heart rate? Or some kind of muscle strain due to starvation/toxic buildup.
I agree with the easy but long duration from what I've read (born to run). His theory is that we've evolved to have incredible running endurance, and can even run animals (antilope, etc) to death by exhaustion. Humans being the only mammal whose breathing process is not directly linked to their running gait.
btw it sounds like he is training for cyclecross, which presumably requires a high output.
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
buy this book and start reading it
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1479256656&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=born+to+run
I always wanted to do sports in high school but never did because I thought I wasn't good enough for it. Then, in my senior year I decided to join anyways and I have to say it was probably the best decision I made. I wasn't fast at first, but just a few months in I shed all my excess weight and started to become exponentially faster. I didn't get tired anymore and I made a bunch of friends and met a bunch of chicks. It was awesome. Also, if you're gonna run and actually want to be a God at it (and to not look like a scrawny anorexic) you should also hit up the gym once or twice a week on the side. 50% of running is upper-body strength (for short-mid-distances)
I did when first starting to run in them. Calf smashing with a lacrosse ball really helps a LOT.
Check out some of the barefoot running tips on Vibram's site, and maybe check out Chris McDougall's Born to Run. It takes some time, especially if you've already been running a lot on your heels, but just do a little at a time, and you'll find your pace :)
I've been reading this book recently called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I've not finished it yet but I couldn't recommend it highly enough to everyone here.
He talks about ultra runners, people who run 50+ miles. The best runners, he notes, are those that do it for fun. It applies to anything in life, and his examples are amazing to read and something I shall apply to every important area of my life.
When I found the right reasons & goals for running, in this case, I made it fun and I've not had to struggle to get out of the door like I used to. I've always been competitive so I currently use my previous times and distance as goals to beat. That will eventually need to change as I hit my limits.
I understand you're just starting out so you're still finding your feet, so to speak, but if running is something you truly want to incorporate into your lifestyle, C25K is the right springboard to start with and maybe check out the book too for some inspiration.
being a dedicated barefoot runner myself, two things I can recommend:
Born to Run (a book) by Christopher Mcdougall
Swiss Protection Socks
I am reading Born To Run right now and it's great. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307279189?cache=7a1e4883f39aa620826b16341a1326ee&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;qid=1406163869&amp;sr=8-1#ref=mp_s_a_1_1 sorry for formatting. On reddit news.
Regarding shoes, there is strong evidence that older shoes are actually healthier and that newer shoes cause injuries.
Read this book: Born to Run
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307279189/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307279189&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=landandfarmco-20
I recommend this book
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307279189/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1486497161&amp;sr=8-2&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&amp;keywords=Born+to+run
It also advocates for running barefoot as shoes have increased ankle splints and other lower body injuries
VFFs are good for allowing barefoot form and not altering it otherwise. They need a strong warning, though...they are too good at protecting soles, and it is much easier to do too much, and overuse injure yourself. If bf from is not good, you'll get abrasive/sheering stress on the skin on the bottom of your feet. If form is dialed in pretty good, no blister problems. VFFs can protect the skin abuse, preventing you from receiving the message that form is not good enough, which can allow over-stressing other anatomy (Achilles and other tendons, calf muscles, etc...). They can mask cues that something is amiss, leading to false sense of security of good form, and you end up overdoing it and soreness or injury results. I prefer these huarachas for when running surface is too hot or sharp/rocky...they look better IMHO, but more importantly, they aren't so problematic as VFFs described above. Also, they slap loudly when form needs work, and are ninja silent when it is perfect.
Read this for fun and motivation, then this
for easy to understand details of kinesiology, and good bf from...it is spot on...everything you need to know is here.
Alex Sr. lead a very interesting life, as set forth in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Count-Revolution-Betrayal-Cristo/dp/0307382478/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1371538715&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=black+count
The Black Count.
Relative to Bosnia. Try this, Kagame interviewed about why they couldn't bring them all to justice, not least because a very large number were parked in refugee camps in the DRC. The story of the Rwandans closing those camps is pretty horrific too.
You should read We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families about Rwanda.
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families is a great read about tribalism and the causes and events of the Rwandan Genocide. Long title but great book.
> The Tutsi and Hutu were ethnic groups/social classes within Rwanda, not the Congo. And Rwanda was under German control until 1916 when it was taken over by the Belgians, which was 7 years after Leopold II died.
I'll admit, I got my facts confused. I was just going off memory from what I learned from the film "Hotel Rwanda" and this book and it has been years since I read it.
I suppose I should have spent 5 minutes brushing up on my history before mentioning it.
But you're acting like you're somehow an expert when you obviously just went to Wikipedia and found the first thing you could find to debunk my claim...
The truth is still closer to my side. When the Belgians took over they implemented the ID card system which codified the ethnicities into a rigid caste system with the 1 percent Tutsis ruling over the 88 percent Hutus. This is what I was thinking of and I wrongly attributed it to Leopold. My bad.
But most historians trace the strife back to this action by the Belgians and I still stand by that position. There were divisions between the Hutus and the Tutsis prior, but people could move fairly freely between the ethnic groups. And there wasn't this intense hatred:
> The Hutu and Rwanda were not living in equality before European colonialism but major conflicts between the two ‘races’ didn’t occur until after European colonialism. The European “divide and conquer” strategy for dealing with native populations combined with the ‘scientific’ racism of the era gave motivation and reasoning for developing the divide between the Hutu and Tutsi. European colonialism directly created the animosity between the Hutu and Tutsi, through the subjugation of the Hutu and elevation of the Tutsi as well as the removal of any social mobility, that upon their subsequent withdrawal from the firestorm they created, they had put the country of Rwanda on the road to genocide.
And the use of ethnic ID cards provided a basis on which to carry out the genocide, i.e. you had lists of people who were designated Tutsi, much like you had people with Yellow Stars or Pink Triangles, designated Jews or Gays.
The below is based on my recollection of this amazing book
Rwanda is a small african country. As a result of specific policy choices made during the colonial era, the country was divided between a Tutsi minority that dominated politics and trade, and a Hutu majority that often felt left out of governance.
In the post colonial period, this ethnic divide deepened, and ultimately the Hutu majority took power in the country. The country faced trouble typical of the region at the time, with strongman government and ethnic strife.
Over time, the government increasingly used the Tutsi minority as a scapegoat for problems in the country. Following the assassination of the president (which some claim was the responsibility of his supposed allies) the government called on the Hutu population to rise up and cleanse the Tutsis. Spurred by radio personalities and the government, soldiers, police, and armed mobs began to slaughter Tutsis.
The international response was divided. France considered the Hutu government a client, and was opposed to direct foreign intervention. The UN forces in the country were similarly paralyzed, and politics prevented them from taking a direct role in trying to stop the worst of the conflict. (the leader of the UN force ultimately killed himself out of guilt for failing to do more, if I recall correctly).
Ultimately, a mostly Tutsi resistance force was able to stop the killing, eject the government and force the worst of the military out of the country (Which destabilized neighboring Congo).
The estimated death toll is between 800,000 and 1.2 million killed, I think, in a matter of weeks.
In the book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, the author discusses this process a bit. The book is really interesting (but sad). I read it after watching Hotel Rwanda.
http://www.amazon.com/Wish-Inform-Tomorrow-Killed-Families/dp/0312243359/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334242536&amp;sr=8-3
Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch were both very difficult to read.
A really good book about the genocide, def recommend to anyone
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
Have you studied at all on Malcolm X?
I suggest you read:
https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Alex-Haley/dp/0345350685/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=S4HXAPSC2DB33V62TY8T
Good lord, if this is how most Americans think you people are doomed. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU
It's interesting how out of my entire OP you've decided to derail the main matter - sexual assault and abuse. You have poor critical thinking skills and don't realize how ignorant you actually are.
I would encourage you to read the autobiography of Malcolm X.
edit... buy here: https://www.amazon.ca/Autobiography-Malcolm-X-MALCOLM/dp/0345350685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1519205773&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=malcom+x+autobiography There are free PDF versions online as well in case you cannot afford it
Also, your inability to remain calm and use reason says a lot about you. The language you choose to use is very telling about who you are as a person.
I was like you until senior year in high school when I started reading for pleasure. My first two books were Yeager and Malcolm X. For me reading these autobiographies moved me and taught me some stuff that made reading seem both fun and productive. Later that year I went back and read most of the required books that I faked my way through in the previous years of high school. I've since come to appreciate literature and become a reader of most every kind of book and these two books really got me started. I think it was because at that age I wanted to know what living a life was truly all about.
Don't let the fact that you didn't get fully involved in the Foundation as some impediment. The lack of a strong character based plot makes that book kind of a chore. If there are a few historical characters you are really interested in why not find the best biographies associated with them and give them a shot? It worked for me!
For sure comrade.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;rct=j&amp;url=https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Alex-Haley/dp/0345350685&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj2wdKTyKnUAhUE2GMKHTzUCIQQFggjMAA&amp;usg=AFQjCNF5cv3eW6_aAY0sCteeR6ciBhqWbw&amp;sig2=GbqaU11PF46ixAzNO9aLRg
Sorry for the long link.
Malcolm X autobiography. By Alex Haley
dude, there aren't any non-violent social revolutions to cite, because they don't do anything. they are facades and this is common knowledge everywhere in the world except for the hyper-privileged americans who grow fat off of raping the third world and for the most part don't see past their corporate-state blinders; i don't blame them but i do become frustrated. you don't even have to read a book to know this, you can do the reading in 5 mins:
http://georgeorwellnovels.com/letters/letter-to-the-reverend-iorwerth-jones-april-1941/
http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi.html
here is some stuff on black civil rights if you really care:
http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Alex-Haley/dp/0345350685
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html
the idea that either issue was solved, or really even affected by non-violence is explicit capitalist propaganda. both had violent components. india is still controlled by imperialist, capitalist, hegemony, and black people are still the oppressed underclass of the US.
as an aside, you don't actually think black people achieved social equality, right? if so, i'd remind you that capital is an ethereal social power, not a physical reality.
~
anyway, do you really not see the inconsistencies in your posts?
if your measure is efficacy, you can't possibly think that non-violent revolution is comparable to violent revolution. should i list off the major violent revolutions that shaped the world until you agree? like, the american one?
if your measure is morality, hey, more orwell:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_patw
no one would say we should strive for violence, or that violence taken out of context is moral, just that it is a less bad option, sometimes. the pacifist stance is so silly and naive that it would be sort of amusing if it wasn't destructive. people literally believe the platitude "violence doesn't solve anything" and it sort of blows my mind.
the ussr failing and the fact that it was created in a violent revolution doesn't mean that everything a violent revolution does is doomed to failure. again, how can you say this on an american website, and not see the flaw in it?
it seems like you're conflating your argument against violence with your argument against a communist system (i'd like to point out another capitalist hypocrisy: the ussr failing means communism is dead and could never work, and violent revolutions are useless, but the same perfectionist desire for instant gratification when it comes to socioeconomic systems isn't applied to capitalism - when a capitalist country fails, it must have been individualist moral failings or some other reason, capitalism is never questioned), but they are separate concepts.
Frugal because even when this is not on sale, it's already cheap, and when it's used, it's only a penny before shipping!
It's not like Castle Wolfenstein, we don't have to go through every underling to get to the boss fight.
I recommend this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1331348848&amp;sr=1-1-spell
These are the books we read in my Africa in Popular Media and African History classes in college. I highly recommend all of them:
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky
God Grew Tired of Us
A Long Way Gone
A Continent for the Taking
Black Hawk Down
Country of My Skull
Kaffir Boy
Machete Season: the Killers in Rwanda Speak
The Graves Are Not Yet Full
An Ordinary Man
You probably should read some literature on child soldiers and how they are 'conscripted' and how they are forced to fight in wars. I recommend A Long Way Gone (a memoir of Ishmael Beah an ex-child soldier) and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children (by Romeo Dellaire).
One method is to use their culture against them, as in they will force you to kill your mother or else they will kill all you or your brother. Then they are taught to believe they are not wanted anymore and they will be killed by their own tribe. This has parallels with gang recruitment. Once this stuff happens in order to reverse this behaviour you need to retrain the individual and attempt to reverse the mindset that they are soldiers or the like and not locking them up in prison.
If anyone wants a perspective of what it was like to be a child growing up during the civil war in Sierra Leone check out the book "A Long Way Gone." Crazy crazy stuff you don't hear much about.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - It's the memoirs of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Despite his genius, the book is not technical in any way and instead focuses on the bizarre, outlandish, and behind-the-scenes moments of his life.
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer's white-knuckle, first-hand account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
> Well, so long "buried alive," you're no longer number one on my list-of-worst-ways-to-die list.
Read The Climb and (as much as I dislike Krakauer) Into Thin Air. I read them back to back (read Into Thin Air first) and it gave me nightmares.
Both books chronicle the events that took place on Everest in May 1996. Krakauer was there to write an article or a different book; Boukreev was there as a hired guide who was using the trip to fund his next personal ascent on another peak.
I'm not sure which part it was that got to me the most; probably Rob Hall being patched through from his radio to base camp to a satellite phone to his pregnant wife in New Zealand, while he sat just below the South Summit freezing to death - as everyone on the mountain listened on their radios.
Into Thin Air fits your bill.
It sounds like you're off to a good start. You sound pretty close to the right height/weight ratio, so it'll probably be pretty hard to see any big weight changes even with a lot of effort. I had a lot of good luck on a bicycle, largely because running would tear my body up, so good luck to you.
There's some good (and conflicting) advice in this thread already, but working out with friends can help you stay at it. In a similar vein, I started playing pick-up basketball at a park a couple nights a week, made some friends there, and my team of 5 would expect me to be out there so we'd have a full team on those nights. That way I'd be sure to be out there since I knew if I wasn't they'd be upset. It really helped on nights where I could have easily packed it in and stayed home, any almost never did I regret actually going. Another thing you can do is train for an event with someone; maybe a mini-triathlon, half-marathon, century bicycle race.
But I actually came to answer your audiobook question. I had some good luck with This American Life (you can get all of the MP3s for free) for awhile but burned out on it a bit. Then I made myself a musical bike helmet and I'm in freakin' heaven with that thing; it's the perfect amount of split attentions for me. I like fitness cycling to adventure/survival non-fiction, I could manage to push myself since the characters had it so much worse. How can you refuse to go balls out for another 3 minute interval when you're listening to a story where someone's starving to death?
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing was my favorite of that genre, had a brilliant reader.
I also liked Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.
And out of that genre, I've recently listened to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and Moneyball by Michael Lewis and I can't stop talking about either of them.
Good luck and keep at it. I got a lot of silver-bullet advice from a lot of well-meaning friends, but what really helped was finding stuff that worked for me and then ignoring them. I'm down about 50lbs over the 16 months or so.
This was fun :)
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11 (this one is reaching... it organizes... lunch?)
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Bonus - hmmmm, this?
In the Heart of the Sea was excellent. I'm also a fan of similarly harrowing nonfiction. Here are a few others to check out:
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is about a disaster on Everest. Lots of freezing to death in this one.
Alive by Piers Paul Read is about a plane crash in the Andes. Features both freezing to death and eating each other.
Maybe Into Thin Air?
>I didn't now there was a procedure for that.
Black Like Me
Start here
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Like-John-Howard-Griffin/dp/0451234219
If you haven't, you should read Black Like Me. It gives some anecdotal accounts of what it is like to be black in an area that has segregated businesses.
The Diary of Anne Frank
How could no one have mentioned "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl"?!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553296981?pc_redir=1406880381&amp;robot_redir=1
I gave my brother (who never EVER reads, and doesn't like "hard books") How to stop time also by Matt Haig, he read it in one sitting and then went out and got the rest of his books and read them all in a couple weeks. Christopher Moore is also great, Sacre Bleu is my favourite.
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for non-fiction: Letter from Birmingham Jailby Martin Luther King, Jr. anything by Audre Lorde or James Baldwin and Anne Frank and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for showing him how to appreciate life.
"Wild Swans" by Jung Chang is a tri-generational memoir spanning across some of the most interesting (and turbulent) times in China's recent history. The entire book was captivating enough that I've been meaning to re-read it for some time now. I'd highly recommend it!
All set in or over the communist era.
China:
Wild Swans
Life and Death in Shanghai
Russia:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The Long Walk.
Thanks! I guess you mean this book, right?
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Yeah, that has crossed my mind due to Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country," but I have to assume that's possible if 2,430 live regular season games of baseball are within reach each year.
I second the Horwitz nomination and add Richard Grant, author of "God's Middle Finger" and "Crazy River."
Both of those demonstrate a spirit for and enjoyment of adventure that was the core energy in Bryson's "In A Sunburned Country" and "A Walk in the Woods".
If you want to learn Australiana then check out In a Sun Burned Country by Bill Bryson, defo an entertaining read.
If you like to read you should check out Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country. Although it's a little outdated (published in 2001), Bryson is an incredible author and an even better travel writer. While it wouldn't necessarily be helpful with money or visa tips, it would be a great lead in to your travels.
Good luck!
In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson.
I love me some Bryson.
> the rich white kid had to work hard and deal with a lot of shit too?
That may be true, in which case he can tell the college about it and they can take it into account.
> I didn't say it did.
But given that colleges do take into account more than just test scores, using test scores as your only evidence that "more qualified" candidates are being passed up is basically saying that test scores = qualifications.
Look, I used to be like you. I literally wrote an editorial against affirmative action in my local newspaper when I was in high school. I don't think anybody could have convinced me then that affirmative action was OK, and I don't expect to be able to convince you now. Just know that those of us who support affirmative action, even though it may in some sense "disadvantage" the races we belong to, do so because we feel that the deck is deeply, deeply stacked against black people in this country, and that without accounting for that deck-stacking when we make decisions about who to offer the opportunity to go to college to, we perpetuate and amplify the effects of that deck stacking. We live in a world where coloblind policy would perpetuate and reinforce a very much not colorblind history and a society that doesn't actually operate in a colorblind way. As a result, we favor policy that we believe at least progresses toward a world in which colorblind policy would create colorblind outcomes, even if it means accounting for color today.
That's not a thing I can convince you of in a night, and it may not be a thing that you ever believe at any point in your life. All I ask is that you don't dismiss our argument out of hand.
And hell, if you're bored, and interested in getting a deeper perspective on this stuff, maybe even peruse materials on how black people actually are uniquely disadvantaged in the U.S.
Maybe check out similar CMVs.
Or read Coates's fantastic piece about how housing policy continued to prevent the accumulation of wealth in the black community decades after slavery ended, or his beautiful memoir to his son.
Read about how black people have been intentionally targeted for disproportionate incarceration by the society, and imagine the effect that having your race associated with poverty and crime has on popular perceptions of you by society.
That's just a handful of examples, and you don't have to engage with them now of course. Just know that many of us who have have come to the conclusion that the treatment of black people in the United States is and has been uniquely horrific, and we can't rely on colorblind institutions to make amends. Thus - affirmative action.
>So your response comes down to "You just don't understand" and "you're not educated"
Well, when answering these specific questions, yes.
>Maybe it's just not reasonable to expect a white person to truly have a black point of view.
I would never "expect a white person to have a black point of view". That is exactly the point I am trying to make. No white person can understand "a black point of view" on a fundamental level, but a white person can understand an extensive historical record of oppression and recognize how it changes the lives of the historically oppressed, especially when those very same people describe a way in which that historical oppression manifests in the present day.
>Maybe it's not reasonable to expect a person of any race to put somebody else's interests before their own.
Eh, I don't really expect people to do this. I want them to do it. I believe wholeheartedly that putting another's interests before your own is one of the most amazingly unique, human things that we are capable of doing. Action that can be interpreted as selfless is something that separates us from most, if not ALL less intelligent animals. If you don't agree, I'm not necessarily surprised. I don't expect you to hold this view. I only hope.
>Re-examine your beliefts.
Always do, always will ;-)
In fact, should you happen upon me in the correct scenario, you might see me arguing against stereotypically-"SJW" viewpoints, precisely because I have done my best not to accept wholesale the ideas of any other person, ever.
I'll (potentially) end this discussion with the following quote, from YOU:
>If you don't want me to judge black politicos based on what I see and hear from them, then I need access to their real message. Not the PR message tailored for those like me, the raw and uncut message. That is what you should be basing your faith in these people on.
If you want access to the "real message", then I advise you not reject the message given to you on first glance. For fuck's sake, go to one of these "segregated" discussion groups that spawned this thread and actually spend some time meeting people who are different from you and listen. Try your best not to resolve to attack the messages therein and instead question them as a child would, in an attempt to understand from a more fundamental and deeper level. I know I have; it's precisely why I've gone from someone who rejects this type of theory to someone who feels deeply committed to it.
I have spent more time on this website than I care to admit attempting to understand the actual arguments of people who rail against "SJWs" and their ilk. I've done hours upon hours of research, dissected innumerable arguments. I grew up in an environment where I was friendly with and regularly conversed with people who are very ideologically different that I am now. I implore you to really consider how much you've attempted to challenge yourself on this issue and others, as my genuine belief is that anyone who spends enough time on this topic will come to believe something much more similar to what I believe. I would be insane to not believe otherwise.
____
tl;dr: I really hope you read the entirety of the above and consider it, but if you don't (and especially if you do) I request that you immerse yourself for a bit longer than you are used to in some of the following material. Note that I would never assert that none of the below is infallible or devoid of bias, but it is certainly worth your time and (I believe) would be a significant challenge (in the competitive sense) to the way you think about these issues. Let your ideas battle it out after you consume the following media, really wrestle with the minutiae of everything you take in. It's worth it.
There is plenty more, but the first and third listed here are particularly easy to consume and I'd suggest you read/watch them.
EDIT: would also love some recommendations of movies/documentaries/books that YOU believe would change MY beliefs. I'm always in search of that.
Thank you, once again, for that propaganda-laden YouTube channel. I'd be more impressed if you could find a more credible source than some guy picking out black crimes.
As for your statistics, numbers will only get you so far. I will accept that there is a higher crime rate among blacks, but much of that is because of the culture that the U.S. instills in them. And before you call me out on being an "SJW", let me make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with them. I find the majority of what they have to say ridiculous. However, the combination of poverty and fear/frustration stemming from racism that many black people experience is more often than not responsible for crime. Historically, black people in the U.S. have been disadvantaged, both socially and economically. Also historically, those who feel disadvantaged or trodden upon tend to lash out, no matter their race or culture. Honestly, you're just being racist at this point. Your statements look no farther than what you consider "objective" facts, and anyone with the even the most basic critical thinking skills realizes that statistics taken out of context are meaningless. Have a little empathy, and before you make blanket statements about black people being inherently more violent than whites, try to look at living in the U.S. from their perspective. Here is a wonderful book about growing up black in the U.S., maybe it will help you learn a little understanding: http://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543
I do agree that the media has failed us all. The discussion has become so warped and compartmentalized that it has ground to an invective-laced stalemate.
My only suggestion is to expose yourself to stories told by African-Americans. Skip the news, go straight to a primary source. The best one off the top of my head is this book.
It's the letters the author wrote to his son before he went off to college. The author knew his son would be out there in the world without him, and he wouldn't be around to explain the things he'd have to deal with, so he told him the story of his experience as a black man in America.
If you do decide to read it I'm sure you won't agree with everything in it, and I don't think any reasonable person should expect you to. It's just a very sober, very well written look at the other side of the story.
Starship Troopers is good stuff.
I've been on a WW2 history kick. Three different books I've been reading a few chapters of each night:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E. B. Sledge.
Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds by Christina Olds.
Here's my three faves:
Sand In The Wind
Body Count
With The Old Breed
Got two good books for you:
https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419063/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480559595&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=sledge+with+the+old+breed
https://www.amazon.com/Tennozan-Battle-Okinawa-Atomic-1994-05-10/dp/B01K2E9R4S/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480559725&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=tennozan+the+battle+of+okinawa+and+the+atomic+bomb
The 101st was no secret.
They were badass as fuck and the Krauts knew it.
Your comment still kicks ass, though!
If you haven't read Donald R. Burgett's series of first-person accounts, YOU MUST!
Curahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy is the first one.
It's the With The Old Breed by E.B. Sledge of the ETO.
With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge
Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie
http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
i liked it more than Dick Winters book Beyond Band of Brothers.
Watch HBO's Band of brothers and HBO's The pacific then read these war memoirs,
http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
http://www.amazon.com/Helmet-My-Pillow-Parris-Pacific/dp/0553593315
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Before-During-Brothers/dp/0425227871
http://www.amazon.com/Band-Brothers-Regiment-Airborne-Normandy/dp/074322454X
I don't think so. My copy says With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
Regardless, one the best WWII books out there and it definitely deserves all the praise it gets.
Agreed, just read this instead..
All true, Peleliu must have been insanity. If I remember correctly it was like 10 square miles. If you haven't heard of it I would strongly recommend picking up "With the Old Breed", it is the first hand account of a Marine mortar man at Peleliu and Okinawa and it is incredibly good. I read it in like three days.
(http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195)
Sry for poor format my Reddit skills are newish
This isn't heavily science-y and a bit journalized, but I really enjoyed Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadaver's by Mary Roach. I also like Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. There's a lot of overlap with what he teaches at his UChicago Eco & Evo course. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is also wonderful, but will likely make you angry. Yet another interesting read is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
It's not a textbook, and perhaps it goes against your "not be popular science" stipulation, but The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an amazing book... genetics, cancer biology, medicine, some historical perspective of those fields, tied into one real-life family with its own deep story. I think you will find it awesome and accessible.
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
>The difference between skin cells and a fertilized egg in the womb, as I believe to be correct, is that skin cells (not only being dead), also do not have the same differentiating and human-producing capabilities that a egg does. I don't want to call it a "potential person," I'm calling it a person and saying that it's future development will include the generation of a consciousness and sentience.
And a HeLa Stem Cell Culture?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
They came from a human woman, Henrietta Lacks
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
There are more HeLa cells out there than were ever in Henrietta as a talking, walking, human. But you can't talk to the cells in a petri-dish. and they are alive.
It's a big topic and I'm no expert, but I'm happy to share some of what I know.
When black people were brought here to the US as slaves, they were considered property rather than people. They had no ownership over their bodies. Many female slaves were raped by their slave owners, and left to raise any resulting children (who would become slaves as well, and would sometimes be sold off to another family). White babies were often wet nursed by slaves, to the detriment of black babies.
Before black people were considered people in the US, they were legally considered 3/5 of a person, and having one drop of black blood meant someone was considered black. (Even now, it's why Americans consider President Obama to be black, even though his mother was white.) African Americans have faced generations of disadvantages - sharecropping,
appallingly unethical STI tests, segregation, forced sterilization, redlining, the mass incarceration of black men, and the pay gap for black women. Black people here are still crawling out from under all that. Meanwhile, white politicians lead people to believe black people are to blame for these disadvantages, by trotting out terms like "welfare queen" and "black-on-black crime".
If you're interested in more reading, I recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates's long-form essay "The Case for Reparations". Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a good look at how US medical and research institutions have treated black people over the course of several generations. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing (fiction) is an incredible, heartbreaking look at how systemic racism ripples through generations of African Americans.
I thought "On Speed" was a good read. https://www.amazon.com/Speed-Benzedrine-Adderall-Nicolas-Rasmussen/dp/0814776396/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1487033664&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=on+speed
Also, it doesn't get much better than "The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks" https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1487033763&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+secret+life+of+henrietta+lacks
Darn, you beat me by 10 minutes. It was a pretty good book. boop
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Synopsis: Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Mary Roach is another great nonfiction author.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was pretty kickass. It's the story of a woman whose cancer cells were the first to prove "immortal," endlessly being reproduced for research.
Check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1344638032&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=immortal+life+henrietta
Happy birthday!
If you're not down for heights, I think a neat bucket list item is to go on a road trip! Take a long weekend off and go somewhere cheesy, check out the largest bowling pin, take in some weird sights. It's fun, even though its not really possible where I'm from.
As a good non-fiction book, The eternal life of Henrietta lacks. Haven't had a chance to read it, but I love pop science works. I'm not super schooled of microbiology and this seems very nice mix of history, microbio, and a bit of rights of the deceased.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
It's 400pgs but ridiculously amazing.
I just went and stared at my bookshelves and realized that there was a distinct paucity of minority characters.
However, some general recommendations:
feed for the teenager uninterested in the world at large or the dystopian fiction fan.
My Date with Satan Short stories, usually from a female perspective. High schoolers would probably delight in the bad language and messed up characters.
Trickster's Choice; A young adult girl-power fantasy/spy novel with a lot to say about colonialism. My strongest recommendation on this list. Lots of major minority characters also.
Infidel; A heavy-handed memoir about triumph by a woman who "escaped" Somalia and is now a European politician. Controversial for a multitude of reasons and has nothing nice to say about Islam, but you know your students better than I do.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for the scientifically inclined.
Wicked for modern classic fans who'd appreciate deeper meanings.
I think that is largely correct. My sense is that the criticisms of Ohler's book also criticized his tone and the potential negative impact his would could have. Polemic doesn't often foster dialogue.
Other common criticisms of popular history are that it often fails to credit the work of academics and that it is often incorrect or not very nuanced. For example, Empire of the Summer Moon is a very popular book about the Comanche nation. Many of the main points had very recently in the extensively researched and truly brilliant book Comanche Empire. Moreover, Empire of the Summer Moon included inaccuracies that would likely have been caught during the editing of an academic book.
There are academics who see the value of popular history writing because it can so effectively share important material to a general readership. Guns, Germs, and Steel is an example of a book some academics admire. I read it and 1491 because a professor I respected recommended them.
Full disclosure, I'm an academic who works in cultural history and literature. I think about these issues a lot. I'm glad to see them discussed in a wide open forum.
Not many historians have that nice, rolling narrative style of Mr. Foote. It's so easy to read and it tells the story in a compact, but intimate way with a focus on the people and their motives.
To answer your question I would look at histories written by journalists such as Barbara Tuchman - Guns of August. I also like S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon, Hampton Sides Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers. Lot's of good narrative histories out there - just keep looking and share any new good ones with Reddit! Good luck!
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
and it is absolutely fascinating and well written.
The Comanche
Empire of the Summer Moon goes into great detail about it, but basically the Comanche would wreck the shit out of anyone until Texas Rangers learned how to fight them and got their hands on the first commercial revolvers in the 1840s.
The various groups who fought them (Spanish, Mexicans, Texans) with muzzle loading firearms got ripped to pieces by guys on horseback with bows and 14ft lances (that they used to kill Buffalo, so skewering people was easy). They also had shields covered in Buffalo hides that could stop bullets. They were so good at riding that they could lean sideways on their horse and fire their bow over the horse's back or under the horse' neck while on the move (using the horse's body as a shield).
Obviously not a great deal of history of the American Indians or Native Americans(for the PC crowd) before the 1500's but the Comanche Indians fit the bill.
This is a great book about them, vicious as can be.
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
The Comanche were specifically a brutal, rapey, slavery, genociding tribe as they existed in 1775 and were just getting started. It would be a bit like a Mongol Superman, but without all of the effeteness, nicety, and devotion to morality the Mongols were known for.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591060
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
amazon
I highly recommend two books:
Amazon
Tells the story of the Comanche, horse nomads and the most proficient mounted warriors North America has ever seen.
Amazon
Tells the story of the Navajo, as well as the American/Mexican/Spanish expansion into the west. I really took a lot from this for my frontier world.
I heard the author of this book explain it during a radio interview. He made a pretty convincing argument, but I never bothered to read the book.
The evidence he's talking about is from a book someone wrote after the fact. His son fits a lot of the evidence better. Smaller hands, worked with nicole, had attacked people with knives, had a dog (they found dog hair), matched the dna (he's a relative), and most damningly oj hired lawyers for him days after the murder.
I really wanted to read it for myself, but I was unable to find a copy of the book when I last decided I wanted to read it but it seems like it's available on amazon now I guess because of the resurgence of interest in the case. link
The idea originated from the book OJ is Innocent and I can Prove It.
Ironically, going by the evidence it appears his son is the actual murderer, so it is no wonder the evidence was iffy.
O.J DIDNT DO IT.
http://www.amazon.com/O-J-Innocent-I-Can-Prove/dp/1616086203/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1342044251&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=oj+is+innocent+and+i+can+prove+it
http://www.amazon.com/O-J-Guilty-But-Not-Murder/dp/0970205805/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1342044251&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=oj+is+innocent+and+i+can+prove+it
read the latter and it blew my mind... I dont doubt that LA screwed this one up. It was OJ or bust
> But I can't remember reading one where the author flat out names somebody as a murderer before the police do and without evidence that can be used in a trial.
I'm just going to leave this here...
Do it
Into Thin Air, A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster. That was a gripping motherfucking book.
>I think it matters where "she" claims to empathize with the struggles and feelings of people who were actually born as women and then runs around lecturing other men like she has any authority on the matter.
She definitely doesn't have authority on matters during childhood or before her transition age, but if she can pass as a woman on the street, for instance, then she can definitely be an authority on how random women are treated by strangers. If she passes for a woman at work, then she can definitely comment on the treatment of women in the workplace.
Basically, her capacity to speak with authority on the matter is a function of how consistantly she passes in a given context, and if how independent that context is to a woman's life in the period before Wu's transition age.
> It's like a white guy arbitrarily declaring himself African American and claiming he fully understands and empathizes with race-based issues the moment he makes said declaration; it's completely idiotic.
Well, no, it's not quite the same, because it's really fucking hard to pass as an African American when you have white skin and facial features.
There was one man, many decades ago, who did everything short of plastic surgery in order to pass as an AA man, and he wrote a book about how he was treated.
I wonder if anyone during that time were likewise trying to claim he could speak with no authority on the treatment of black people because he wasn't born black.
Couldn't comment when I made this, but if you haven't read Wild Swans by her, you should. It provides a very good narrative for 3 different time periods (pre-communism/revolution/communism) and actual experiences/eye-witness viewpoints. I read it while I was studying Chinese politics, and it opened my eyes. I know this article linked is brief, but Jung Chang is a good writer. While the validity of parts of her other book (Mao: The Unknown story) is debated, she is a worthwhile author to read if you are interested in China.
The link to the guardian article is more informative, but the new book is about empress dowager Cixi
>Her "groundbreaking" new biography will "comprehensively overturn … the conventional view of Cixi as a deeply conservative and cruel despot", said Jonathan Cape, and show how she abolished foot-binding, developed foreign trade and diplomacy, and revolutionised China's education system.
no concise fix to a centuries-long problem but if you're american (or even not american) you can read this https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi-Coates/dp/0812993543/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1523288519&sr=8-1&keywords=between+the+world+and+me
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind About a 14 year old boy in Africa who builds a windmill from an american textbook without knowing English. Many struggles to be overcome and is a fairly recent story. I learned a bout it when the boy apperared on The Daily show I think, so it has a fairly good ending.
Tell that to The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind ... he used these initially. Actually a really, really good book. there's a Ted video too. (it's a dynamo light btw)
I realize the Wikipedia article isn't terribly helpful, which is why I linked the story about the NYPD case. I, and many many others (unsurprisingly!) find that case to be extremely disturbing. And of course, there is the infamous Rampart Scandal in the LAPD, involving over 70 officers accused of some form of misconduct (and many felonies), with several cases still being unsolved today. I also read a book many years ago called Gang Leader For A Day, where a U of Chicago graduate student embeds himself within a gang of drug dealers in the local projects, and witnesses rampant police brutality (including instances of robbery and unwarranted searches and beatings).
Of course, I'm sure you can come up with excuses as to why these examples don't worry you (NYPD/LAPD cases were exception, the book is just anecdotal and probably full of lies to sell more copies or whatever). And that's fine, I can't change your mentality. But I think it is important for LEOs to understand that these narratives are out there, that they are very convincing to the general population, and that they're not going to go away.
Born to Run by [Christopher McDougall] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McDougall)
Not spewing BS, please read my other comments when you choose to disregard something or ask for references if necessary.
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307279189
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnwIKZhrdt4
Por el nombre de fermentados no me voy a detener, yo conozco el Tesgüino (mas tomado del lado este de la sierra) y el bacanora (mas tomado del lado de Sonora).
tradicionalmente los Tarahumaras no toman nada ni consumen nada para correr por que eso afecta su rendimiento o pueden tener un accidente, ellos corren en acantilados y sierras. Se ha estudiado su tradicion de correr y se cree que el runners high o liberacion de endorfinas a cierto tiempo de correr es su "droga".
Correr tiene una tradicion prehispanica y si tenian rituales en donde consumian estupefacientes y corrian entre distintos pueblos: bajo caminos trazados y limpios, distancias no tan largas. Ahora se ha reducido a las tesgüinadas que no son mas que bacanales de alcohol y droga.
Te recomiendo el libro de nacidos para correr de Christopher McDowell, ahí viene todo lo que te estoy diciendo. Para variar un extranjero que viene a estudiar a nuestras etnias porque nosotros no podemos.
Yo se que los mandaderos de narcos usualmente no leen (causa-consecuencia), pero echale ganas, yo se que tu puedes.
You should not read this book if you want to keep using your shoe example.
Anyway, the argument that you're making is really about scientific advances, not economic ones. Except for the healthcare thing, that one is applicable.
Born to Run. Highly recommend it if you're looking for some motivation and to open your mind to the many different perspectives of running.
It wasn't. it was the french. We mutated it later on. see the history of haiti and the treatment of the dumas family.
the truth is a bitch and people vote down but I cite sources:[According this painfully researched book: the black count by tom reiss not only was france a colonial power but at the time due to linear succession the count was black. You'll napolean being a dick, miscagination laws and the guy of the cover killing thousands for the glory of france.] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Count-Revolution-Betrayal/dp/0307382478)
Classism definitely exists, but like everything else doesn't exist in a bubble. Class, race, gender, sex, age...these things all intersect and interact in ways that make social realities for people. Academics (which I am not) have different opinions about the extent to which one is more important than another. I would say yes, historically it has been far more difficult for a person of color to move up in American society and yes, that is still the case today. But I'm just a guy on reddit who likes to read. If you're interested in this stuff here's where I started: The Color of Law, New Jim Crow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the autobiography of Malcolm X, The Warmth of Other Suns
> Having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks and having lived in the projects for a time, I found myself deeply conflicted by the author's portrayal of others and himself. In the end he is only somewhat honest with himself about being the biggest hustler of all in the book. How exactly do you eat people's food and sit on their couches and follow them around for six years and in the end say you weren't even friends?
Is that the book you meant? I'm not sure I see the applicability.
> I think you're extrapolating from individual stories from the margins to an inaccurate view of how sexist other cultures are, how static other cultures remain, & how separate immigrants would remain in subsequent generations.
I hope you are right. Perhaps I am overly pessimistic.
Please read the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400052181/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_lFFGwb4HMQB9G not justifying or defending anything. I think the Internet is full of Donald Trumps and very rarely a thought out and balanced close look at both sides of the issue. This book did that.
Here's the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
It was excellent and not at all what you expect. The compelling aftermath of Jim Crow racism that places Mrs. Lacks unwitting sacrifice to science in perspective. And Ms. Skloot breaks every rule of a biographer, and lets the story rope her in.
The little known story of the discovery of the Hela cell line and the woman who unknowingly changed science could not have been without the thoughtful voice of Ms. Skloot.
>However, when we speak of inequality, we are led to believe that inequality is fueled solely by white America. That simply isn’t the case.
Your problem is listening to MSM discourse on racism in the first place. It's mostly just white people dominating the conversation, saying nonsense, left and right.
When you go to people like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, or Michelle Alexander, or Ta-Nehisi Coates, or Karen Ho, or Deepa Kumar, or anybody with a narrative that isn't white, you quite quickly come to understand how it is indeed that inequality is solely fueled by white America. Racism in America didn't start with black people. Racism in America isn't perpetuated by black people either; the war on drugs isn't a black American idea. But it's not like you can treat minorities they way white people do and expect them to be like, "Yeah! I wanna be cool with those guys!"
Discrimination by minorities is a reaction to, and not cause of, the racism of white America. The feedback loop between discrimination by minorities and racism by white America is pretty much where we're at.
To be explicit: that's not to say that minority communities don't have social problems of their own. But then here comes white America screaming, "Identity politics is destroying America!" People on the left and right proclaim this! It's like they expect minorities to live up to a certain colorless, featureless identity (one that caters to white people because it's not like they're calling for an identity of blackness or Hispanics or Asians) in order to overcome some social obstacle, then white America will turn around and say, "Well, what about the problems in your community?" What do you mean my community? I thought we all had the same identity? I thought you and I were supposed to help each other with our social obstacles...
White America absolutely fuels inequality.
I toyed with trying to soften that accusatory blow...but fuck it. I've read all of those books I linked except one. I got all day to defend what I've said here.
>"People like me are good, people different from me are bad" is inherently harmful.
You do indicate a high degree of education in a specific political philsophy, where you would read my statements as a statement of moral bias. Nowhere did I give you any indication whatsoever that this was the case; you made it up in your mind, which most simply indicates you are indoctrinated, not educated.
The fact that you see this as a hierarchy of value systems, which you do as indicated by that statement, is a weakness in your world outlook not ameliorated by whatever education you have highly attained.
>Believing that you have created some sort of cultural "gift" and thus benefited the world is harmful.
The social metrics of the average Japanese and South Korean indicate you are wrong.
>but rather because they give rise to sentiments of segregation and superiority.
That's an assumption on your part. No need to get presumptuous, I'm not presuming I am superior to a Japanese. I am pointing out that Western culture is superior to Eastern, which is a fact, not an opinion, and it is not a moral fact in the way that money is neither good nor bad.
>These points of view are not harmful because they are "wrong" (though I do not concede that they are "right")
Your argument is moral. Narrowly moral, assumptive, and insulting in its presumption.
The West fought WWII and did not colonize the East. It would have been simple. We thence fought a war in Korea.
The inhabitants of the lands under the Western sphere are objectively and incontrovertibly better off, by solid social metrics, than those who aren't.
I am a Veteran, and I like history, and military history. Men dying at Chosin to hold off an overwhelming Chinese advance (which resulted in the complete destruction of 3 Chinese divisions, they actually ceased to exist), so that the US could get a mere 1/3 of the Korean refugees off the beach, by dumping supplies over the sides of ships and cramming it full of 20,000 refugees, for a grand total of 90,000 refugees in one battle alone, is a benefit.
It is not emotional, it's not patriotic. It is an objective, undeniable fact. Those 90,000 refugees from Chosin alone went on to produce hundreds of thousands of South Koreans who today enjoy rapidly-increasing life metrics, in contrast to what I don't have to mention for those who, unfortunately, were not evacuated.
If your education has buried these easily-verifiable facts, and there are thousands of them, under contemporaneous intersectional theories for well-paid Professors and overt, and known, Chinese infiltration of Academia, then you have been ill-served by your education.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chosin/
https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
Western Civilization is better, in objective, verifiable terms, and it is more important to remember that than to goalkeep whatever superiority you hypothesize may be forming in everyone's mind.
If your practice good posture, then the chair doesn't matter at all imo. Also there is a near impossible chance that you are qualified enough to tell this guy that he's wrong. If anything, then I would say a more comfy chair would persuade some one to stay sitting for longer amounts of time, allowing less time for physical activity, which has a positive correlation to good health. Also have you ever heard of the book Born To Run? In a part of it they discuss how humans succeeded evolutionary partly because we were able to run incredibly long distances, tiring out the prey that we hunted. They discuss a tribe in Mexico who run from village to village, sometimes for 30 hours straight without stopping, and they run in barefeet or an extremely thin leather sole. So if this book is correct when it say that running shoes were a detrimental invention for runners (because the tribesman are an example that we have natural cushion on our feet and the shoes makes your feet more sensitive/ bones develop weakly), then I would say my argument has some validity that a comfy chair actually hinders long term comfort.
check her diary
http://www.amazon.com/Anne-Frank-Diary-Young-Girl/dp/0553296981/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1394297822&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+diary+of+anne+frank
Guess no one has ever seen clerks 2