(Part 2) Best historical study books according to redditors
We found 1,436 Reddit comments discussing the best historical study books. We ranked the 501 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Theodore Allen's The Invention of the White Race explores this, framing 1676's Bacon's Rebellion, where slaves of various ethnicities and origins banded together against rich elites in Virginia, as the inciting incident that led to the first promulgation of slavery laws based entirely on race.
Firstly, a caveat. I am not, nor have I ever been, a Muslim. I have, however, studied Islam at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
That being said, let me point out just a few huge blunders in this article:
>Mohammed was in Mecca preaching to any who would listen that he alone was the Divine Prophet of the One God, Allah
False. Mohammad claimed to be one in a line of many prophets. Islam also accepts Jesus, Moses, Adam, Noah and other as prophets.
>traveled to the Jewish city of Medina
Medina wasn't called Medina then. It was known as Yathrib. There were Jews living there, from the Jewish tribes of the Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayza and Banu Qaynuqah. But Arabs lived there as well. The name Medina is a contraction of the Arabic Medinat-ul-Nabi ( مدينة النبي ), meaning 'City of the Prophet'. It acquired this name only after Muhammad migrated there.
The author writes that, "Mohammed sneaked out of Mecca..." but also "Mohammed was consumed with rage over his being booted out of Mecca". Which is it? Did he sneak out or was he booted out? A serious contradiction.
>Even the Jews of Medina, who had shown him such kindness, were eventually driven from their homes while Mohammed's Muslim band pillaged the city
The three Jewish tribes I mentioned above were eventually driven out. This is usually based on betrayals of the conditions laid out in the Constitution of Medina, to which those tribes had agreed.
>In 630 A.D. Mohammed marched triumphantly into Mecca with 40,000 followers. His revenge was complete, but the horrors of Islam had only begun.
Inane. There were skirmishes between the Meccans and the Ummah (Muslim community) that culminated in the Battle of Badr, fought on March 13, 624 AD, when the Meccans attacked Medina. The Muslims won. A year later, in 625 AD, the Meccans attacked the Ummah in the Battle of Uhud, which the Muslims lost. In 627 AD the Meccans, allied with some of the Jewish tribes mentioned above, again attacked the Ummah in The Battle of the Trench. Ultimately the Muslims won the day and Mecca surrendered. To say all of this was 'revenge' for being driven out is simplistic, ignores the context of the event and shows no real understanding of the events leading up to the conquest of Mecca.
>In all, Mohammed had eleven wives, nine of them simultaneously, with the youngest being only ten years old. Eye-witness accounts claim that Aisha brought her toys with her when she was delivered to the Prophet of Allah.
Again, overly simplistic. Blood and family ties were--and are--central to Arab culture. We are familiar with marriage alliances in Europe, and in Arabia it was the same. Many of Muhammad's marriages were undertaken to cement alliances between tribes. Simply put, through this and other maneuvers, Muhammad united the Arabian peninsula in peace for the first time in its history. Yes, he married Aisha when she was young, but there is no real evidence to support sexual activity between them until she had reached the culturally-appropriate age for such according to Arab culture (this remains hotly debated...a debate beyond the scope of this post).
>Mohammed regarded women as nothing more than sexual toys and servants
Patently false. The Qur'an gives women rights they did not have before Islam. These included the right to initiate divorce; to inherit property; and to have their say in the governance of the Ummah. Additionally, the Qur'an forbade female infanticide, which was a common occurrence before Muhammad's prophetic career.
This entire article is full of invective, a lack of historical knowledge, and blatant fabrications designed to support an anti-Islamic agenda. It is fear and hate-mongering of the worst sort. It smacks of the kind of Bush-era paranoia and Islamophobia that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
You can find out more by following the links above. Also, the following books might be of interest:
Muhammad: his Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings
A History of Islamic Societies by Ira Lapidus
A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani
Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong.
Hope this helps.
I have always enjoyed Isaac Asimov's non-fiction. He wrote numerous history books, including the excellent
Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times.
The Near East: 10,000 Years of History
The Land of Canaan
The Egyptians
The Greeks: A Great Adventure
The Roman Republic
The Roman Empire
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire
The Shaping of England
The Shaping of France
The Dark Ages
Christopher Columbus: Navigator to the New World
Ferdinand Magellan: Opening the Door to World Exploration
The Shaping of North America
The Birth of the United States
Asimov also wrote excellent histories of science and mathematics:
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery
A Short History of Biology
A Short History of Chemistry
Most of Asimov's non-fiction was aimed at the masses (as was Sagan's Cosmos), so they tend not to go into great depth. However he was excellent at showing how an event or discovery would have direct or indirect impact on a future event or discovery (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that). Most of these were written in the 1960's and 1970's
Ajattelin olla kommentoimatta kokonaan, mutta nyt mennään niin aiheen vierestä ja niin pahasti pieleen niin on pakko kommentoida. On täysi myytti, että länsimaat ovat syypäitä lähi-idän ongelmiin. Lähi-idän ongelmat olivat olemassa jo kauan ennen länsimaita.
Ennen kuin kommentoin enempää, annan muutaman kirjallisuusviitteen...
Ensinnä on täysi myytti lähi-idän olleen keskiajalla länsi- ja keski-Eurooppa edellä. Harha johtuu erilaisesta yhteiskuntarakenteesta. Lähi-idässä kaupungit rakennettiin siellä täällä olevien hedelmällisten saarekkeiden keskelle. Yhdellä alueella kaikki keskittyi ja keskitettiin yhteen metropoliin. Euroopassa taas ei ollut pulaa hedelmällisestä maasta ja maanosa oli täynnä pieniä linnoitettuja kaupunkeja, joissa kaikissa oli omat pienet yhteiskunnalliset instituutiot. Tämän takia lähi-itä näyttää kehittyneelle sillä siellä oli muutama iso metropoli. Eurooppa taas näyttää pimeälle paikalle sillä kaikki on pientä ja hajautunutta. Tosin tämä on myös osittain harhaa, sillä esimerkiksi Notre Damen rakennus aloitettiin jo 1163.
Mielenkiintoinen seikka lähi-idässä on, että yhdyskuntarakenne on hyvin pitkälle pysynyt samana. Syyria on rakentunut Aleppo-Damascus kaksikolle. Irakia hallitsee Baghdad. Jordan rakentuu Ammanin ympärille. Egyptin sydän on Kairo. Kaikissa näissä maissa on myös samat ongelmat mitä oli 1000 vuotta sitten. Hallitsija hallitsee 100% metropolin sydämmessä. Mitä kauemmaksi metropolista mennään, sitä vähemmän valtaa keskushallinnolla on, kunnes jossain kohtaa hallinnon valta katoaa täysin ja on riippuvainen paikallisten heimojen hyväksynnästä. Maita uhkaavat uhat ovat myös samat kuin aikoja sitten. Aikoja sitten uhka keskushallinnolle tuli erämaiden heimoilta, jotka liittoutuessaan saattoivat kukistaa hallitsijan. ISIS:n synty ei ole mikään poikkeus lähi-idän historiassa vaan toistaa samaa vanhaa historiallista kaavaa.
Persia tai paremmin sanottuna Iran on oma tapauksena. Iranissa ei ollut yhtä isoa hedelmällistä aluetta, joka olisi mahdollistanut isojen metropolien synnyn. Sen sijaan Iranissa yhteiskunta siroutui pieniin eristettyihin yhteisöihin. Näitä eristettyjä yhteisöjä sitoi yhteen yksi yhteinen kieli ja ennen kaikkea usko Shahiin. Iranin historia on lyhyesti sanottuna surullinen sarja sisällissotia jossa haastaja pyrkii saamaan vallan itselleen ja tulemaan Shahiksi. Olojen epävakauden johdosta iranilainen yhteiskunta on hyvin lyhyt jänteinen ja suoraan sanottuna paranoidi. Iranin iänikuisten sisällissotien kaavan rikkoi vain ainoastaan ulkopuolisen uhan ilmestyminen Venäjän ja Britannian muodossa. Kun nämä kaksi valtiota ilmeistyivät kuvioon, Iran oli jo jäänyt todella pahasti jälkeen muuta maailmaa. Länsimaalaiset intellektuellit mielellään maalavat Iranin kaikkien ongelmien syyksi Britannian ja Yhdysvallat. Tosiasia kuitenkin on, että Iran oli takapajula jossa valta oli niin Shahilla kuin Ulamalla. Jos 50-luvulla Ulama ei olisi asettunut Shahin puolelle, olisi se kaapannut vallan ennemmin tai myöhemmin. Yhdysvaltojen ja CIA:n väliintulo vain lykkäsi Ulaman valtaannousua.
I wouldn't be overly concerned of swearing when talking of deities, per say; especially as someone who fucking loves Zeus. The sensitivity people often have towards swearing and profanity is actually quite contemporary, beginning in the 18th century. Such language has often taken a mundane place in the ancient Hellenic world, in truth. I recommend you read the book Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr, who goes over obscenities in parts of the ancient Hellenic world, such as Rome, for example.
Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.
Books - General History of the Middle East
Books - Middle East Military History
Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Think Tanks
Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
In How We Got to Now, Johnson describes the connection between the printing press, glass-wearing, and developments in glass technologies that eventually led to astronomy and fiber optic networks.
Race/Black Liberation
Technology and Politics
Greater Middle East
no, see, that's not 'being fair'
whiteness is a construct and a dominant one usually used to divide. people are added to whiteness as new enemies are created. there is no real white history, because there is no real 'white race'. Jews, Irish, Italians, so on and so forth - commonly referred to as white now, but not previously. Only now because those seeking to divide us through violence find it useful to include them in an 'us or them' mentality. That's an extremely basic way of putting it, but historically 'white', 'aryan', etc, only start to exist and show up when they are being used to motivate acts that I would consider violent - colonization, slavery, genocide, etc.
of course there has always been war, and of course there have always been border conflicts, ethnic cleansing, genocide, but 'whiteness', like 'blackness' is an invention of this. it's not the same as violence based on nationality, belief systems, or even real lineage - white power is based entirely on buying into the idea of whiteness.
if anyone is actually curious about this, The Invention of the White Race is important to read. Here's a presentation on it that I haven't watched the whole thing of but seems to be on point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gq77rOuZck
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-White-Race-Oppression-Control/dp/1844677699
European history is a bit different, and as a jew who had family in camps, I feel it's also really important to the current conversation. but I'm not sure I have as good a single source as this one for the US.
But I don't expect most redditors to reach past surface level, this is complex stuff.
Googled it, first good link.
I remember the story of her fundraising speeches from this book, which is like a kickass super well written nonfiction almost novelistic account of the founding of Israel.
All the books these guys wrote together are great, informative reads.
"their own kind" lol that is not quite what I am talking about
...by preserving in translation many classical texts that would otherwise have been lost. Do you think Aristotle contributed to the Western Canon? The Roman Catholic church sure does, just ask St. Thomas Aquinas. Now who do you think you have to thank for that? I'll give you a hint.
And guess who Aquinas' favorite commentator on Aristotle was? This guy named Averroes, whose full name was Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd.
Try reading a history book; you might start with A History of the Arab Peoples.
Falls sich jemand mit der wissenschaftlichen Basis für interethnische Unterschiede in der Verteilung von (genetischen) Verhaltensprädispositionen beschäftigen will, empfehle ich dieses Buch zum Einstieg:
https://www.amazon.de/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/0143127160
Es ist übrigens Konsens unter Wissenschaftlern der jeweiligen Fachbereiche, dass menschliches Verhalten eine große genetische Komponente hat und dass in einzelnen ethnische Gruppen spezifische Selektion stattgefunden hat u.a. auch auf Gene, die an der Gehirnentwicklung beteiligt sind. Die Frage ist eher worauf genau selektiert wurde. Warum ist offensichtlich: unterschiedliche ethnische Gruppen haben in unterschiedlichen natürlichen bzw. kulturellen Umgebungen gelebt. Vor allem seit Beginn des Ackerbaus haben sich die Lebensbedingungen massiv geändert. Der menschliche Verstand ist keinesfalls in der Altsteinzeit stehen geblieben. Verbliebene Jäger und Sammler-völker kommen vielleicht deswegen im Vergleich am schlechtesten mit dem modernen Leben zurecht.
That Noble Dream
Peter Novick
It is a history of 20th century American professional historians and a real eye opener. One highlight: Charles Beard was the most respected historian in the country in 1940. His books were the best. His research was the tightest. People near-unanimously described him as one of the nicest people they ever met.
He became a pariah overnight because he had misgivings about the World War II project. The wikipedia article alludes to this, but if you read Novick's presentation your head will spin. And not just his telling of the Charles Beard story. The entire book is like that.
This + this + this = Socialism and worker autonomy cannot come quickly enough
> This my friends, is not the first reset done by the elites. I take it that they wait for a certain breaking point in society.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
The above book describes the timeframe they operate on; although basically it's astrological. They believe that only the periods of time which correspond with certain astrological signs should be permitted to have continuous memory of each other, while there needs to be some sort of cataclysm seperating others, where the memory of the preceding time is wiped out.
They are also very strong evolutionists, and they don't tolerate stragglers. This is part of the reason why they generally do not tolerate the existence of indigenous groups, because they think that the whole of humanity should keep up with whatever they think its' current technological/cultural scenario should be, and they usually kill anyone who they consider regressive. They don't believe in dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis. They think that everything is continually moving forward, and that nothing should be permitted to ever remain the same, even if genuine stability is found.
Judaism is a major exception to this rule; it is an Aries age religion, which has operated continually for three astrological ages, and is now entering a fourth, Aquarius. Presumably the exception is tolerated due to the power held by some of its' adherents, although it probably also had something to do with the motivation behind the Holocaust as well.
This is also why I do not condone evolution as an idea, because I know who it comes from, and what its' social consequences are.
John Keegan's 2nd world war book?
https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-John-Keegan/dp/0143035738
Waco wasn't exactly carried out by the US military (It was mostly ATF Bureau) but the Feds definitely acted in a military-like way when they massacred non-violent men, women and children living in a commune.
The Kent State Shooting however, was carried out by the Ohio National Guard. Also, for those who may not know already, It is against the law to use the US military against US civilians.
It's scary and sad that we are having this conversation today.
Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Sadly still relevant.
I read "The March Of Folly" this summer, a history book written in 1985 that examines folly in government and policy counter to the self interest of the state enacting it. One of the major case studies is about the renaissance popes, with an entire chapter devoted to Alexander VI AKA Rodrigo Borgia. It discusses the Pazzi conspiracy and the criminal nature of the Borgia, as well as the murderous and incestuous nature of Cesare and Lucretia. It was great to look back and realize just how much from AC:2 was accurate, and then playing AC: Brotherhood see how well it continued as such.
http://www.amazon.com/March-Folly-Troy-Vietnam/dp/0345308239
For shits and giggles I looked up the stats for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Ancient Greeks and Romans swore all the time — By Zeus! By Hercules! You can see examples in Plato's dialogues.
For anyone interested in swearing, this is a great book on its history in the West
Holy Shit
It's interesting to see how Shakespeare has religious oaths only in the early plays: the puritan parliament under James made them illegal, although you could still use four-letter words on stage!
At Qwill2's request here is my reading for Spring / Autumn 2013.
Here in the Southern Hemisphere it is Spring and I am working my way through a number of books as pre-reading for one MOOC and post-reading for another.
For a differing point of view:
As well I am looking at Pratchett and Baxter's second volume of their Long Earth series
Plus reading for a MOOC I am doing on 'The Future of Storytelling' through iversity in Germany.
All in all a busy few months but I am enjoying it thoroughly.
I got it from this book which I found fascinating: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Holy-Sh-Brief-History-Swearing/dp/019049168X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503407194&sr=8-1&keywords=Melissa+Mohr
She's a Literature academic who specialises in Roman and Mediaval literature. Also I didn't actually say all "servants and slaves". She's studied what makes different societies swear in different ways and swearing is very linked with taboos within society. The Roman taboos are similar but subtly different than our own and that's where the background with dominance and submission comes from.
EDIT: This video has her speaking on this very subject within the context of Roman society:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1y8cte-LGA
>he didn't demolish any claims, in that instance he points out that Joan Peter's interpretation of a report in the British Archives could be exaggerated
He completely fucking demolished her hoax of a book.
>he is his own undoing
So the ineffable Dershowitz had nothing to do with it, in your opinion? Finkelstein also has shown the extent to which Dershowitz himself is a fraud. Which is partly why Desrshowitz invested so much of his own declining political capital in his persecution of Finkelstein.
It isn't the cheapest or most easily obtainable of books, but it is on Amazon right now, and here's my favourite interview with him, definitely worth a watch. He is the reason why I love it when people use a "Somalia" argument against me in libertarian discussions.. I just go "Nuh-uh, Liechtenstein."
I was thinking about writing a review of his book and push for the Mises institute to add it to their suggested readings, what do you think?
You're absolutely right in that competition undoubtedly drives innovation. That is one factor that affects the pace of progress. However, we shouldn't discount the creative potential of benevolent monarchs simply because the idea of totalitarianism doesn't sit well with modern democratic westerners.
History has been filled with terrible dictators, of course, but there are also a number of notable "philosopher kings" (as described by Plato), who achieved great feats as a result of having absolute control over vast resources and populations. Sejong the Great, Hadrian Augustus, and Süleyman the Magnificent all come to mind.
EDIT: What I mean to say is that in the right hands, a vast and powerful empire can push the boundaries of science, art, architecture, human rights, etc much further than any individual can through their personal achievements. Unfortunately history is mostly defined by conquerors. Napoleon and Hitler were most certainly NOT philosopher kings, but perhaps one would have succeeded them.... Or perhaps not and we would all be living under an oppressive authoritarian rule. There's no way to tell.
> Then again, one of the most important things in advancing science in Europe was really good Venetian glass...
Ah yes! I too, have read "How We Got to Now".
​
https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-John-Keegan/dp/0143035738
Read this then get back to me.
I don't take the Holocaust lightly. Violence is a plague, and thousands of men did not die in vain to protect the Western world.
EDIT: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/the-ghetto-the-nazis-and-one-small-boy/
The standard edition of Kant's works is the German Academy of Sciences edition of Kants gesammelte Schriften, published by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin. The second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft is in volume 3. You can order a copy of your very own from the publisher here.
The standard English translation of the Critique is the one by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, published by Cambridge University Press. The German page numbers cited by wokeupabug appear in the margins in addition to the actual page numbers.
To quote Thomas Haskell, "objectivity is not neutrality." I think one can be an objective, professional historian but still engage with one's research subjects as moral beings. I certainly don't check that sentiment at the door. Whether one has moral feelings about a subject is not what is going to account for whether one is biased about it or not. I believe that one can objectively come to strong ethical or moral conclusions about a given subject.
That being said, one wants to avoid being obviously anachronistic, or incredibly stupid about doing such a thing. One wants to avoid flip judgments that rely entirely on the benefit of hindsight. One wants to avoid being overly presentist in one's approach to the past. And so on.
My general approach is to try and phrase the hard moral issues as broad questions. For example, when talking about the morality of the bombing of Hiroshima, I like to pose my thoughts as a question rather than an answer: under what conditions do we find it morally acceptable, if any, to deliberately set large civilian populations on fire? To me this dodges that standard moral approaches, and instead frames it as a general problem (personal and societal) to be solved, rather than trying to pass specific judgment on the people at the time.
That being said, that's not the primary goal of writing history. But it's hard not to meditate about such things if one is working in areas where people are (as they often are) doing quite unpleasant things to one another.
Required reading for anyone doing any kind of serious study in history is Peter Novick's _That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession_. Worth checking out if you are interested in how historians have approach this and many other questions over the last few centuries, at least in the USA. Short version: it's complicated and contested.
"A History of the Arab Peoples" by Albert Hourani is also very accessible and informative. Your analysis is excellent by the way
Thanks for pointing out the doc, I'll have to check it out.
I came across some of this (again) just yesterday in the book: Holy Shit - A Brief History of Swearing. It speaks to the idea that all other gods were replaced or cleared out of the Hebrew narrative including the consort.
Also that Asherah was at times symbolized by a goat nibbling on a bush/tree i.e. ram in the thicket. Made me wonder if Abraham's 'sacrifice' post angelic intervention was a sexual rite instead....
http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Sh-Brief-History-Swearing/dp/019049168X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463518371&sr=8-1&keywords=a+history+of+swearing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_in_a_Thicket#/media/File:Raminathicket2.jpg
John Keegan's The First World War and The Second World War may well fit the bill for you. Both books do have a slightly British/Allied slant to them Keegan was a senior lecturer at RMA Sandhurst for many years and his relationship with the British Army does come accross strongly. Having said that, they are both excellent single volume introductions to the conflicts.
There is an excellent book titled Forces of Production by David Noble which begins with the story of the Luddites and draws comparisons between their plight and what skilled machinists underwent in the government subsidized development of CNC technology.
http://www.amazon.com/Forces-Production-History-Industrial-Automation/dp/0195040465
Melissa Mohr - Holy Sh#t, A Brief History of Swearing
Eric Berkowitz - Sex and Punishment, Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire
I'm assuming you're looking for things geared toward a layman audience, and not textbooks. Here's a few of my personal favorites:
Sagan
Cosmos: You probably know what this is. If not, it is at once a history of science, an overview of the major paradigms of scientific investigation (with some considerable detail), and a discussion of the role of science in the development of human society and the role of humanity in the larger cosmos.
Pale Blue Dot: Similar themes, but with a more specifically astronomical focus.
Dawkins
The Greatest Show on Earth: Dawkins steers (mostly) clear of religious talk here, and sticks to what he really does best: lays out the ideas behind evolution in a manner that is easily digestible, but also highly detailed with a plethora of real-world evidence, and convincing to anyone with even a modicum of willingness to listen.
Hofstadter
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: It seems like I find myself recommending this book at least once a month, but it really does deserve it. It not only lays out an excruciatingly complex argument (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem) in as accessible a way as can be imagined, and explores its consequences in mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience, but is also probably the most entertainingly and clearly written work of non-fiction I've ever encountered.
Feynman
The Feynman Lectures on Physics: It's everything. Probably the most detailed discussion of physics concepts that you'll find on this list.
Burke
Connections: Not exactly what you were asking for, but I love it, so you might too. James Burke traces the history of a dozen or so modern inventions, from ancient times all the way up to the present. Focuses on the unpredictability of technological advancement, and how new developments in one area often unlock advancements in a seemingly separate discipline. There is also a documentary series that goes along with it, which I'd probably recommend over the book. James Burke is a tremendously charismatic narrator and it's one of the best few documentary series I've ever watched. It's available semi-officially on Youtube.
some things are best to be clued into and let one discover for oneself. i've read a bunch of books & authors (still am reading) from tool's recommended reading material, like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and Bob Frissell You Are a Spiritual Being Having a Human Experience. I even admit to owning a Drunvalo Melchizedek book on the Flower of Life which reads like a New Age Bullshit Hippy Dippy Textbook on advanced circle drawing with a compass. I like the idea on the Flower of Life but Melchizedek is waayy out there. Maynard talked about that briefly in his book. I finally got around to John Crowley's Aegypt recently, which is actually a series of 4 novels, very good and I highly recommend it. Crowley is such a great writer and there's times you can clearly see influence in mjk's lyrics. There's a book called The Secret History of the World that covers these subjects through human history, if you are curious it's a great resource.
> Netanyahu is the personification of Chutzpah.
And beyond...
saved, thank you. That was probably the most keen observation of how ideas survive I've ever read.
Construct something that seems so obvious at face value that it puts the responsibility on anyone who disagrees with it to build an opposing case. Philosophy starts with finding areas of common agreement to build a case, and then applying a contextual arche to it. So if someone disagrees, they probably use a majority of the pre agreed upon points to build an alternative arche, or interpretation. In the end, the Philosophers like to test their ideas from various situations/vantage points, or even point of views abstractly.
I'm very keen myself on the history of ideas, and popularity and convincing seem to be the mix, which by the way I seriously have to recommend Connections, it was required reading for my univeristy, and it is what got me interested into Philosophy, some early statement in the book got me turned onto Aristotle, and I was like, that's it. Who is this guy Aristotle?
I'd recommend The Second World War and World War Two Day by Day.
My first WW2 book was Rise and Fall of the Third Reich but it just covers Germany. Good book though add it to your list.
There is this really good book on this topic that I enjoyed more than any other document related to this subject by the name of The Guns of August.
Very nice book.
As always, American Heritage is a good reference and starting point. I also recommend their Civil War book if you're interested in that.
Stephen Ambrose has several good books including Band of Brothers.
I like John Keegan, so I'll recommend his book.
That's all I've got to start with, maybe someone else can pick up where I left of, there are a lot of books on WWII out there. Might be easier to pick a specific battle or theatre you're interested in and find a good book about it.
>Are the 2 not linked? Genuine question. I would have assumed there was a fair amount of correlation.
Related but distinct. The executive summary of this report helps to clarify.
>You got any links on this? I could do with some in my arsenal.
There are quite a lot of studies out there, it's a fairly consistent finding. There are some references here and some more here, and one of the more famous analyses is contained in books by David Noble such as Forces Of Production.
It is a little known fact that Isaac Asimov wrote more science books than novels. I have read one or two of them and can tell you that the writing is clear and straightforward. He is credited with authoring around 500 books.
Here are a few examples:
Understanding Physics
Asimov's Chronoloy of the World
Atom: Journey Across the Sub-Atomic Cosmos(I Read this in the 90's and due to the speed of advances in this field it's a bit dated but it gave me a solid foundation and taught me the difference between a letpon and a baryon)
It seems I may have invented the 'BBC Radio' portion in my mind... it's actually an audiobook. Covers a lot of the same territory as the series, but is still incredible. Found it here Connections Audiobook on cassette! There are mp3s out there.
[my favorite history book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062700367?pc_redir=1397832010&robot_redir=1)
This book https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/019049168X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479857176&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=holy+shit&dpPl=1&dpID=51hiIAfWPjL&ref=plSrch. Its full of stuff.
I read a lot. I was in elementary school in the 1970s and it was all the rage back then to train kids in gifted programs in speed-reading, which my school did. I was the fastest reader, in fact I got a talking-to for speeding up the machine because it was going too slowly for me. :| I still read very quickly.
Most of the books I read have to do with religion and spirituality, like The Weapon, Resistance, The Four Last Things. Right now I'm deep into St. Faustina's diary. It's extraordinary.
In fiction I love classic literature, novels and short stories. Jane Austen, J.D. Salinger, Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have a particular taste for 19th century French writers: Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo. They motivate me to improve my French.
In non-fiction, I read about dog training and health, business, human nutrition and health, history and politics. Anyone struggling with weight loss might want to check out Dr. Jason Fung's The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended - good info there.
Currently on my to-buy list:
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History
The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
I prefer paper books, they are dependable and unchanging. Ebooks may or may not be there later and you never know how they've been changed, or by whom.
I don't think any of that has to do with being an INTP necessarily, except maybe having a range of interests.
>In the final sitting weeks of the winter session, Tony Abbott held an unusual meeting of his full ministry during which he was asked by a junior minister how the government was intending to deal with the widespread view that it had broken election promises. The prime minister’s response was forceful and absolute. The government had not broken a single promise, he insisted. There was nothing to deal with, no case to answer.
This is pretty much exactly what historian Barbara Tuchman would describe as wooden-headedness, characterised by a total inability to consider new or outside information due to a pathological adherence to a pre-conceived, self-deluded point of view.
Wooden-headedness rarely works out well for the wooden-head.
I would add to Ron Paul's praiseworthy opinion that NATO's encroachment upon Russia has provoked Putin to act upon Crimea. Obama's sanctions could very well escalate the conflict.
Similarly, Gore Vidal said in his short book, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated." that the U.S.A. military based in Saudi Arabian holy territory had provoked Osama Bin Laden. http://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-War-Peace-How-Hated/dp/156025405X
"I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be able to think of Israel in any factual sense."
It is a fact that most of the material about Israel and Palestine is what we can call "advocacy" by partisans of both sides. I would ignore most of the Internet sites, blogs and posting and go for the original source materials prepared by those with less attachment to either side and based on their conversations and observations. To start, I would go to:
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=article&id=FRUS.FRUS1947v05&did=FRUS.FRUS1947v05.i0016&q1=Jews
You might also want to go to the New York Times Website's archives and read articles on Israel/Palestine going back well before 1948.
A good (and classic) book on Jerusalem and 1948, respected by Jews and Arabs alike, is "O'Jerusalem" by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre. Here is a link to Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/O-Jerusalem-Larry-Collins/dp/0671662414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394386663&sr=8-1&keywords=O%27Jerusalem
The Source by James A. Michener
O Jerusalem! by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
The Mossad: Israel's Secret Intelligence Service: Inside Stories by Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz (I haven't read most of his other works, but you may find what you are looking for amidst his other works of fiction)
Rats, Lice and History - Hans Zinsser
The Discovers - Daniel Boorstein
Connections - James Burke
The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould
Control of Nature - John McPhee
These are a little obvious, but if you haven't read them, you're definitely missing out:
Connections by James Burke
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Not really original, but great fun, great stories and exactly what you seem to be looking for.
In no particular order:
http://www.amazon.com/Beirut-Jerusalem-Thomas-L-Friedman/dp/1250015499
http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making-ebook/dp/B00BH0VSPI/ref=zg_bs_4995_5
http://www.amazon.com/My-Promised-Land-Triumph-Tragedy-ebook/dp/B009QJMXI8/ref=zg_bs_4995_4
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=zg_bs_4995_10
http://www.amazon.com/Arabic-Thought-Liberal-Age-1798-1939/dp/0521274230/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3
http://www.amazon.com/History-Arab-Peoples-Albert-Hourani/dp/0446393924/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Gender-Islam-Historical-Modern/dp/0300055838/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9
http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Modern-Studies-Eastern-History/dp/0195134605/ref=cm_lmf_tit_10
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805068848/ref=cm_lmf_tit_17
As a non-Muslim, non-Jew, non-Arab, non-Semite, American, and having read these (yay strict immigrant parents!) and some other histories, as well as having had the attacks of 9/11 give me a neurosis about following the news in the Middle East/Central/South Asia as regards potential US involvement and issues:
A lot feels familiar to me, some of it even seems like stuff I know a good deal about, and a few things about "The Middle East" which is a massively rich and complex sociopolitical place and slice of humanity are things I'd consider myself very well read on.
And I don't know shit.
I can tell you as a native born American and US voter what I think my country's policies (in a limited, broad strokes sense) should be - - - but beyond that, there's very little I've ever seen as conclusive and firm coming from anyone who by dint of identity didn't have 'skin in the game' .
It is indeed a complex situation, but these would be a good start:
Earlier history:
For more contextual books, I would recommend:
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984) by Barbara W. Tuchman is absolutely fantastic... here are some [reviews]
(http://www.amazon.com/The-March-Folly-From-Vietnam/dp/0345308239)
Im not sure about some of those books on the OP list, i do history at Uni, and i love it with a passion, but i could never slog through Sun Tze, let alone the Communist Manifesto. You want to find books that really bring history to life. Such as March of Folly, or Frank Kitson's book: Prince Rupert, Portrait of a Soldier.
It hasn't
There's a good (very thick, two volume) book out there called "The Invention of the White Race" that goes into detail about these things. But the short answers to your questions would be:
How We Got to Now
https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/1594633932
I've been saving Dan's podcast for a while. Great time to start.
I would also highly suggest Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" for a taste of the times immediately before and after the breakout of fighting. I would also recommend the same author's "The Proud Tower" which digs into the culture leading up to The Great War.
Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples Hourani (British-Lebanese) is a Historian of the Middle East and Arabia.
This varies, but in general, I think historians deal with bias by accepting it and understanding what a point of view brings to or detracts from a historian's work. Every historian brings a bias to the archive and the keyboard. Heck, even the selection of a research topic is indicative of some sort of bias -- why would someone devote 5-10 years of their life to a project in which they had no interest?
You will likely never find any academic work that doesn't give at least some short shrift to the side(s) with which they disagree. I don't know if it's a Quixotic quest to find one that's perfectly even, but I do think it's pointless. Embrace diverse opinions and read many works on the same subject. This will help you not only understand something closer to an agreed-upon-truth, but it will also help you develop critical thinking skills.
If you'd like to read a book that does a much better job of explaining this than I do, Find a copy of Peter Novick's That Noble Dream. It's a little old and there's been quite a bit of ink spilled praising and reviling the book, but I think Novick does a good job of probing the question.
I seem to recall that Asimov's Chronology of the World was in a format like this, although it reached further back than 500 B.C.
https://www.amazon.com/Asimovs-Chronology-World-History-Modern/dp/0062700367/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537113616&sr=1-1&refinements=p_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AIsaac+Asimov
There's a good explanation in chapter 5 of How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
My knowledge of Middle Eastern history is severely deficient and my understanding of the nature of Islamophobia is null since I don't know shit about Islam. Would anyone happen to know of any good articles on Islamophobia or care comment on it? As for Middle Eastern history I've been thinking of picking up the second edition of Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples--I've read some pretty great things about it. All I know is that the region's been plundered by Western powers since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and I imagine that this is generally why the area is so violent both internally and with the West.
I have been to Swaziland, that country is poor and the people are suffering. Their king is a cunt.
Unlike Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein who actually wrote a book on how to enrich his citizens. A guy who is so loved that when some progressives had a referendum to limit his power, 80% of the people rejected the motion:
https://www.amazon.com/State-Third-Millennium-Prince-Hans-Adam/dp/3905881047
He is an anarchist, however he prefers monarchy to modern democracy. A good example of a monarch he would be happy with is, his friend, Prince Hans-Adam II. I would suggest looking into both. Hans-Adam II Write an interesting book called The State in the Third Millennium.
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Chutzpah-Misuse-Anti-Semitism-History/dp/0520249895/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483129182&sr=8-2&keywords=the+holocaust+industry
Oh boy, haha. Way to open Pandora's box here.
My own work is primarily on British riots, but I have a broader interest in mass movements in general. I'll recommend the book I mentioned in my comment - Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and Bill Ayers' Fugitive Days to start. Ayers is somewhat controversial because Ayers, but that book is incredibly thought-provoking and valuable.
Less controversial but no less thought-provoking (and currently relevant considering our depressing state of climate-change denial) is Keith Thomas' Man and the Natural World - it's a book about our changing perceptions of the world around us.
Finally, before I give you an 80-page list, I'm going to recommend this one. Peter Novick's That Noble Dream - I don't expect anyone but nerds like me to read this, but if more people understood the study of history itself as a constantly changing profession and philosophy (as well as science) I think the general population would see the value in it more. History isn't a static thing, and the way we approach it has changed dramatically in 150 years.
Oh...no.
> Can we get Nawaz, Harris and Murray to have a conversation about this?
Throw in also Nicholas Wade, the author of A Troublesome Inheritance, the book I'm reading right now, which provides nuanced insights into how different human populations evolved differently and how those differences are reflected in the genome, while also subject to continued evolution and fluidity.
I read two books to help me develop how to best teach on the subject:
Holy Sh•t: A Brief History of Swearing
https://www.amazon.com/dp/019049168X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zfzSzbHWB3QX4
Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0595391478/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_SgzSzbPKPZVSB
Scriptures on considering the words we use are plentiful, and some have already been posted, but these two books helped solidify my knowledge of how and why cultures develop swear words. Both were incredibly beneficial to my understanding of why Christians are best served guarding their language, both publicly and privately (especially the first title listed).
Is it a sin? I can’t say conclusively. However, the Bible clearly teaches that the words we choose are important.
—
For anyone interested in seeing Asimov in a nonfiction light, I highly recommend Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times which is a spectacular history of the world. Totally readable, it gave me a much better understanding of the scope of human history than perhaps any book I read in my teens. Not often discussed in book groups, but an exceptional work of history and literature, IMO.
O Jerusalem
by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
https://www.amazon.ca/Jerusalem-Larry-Collins/dp/0671662414/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=208425627839&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9000439&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=10197744848757891610&hvtargid=kwd-296293639094&keywords=o+jerusalem&qid=1554217974&s=gateway&sr=8-1
​
Daaamn good book. It's not exactly a good starting point for learning about Arabic history though... Maybe A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani... I haven't found many single books that explain early Arabic/Islamic history in detail very well, but often have to read several books about parallel subjects. I am at the moment reading The House of Wisdom by Jim al-Khalili which is fascinating so far. Could be better in objectively presenting some material, but still a good read and is so far accurate from what I've read elsewhere.
Thanks! I really appreciate your reply. I'm just a couple chapters away from finishing Secret History of the World and I most definitely will dive into Illuminatus Trilogy as soon as I'm done!
From the little I just read on Discordianism, I'm pretty fascinated. You may have just converted me :) Seems like a religion based on paradox, which really interests me. I may be understanding it completely wrong, but that gives me an excuse to check out Principia Discordia!
have you read this book?:
https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1525982862&sr=8-3&keywords=the+lessons+of+history
I did a while back and it frames many of the struggles of humanity over its history as a function of various societies' rich and 'others' exerting more or less control over economic power - wondering what a history major's take on it is (if that's what you meant above)
edit: it was also a bit bizarre reading the book as much of it seems to apply very directly to many things happening in the US and the world right now, despite having been published originally in 1968 (which I did not initially know when reading it)
edit edit: damn @ this quote:
“Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign.”
You can also find the occasional work of non-science-fiction that combines a broad interest in all the manifold aspects of day-to-day-life with a deep detail about how the structure of our life is affected by all the inventions we take for granted, and as you and I would expect, it is awesome.
I'm actually reading a book on this right now! Well, at least as it pertains to English.
Check out "Holy Shit" by Melissa Mohr
The short answer is that it's complicated.
The long answer is that it has to do with evolving concepts of power, religion, and the taboo over thousands of years, dating back to the earliest roots of English language. The earliest nugget of the concept dates back to certain words that denoted whether you were in the more dominant or more submissive group in society, and evolved as the major western religion of Christianity developed, and then got even more complicated once concepts like privacy and propriety came along. Throw in the evolution of our modern concept of class, and you arrive at which words are bad words by today's standards.
The really long answer is... read this 336 page book. I thought it would be good when I picked it up, but it's absolutely fascinating!
I can only relate to you what I've experienced and realized and only hope that it can offer something to your journey. What I tell you is very subjective.
When I said a universalist approach towards religion and spirituality, I mean that doctrine and creed do not hold me back from the quest for knowledge (Truth is after all an endless pursuit of higher knowledge and realization). If I read a book on philosophy or spirituality, credibility, authority, and citation are not as important as the message the author is trying to convey. After all, the former three are principles of the material sciences which is only a limited lens into which we can peer into spiritual reality. Science cannot measure or describe a soul or what happens to you after you die (maybe how your body decays but that assumes that you are only your body and not a soul or a spirit).
Even though I lament on how overly scientific modern religion is, I also go on to say that I treat religion and beliefs like education. I constantly seek knowledge or experiences that will challenge and expand my beliefs and faith in a way similar to studying and passing class examinations in order to move to the next stage of learning. Nothing is lost in what I learned, it is only expanded upon (we can learn from our mistakes or wrong beliefs). I rely on logic and reasoning (just like the scientific method) to guide myself through all things spiritual and religious just like all things scientific and all things of immediate concern (like budgeting, relationships, pros and cons of something...). I'm being consistent is what I'm saying.
I highly recommend The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth as a good read to really change your perspective on the world and life. It opened my eyes to a whole other way of seeing reality.
If you really want something intellectually challenging yet spiritually captivating, the Urantia Book has it all and more.
you should read this
It's obviously still going on today. Identity politics plus political correctness is it in a nutshell. It's just a reversal. Pretty interesting.
The problem is Hamas' stated goal of complete destruction of Israel (Source from Hamas Charter). How can you come to a peaceful solution when you have an organization that will NOT REST until you are eradicated? This is not a moderate view point, so you will not reach a moderate conclusion to the fighting.
Do you really think that, if Hamas and the Palestinians, were to chose a compromise or a ceasefire, which is offered over and over, that there wouldn't be peace? Israel is not a terrorist organization trying to cause chaos. Even in the start of their independance, they offered citizenship to any Arab who wished to stay in their homes.
Israel has expended great effort over the years to PREVENT civilian casualties. Far more than any other army in history. (Source from UN Security Council) Hamas, unfortunately, has the ear of the Palestinians because they are their "Arab brothers" and convinces them to stay in their houses. The IDF and Hamas end up getting civilians killed in the crossfire, since the people don't evacuate (even after being given AMPLE warning). Israel doesn't profit from Arab deaths; however, Hamas does. They are able to use the civilians as a fucking political tool to shame Israel and the IDF.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the enemies here. Why they do not hit the front page with their wanton acts of violence I do not know. Why have the "Arab brothers" not taken the Palestinians in at some point over the past 40 years? Oh yeh, because they hate them more than Israel ever could. King Farrouk (Egypt) and King Abdullah (Syria) wanted to annex the whole area into Jordan in the early days, but the Israeli's armed themselves in secret before the British left and put up a fight! (Collins, Larry and Lapierre, Dominique (1972): O Jerusalem!)
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!
About The Author, for those using find
Barbara W. Tuchman wrote three seminal books about WWI, The Guns of August, The Zimmeman Telegram and The Proud Tower.
I've gone into biology textbooks, philosophy writings, How To Win Friends And Influence People, who is your audience, what do they read, what could they read, what do you have that they would be excited to read?
Yeah, finding that exciting stuff is tough. Reddit is decent, personally for all of the modern english folk language styles. I find lofty books like Carl Sagan's stuff or things like https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X have good language inspiration by hitting those "God" neurons that maybe are near those groove neurons with well learned/polished professional/scholar language.
Notebooks are good, there are crazy writings in almost every house.
Some factions may see sharing inspiration sources as dirtying your music :P not what I make, but that can be cool. Just go out in the world and find interesting writings, collect folk knowledge, tunes, words.
No, any historian would not agree. I don't know where you get your info from, but "pulling shit out of my ass" does not equal "most historians agree".
Your problem is that I DID the research. I'm a research biologist holding a PhD, who was trained in critical thinking and research. I also have an avid interest in history, so guess what, I read a lot. A bit more than you do, apparently, judging by your comments... (I'm still amazed by the North Korea stuff... Please elaborate.) Here are a couple of the best books on WWI. Perhaps they would help you.
http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914-ebook/dp/B008B1BL4E/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/War-that-Ended-Peace-abandoned-ebook/dp/B00CNQ9PFK/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-4
http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-1914-Europe-Goes-War-ebook/dp/B00C4BA4C2/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Classic-Bestselling-Outbreak-ebook/dp/B002TXZS8A/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-6
http://www.amazon.com/Paris-1919-Months-Changed-World-ebook/dp/B000XUBC7C/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-11
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/143980.The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_British_Empire
Your naive, and frankly, idiotic image of the US stepping in... well that is just hilarious. All this after more than 150 years of imperialism. Ask people in Latin America or the Middle East about how benevolent your country was. And YOU want me to do research. Amazing.
You don't see Liechtenstein to often!
Hans-Adam II is a interesting fellow, I highly recommend his book The State in the Third Millennium if you haven't read it.
A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani is a standard. It stretches back before the time of Muhammad to some of the cultural roots of what would later become Islamic law and tradition (for example, the Qur'an and the Hadith's roots in ancient oral tradition).
A lot of these suggestions (including the one above) seem really academic. For a lighter, more contemporary read, try No god but God by Reza Aslan. It's well written, easily digestible, and covers all the important points (including the pre-Islamic history of the region, which is essential especially if you're interested in Quranic law and early politics). Best of luck!
http://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-War-Peace-How-Hated/dp/156025405X
by Gore Vidal.
I've heard the same from professors. Bennett's translations are great for the more casual or less advanced reader, not so great for upper level academic work. I had a similar experience, but with a different philosopher who I cannot remember at the late moment. OP should probably check Bennett's Kant translations out.
Also, I don't know of any free comprehensive guides to the Critique, but if you go to the library you should be able to find a copy of the cambridge edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Paul Goyer has a relatively concise introduction and it contains a pretty nice overview of the Critique and Kant's project. It helped me gain my bearings when I read the Critique. It might help.
Well, my favorite book, even though it is somewhat limited in geographical and time focus, would be O Jerusalem. It was written by two journalists. It does a pretty good job of avoiding bias. It focuses mainly on Jerusalem and 1947-8, but with background and broader context where necessary. That is a good starting point.
http://www.amazon.com/O-Jerusalem-Larry-Collins/dp/0671662414/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406829796&sr=1-1&keywords=o+jerusalem
I find celebrities or influential people to make for horrible sources since people tend to accept what they say based on name recognition and stature as opposed to the actual facts and arguments they present.
If you haven't already. Pick up the book, Lessons of History.
https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X
Asimov's Chronology of the World is one possibility. It's organized in the way you describe, it's about as comprehensive as a one-volume work could be.
Plenty of Christian apologists were convinced by Christianity. What do you think would cause a staunch atheist to convert?
>Why do we distinguish between apologetics and philosophy?
Often we don't, and oftentimes a philosopher is an apologist and vice versa.
> Why are so few philosophers theists?
This wasn't the case for most of human history, and I don't think it's fair to draw the conclusion out of the current state of secularization in academia.
>If you think you've got something good then by all means share it, but I don't expect to be surprised.
Have you read the following?
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - Lewis was an atheist for most of his life, but later became the most well-known Christian apologist. You might also want to read his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
The Reason for God by Tim Keller.
The Language of God by Francis Collins -
This one is more about how science and religion relate, and it's written by one of the leading scientists of the modern day.
Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas This is the original apologetic. If you're alright with some more-serious reading, this would be a great book to have read, both from an intellectual and historical perspective.
Descartes' Meditations While I'm not really convinced by his arguments, Descartes is known as the "Father of Modern Philosophy" for popularizing rationalism, or the use of reason/logic as the chief source or test of knowledge.
Pascal's Pensees
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant This is known as "one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy" Quite the opposite of Descartes, Kant actually argues against the notion that we can use reason alone to understand the universe.
Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard - This is definitely not apologetics. However, he was an incredibly Christian philosopher, and is known as the Father of Existentialism (interesting that the founder of existentialism was a devout Christian, though now it is often associated with atheists such as Sarte and Nietzsche).
Snapshots:
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This is not an atheist recommendation by any stretch of the imagination, but you should both get and read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
This doctrine is neither atheist nor orthodox judaism. It's a perfect mediary for you two to funnel beliefs through.
Another amazing one is Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly."
It asks how can the "best and brightest" (my phrase) make highly flawed decisions at the top level.
Not just in Vietnam, but across history.
http://www.amazon.com/The-March-Folly-From-Vietnam/dp/0345308239
John Dee comes up a lot in this: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
I don't know about 'magic', but the practice of alchemy is that of self-improvement and freedom from controlling dogma and the current limits of humanity. There's no doubting that newton was brilliant, as was John Dee. I would say a safer bet is to study math over magic.
> https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
Have you read that? How is it.
> I would say a safer bet is to study math over magic.
You're probably right, but the image of Newton doing rituals to get in touch with multi-dimensional beings to gain knowledge is pretty seductive to me. A sicnece man, or THE Science Man, practicing magic is an alluring image.
my fav
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
>or at least, the ones that are dominant now.
yes, of course. that's why I said " one type of religion or another". protestantism is only 500 years old, so certainly another may become dominant - see mormonism, unitarianism, etc
>Is it any surprise then that people would have become more religious?
nope, religion and strength of government tend to be inversely related. for thousands of years, rulers have used it as an aid to their power. When they are strong enough on their own, they exert supremacy, but until then, there is usually a partnership
>Then again, I mentioned that kind of philosophical illiteracy among modern Westerners... that's a huge issue for both religion and just ethics in general.
I think religion is a kind of philosophical shorthand for most humans on earth, and thats why its always been dominant. Most people are busy scrapping out a living and need a shorthand
I have a good book recommendation (dont worry, its only 100 pages) that talks about some of these macro trends from IMO the most eminent historian of the 20th century, Will Durant. Its fantastic
https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X
This all seems pretty similar to the fall of rome in a way, and Durant has a great little wrap up here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_vAcaSqWVk
let me know what you think
You should check out this book which specifically goes into not so much the Vietnam war, but the various reasons different administrations didn't end a war that from the very beginning was considered by the policy makers to be unwinnable.
https://www.amazon.com/March-Folly-Troy-Vietnam/dp/0345308239
Now, of course there are significant differences, but overall the same effect is in play: Ending a losing war require significant political will and right circumstances for superpowers. Something that I fear will never be the case in Afghanistan. We'll probably join the rest of superpowers in digging our own grave in this Graveyard of Empires.
It bankrupted the USSR, and it might bankrupt us in the end.
Don't mistake mass media for scholarship. There are very good reasons to learn about the history of race in America. It isn't because you're more or less racist than anybody else, it's largely due to structural economic history. There were white slaves in America at one time, but elites started getting scared they would join with their fellow African and indigenous slaves in an uprising, so they began to drive wedges between the groups.
Average U.S. family net worth
White Family- $144,200
Black Family- $11,200
Hispanic Family- $14,000
These numbers are what it's about. This is the end. Racism is the means.
I'm a 4th generation Californian. I come from a small town that advertised in national magazines how unwelcoming it was to non-whites. A black family came to town and built a house. People well-known to my family burned their house to the ground. California paid people for Indian scalps from the beginning of its statehood. The U.S. Army facilitated massacres of indigenous villages. Army Captain John Fremont, his guide Kit Carson, and 74 other white men massacred hundreds of Wintu tribal men, women, & children some miles south of where I was born. Kit Carson called it "a perfect butchery." An east San Francisco Bay city is named after Fremont. The capitol city of Nevada is named after Carson.
U.S. Army Lieutenant Nathaniel Lyon marched his company from a U.S. Army arsenal down from where I currently live and conducted the Bloody Island Massacre at Clear Lake. A firsthand account taken by a Pomo man (with errors):
>Many women and children were killed on around this island. one old lady a (indian) told about what she saw while hiding under abank, in under aover hanging tuleys [bulrushes]. she said she saw two white man coming with their guns up in the air and on their guns hung a little girl. They brought it to the creek and threw it in the water. and alittle while later, two more men came in the same manner. this time they had alittle boy on the end of their guns and also threw it in the water. alittle ways from she, said layed awoman shoot through the shoulder. she held her little baby in her arms. two white men came running torge the women and baby, they stabed the women and the baby and, and threw both of them over the bank in to the water. she said she heard the woman say, O my baby; she said when they [the survivors] gathered the dead, they found all the little ones were killed by being stabed, and many of the women were also killed [by] stabing.... They called it the siland creek.
He followed that massacre with several more. When I lived in San Francisco it was at the corner of Grove & Lyon Streets. Lyon street is still named after that Army officer.
Chinese Americans were rounded up and purged from more than 300 California and Pacific northwest cities. Sometimes by marching, sometimes on train cars, sometimes on ships, sometimes by murder and arson of chinatowns. My Italian-American grandparents were dairy farmers in rural Contra Costa County. Many of their neighbors were Japanese farmers, but they lost their ranches and everything after being rounded up during WWII. My grandparents couldn't say anything if they wanted to because well, they were Italian.
After WWII, millions of white GI's got home loans. Black GI's weren't so lucky. Black neighborhoods were systematically 'redlined', meaning loans couldn't be obtained in those districts, preventing black families from benefiting in one of the greatest periods of American family wealth-building in our history.
These stories go on and on, in heart-breaking repetition. Because whites (generally) don't know or want to believe these stories, change is hard to come by. Political and economic power remain in white hands. Most whites aren't active white supremacists. But if you're white and give your loyalty to the system built by white supremacy's perpetrators, well I guess you've chosen your team, and disenfranchisement continues. Generally speaking, that choice isn't coming from a place of scholarship or understanding.
>"Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn." -Martin Luther King, Jr.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/11/03/is-it-possible-to-increase-your-height/#1757e5cc5139
http://time.com/4655634/genetics-height-tall-short/
There is a reason that identical twins reach a very similar height, even if separated and live in different environments, as long as they get a minimum threshold of resources, (so that their height isn't stunted in any way). But it's not like if one gets adopted by the royal palace, and the other one gets adopted by a middle class family, that the rich one with more resources will be anything more than slightly taller. As long as they get their appropriate resources, they are intended to reach their blueprint, their genetic DNA design for their body. There is evidence that better resources can positively impact your height slightly, but not much more.
Intelligence is certainly more complex than height, and harder to measure than height, but it certainly isn't "hard to measure" in a vacuum. It is very, very easy to tell whether the person across from you meets a certain level of intelligence or not, and you don't even need a test to do so. The fact that we do have advanced testing methods only solidifies the point.
Sam Harris recently said, "What we have here is a set of nested taboos. Human intelligence itself is a taboo topic. People don't want to hear that intelligence is a real thing, and that some people have more of it than others. They don't want to hear that IQ tests really measure it. They don't want to hear that differences in IQ matter, because they are highly predictive of differential success in life. And not just for things like education attainment, and wealth, but for things like out of wedlock birth, and mortality. People don't want to hear that a person's intelligence is, in large measure, due to his or her genes, and there seems to be very little we can do environmentally, to increase a person's intelligence, even in childhood. It's not that the environment doesn't matter, but genes appear to be 50-80% of the story. People don't want to hear this. And they certainly don't want to hear that average IQ differs across races and ethnic groups. Now, for better or worse, these are all facts. In fact, there is almost nothing in psychological science, for which there is more evidence than these claims, about IQ, about the validity of testing for it, about it's importance in the real world, about it's heritability, and about it's differential expression in different populations. Again, this is what a dispassionate look at what decades of research suggests."
"The efforts to invalidate the very notions of 'general intelligence', and race have been wholly unconvincing from a psychometric and biological point of view. And are obviously motivated by a political discomfort in talking about these things. And I understand and share that discomfort."
If you would like to see the data that backs this stuff up, I would recommend reading 'The 10,000 Year Explosion', by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, 'A Troublesome Inheritance' by Nicolas Wade, and 'The Bell Curve', by Charles Murray.
https://www.amazon.com/10-000-Year-Explosion-byHarpending/dp/B006J4LGD6
https://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/0143127160/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CAWJC6Z2AZSADXQFYNND
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299
Yes. I read it on The Second World War by John Keegan.
The answer, as everyone else has pointed out, is YES. The best example of this actually comes from the colloquialism 'Whiggish history' meaning history that is written in a teleological mode with an excessively celebratory tone about the current institutions in power.
If you are really interested in this, standard reading in many history masters and PHD programs is a great book by historian Peter Novice called That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession
This is what did it for me! All of history (up to about 100 years ago) in one source.
http://www.amazon.com/Asimovs-Chronology-World-History-Modern/dp/0062700367
I found it in a library sale for 2$ a few years ago and bought it on a whim. I keep it in my kitchen and read it with my breakfast pretty much every day.
Sorry, you can't answer the question if you don't know what any of the words mean. I recommend you read this book
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-White-Race-Oppression-Control/dp/1844677699
To learn what race is (not in the dictionary).
Use a good translation: http://www.amazon.com/Critique-Reason-Cambridge-Edition-Immanuel/dp/0521657296
Try out Allison (as well as Guyer's) commentaries.
Also check out a good Kantian dictionary: http://www.amazon.com/Kant-Dictionary-Blackwell-Philosopher-Dictionaries/dp/0631175350 (since much of his conceptual scheme consists of neologisms).
Lastly, you should check out Strawson's essay' The Bounds of Sense.' http://www.amazon.com/The-Bounds-Sense-Critique-Reason/dp/0415040302. It's sort of a modern 'take' on Kantian themes (not an exegesis of Kant, but a modernization of some of the arguments. It actually sheds some light on Kant's project).
And good luck, try not to be discouraged. I've had two graduate seminars on Kant and they've both been difficult. But, it's not just nonsense. There is some agreement about the structure (and importance) of many of the arguments in the critique and they're worth grappling with, even if you're dealing with reconstructions of the arguments from commentaries.
Dershowitz polarizes, with many deeming him either an eloquent bona fide Zionist or a ruthless fraudulent shyster. (Given the amount of downvotes my comment received for naming just one book among three that goes against the pre-1988 narratives, it's quite foreseeable with which view /r/israel largely agrees.)
You've probably heard of the controversy surrounding The Case for Israel, how it was the target of another book (Beyond Chutzpah) by Dershowitz's arch-enemy Finkelstein — you might be interested in listening to this direct debate between the two.
It wouldn't be the first time a government that was convinced it was right marched its citizens into the fire.
>While he may have brought NSH to a wider audience
This is why my point was about influence more than anything else.
As to your point about objectivity, this is central question that has been challenged by post structuralist writers. (I reject your premise that this is a product of the counterculture.) Zinn is extremely upfront that he is assuming a position in his work. He spends several pages establishing what is perspective is and why.
While most historians since Zinn have settled on a sort of "reasonable analysis" rather than "purposeful commentary," ideas about objectivity in historical writing are notoriously contentious. "Objectivity" should not be thrown around as though there is objective history as opposed to opinion history. See Novick's That Noble Dream
What to read...
There's so much!
"The Ancient Near East" by Amelié Khurt is a great overall history.
Someone already mentioned History begins at Sumer and Ancient Iraq, they're a bit dated but still quite good. For a simple synchronic overview with nice maps look at Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia by Michael Roaf. Also another good history book A History of the Ancient Near East by Marc Van de Mieroop.
Regarding texts, there's a great book that does the history of Mesoptamia through primary sources The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation ed. Mark Chavalas.
That should get you started. Those book are all quite current or still very usable, let me know if you need anything else. As for later periods (i.e. post-Achaemenid) that's not my field... I read A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani which was quite good and as far as I understand a well respected overview of later Mesopotamian history.
As far as I know, the book is still representative of the current state of scholarship concerning the period. It deals exclusively with the period between 1914 and 1922, which is, by this time, relatively declassified in terms of documentation, so I wouldn't expect another book to eclipse it any time soon, unless someone happens to write a better synthesis of the available material.
It looks like the publisher recently released a 20th anniversary edition with an afterword from the author. That wasn't the edition I read, but I would imagine Fromkin's afterword serves as an index of more recent developments in the study of that period.
As for follow-up reading, my plan is to go regional, with a string of books about the development of the nationalisms that got their start in that period. So, on the one hand, I want to start digging backwards into the Ottoman Empire prior to the Young Turk movement (which more or less starts APTEAP), and on the other, I'd like to examine the modern histories of Transjordan, early Jewish nationalism, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Before I get to all of that, though, I've got A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani, which ought to keep me occupied for a while, once I start it.
It's not exactly my thing, but I will make two book suggestions. One book that I found extremely helpful in understanding Zionism's beginnings and the development of Hebraic nationalism (almost wholly apart from the conflict with the Palestinians) was Arieh Bruce Saposnik's Becoming Hebrew.
Another, more classic work in the discipline would be Alber Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples. Of course only less than half the book deals with this issue, but it would be very interesting for you to read.
And lastly, a fun new book about Ottoman Palestine that turns some of the things in the previous two books on its head is Michelle Campos' Ottoman Brothers
It also really reminds me of Steven Johnson's
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
> Stop drinking the liberal for-profit sociology department Kool-Aid.
Not an argument. My understanding of race is rooted in Marxism, in a materialist understanding of race as a social and economic relationship. You, on the other hand, ascribe by the liberal, idealist definition.
>Any definition of racism that argues it is anything more or less than "treating people differently because they look different" is nonsensical dogma designed to perpetuate the very thing it purports to describe.
Is sexism racism? What about discriminating against people with visible disabilities?
Read a fucking book. No investigation, no right to speak.
>You can see this in how people talk about black culture when ancestral "black people" came from wildly different cultures with about as much relation as Maori culture has to Inuit culture.
"Black culture" refers to American black culture, which actually is coherent precisely because African slaves were stripped of their various cultures. The experience of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. have resulted in a formation of a coherent black culture.
Of course, every black person from Cali to NY could tell you this- but clearly you don't actually have any black friends.
>But whatever, reify your imaginary divisions between people some more, I'm sure that'll promote equality...
Lenin:
>Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be “equality” between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real “freedom” as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.
We did not create racial divisions. Whites did. We're not reifying shit by pointing out what actually exists.
What you're describing is the esoteric history of the world. Check out this book (link below) it's worth a read. It basically says the same story you wrote above. It's pretty cool and give an alternative perspective on our concept of religion.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
the 101st has already floated my favorite nonfiction book. So I'm going to go out on a limb and give you something, uh... unofficial. Whether it is true or not is so far beyond what I can answer even the internet could not exaggerate it enough. BUT, it's fascinating.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620
asimov's chronology of the world: the history of the big bang to modern times?
i can't claim to have read it, but my friends who have say it's pretty good.
link
Looks like the good old fag is right again
Try this
I say this as a fan of Evola and someone who embraces the idea that we are in the Kali Yuga: people have been complaining about the decline of their civilization forever, stop being so melodramatic about it. I get it, there is clown world shit happening that makes all of us see red, but that is no excuse to just give up. Stop waiting for some mythic event like the return of Christ, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or whatever deus ex machina story people have been talking about since the beginning of time. Start your own damn thing.
​
Many modern oligarchs did not expect to be as successful as they ended up.
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I also see a lot of complaining in here about the overwhelming amount of simps in the world. Simps aren't a problem, simps are an opportunity. Modern capitalism basically turned most of those bluepillers into serfs. Why shouldn't they be your serfs? Why should Jeff Bezos get serfs and not you?
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There are an incredible amount of people (99%?) who have completely given up thinking, which translates into an incredible amount of opportunity. Men have survived and even thrived despite incredible suffering throughout history. While we have dire problems to face, our ancestors went through shit like seeing 30-60% of their continent die.
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Fuck clown world. Build your own fiefdom. Most people are serfs and you don't need that many people to make a significant change in your own small corner of the world. Find a few people who are completely intolerant of clown world and start digging.
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From The Lessons of History:
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"So we cannot be sure that the moral laxity of our times is a herald of decay rather than a painful or delightful transition between a moral code that has lost its agricultural basis and another that our industrial civilization has yet to forge into social order and normality. Meanwhile history assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely. For 250 years after moral weakening began in Greece with the Sophists, Hellenic civilization continued to produce masterpieces of literature and art. Roman morals began to “decay” soon after the conquered Greeks passed into Italy (146 B.C.), but Rome continued to have great statesmen, philosophers, poets, and artists until the death of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 180). Politically Rome was at nadir when Caesar came (60 B.C.); yet it did not quite succumb to the barbarians till A.D. 465. May we take as long to fall as did Imperial Rome!"
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Nassim Taleb: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
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"It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences."
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Jack Donovan - Becoming a Barbarian
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"There’s an old Greek proverb that says, “society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” If you don’t like what’s happening around you, what’s happening to culture, what’s happening to men and women, what people are becoming — get out there and start digging. Plant the seed of something new. Of something better. Plant the seed of something you really want — not just whatever you think you can have. Show others that there’s a different way to live. Spend the rest of your life tending a root that may one day grow into a tree of liberty."
Apologies--The first critique. The Critique of Pure Reason. This one, to be exact.
Barbara Tuchman has a novella-length history of the British domestic political dynamics surrounding the American Revolution in her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
Since you were so nice to ask.
I went off this book
But then I went to the source material (FAS) and 'only' found 64 instances.
So, yay?! You're not as bloodthirsty cunts as Gore Vidal claimed.
I have changed your status from "Belligerent dangerous cunts" to "Belligerent dangerous cunts"
History. I realized maybe a year ago that my knowledge of pretty much anything pre American Revolutionary War was pitiful. I'm currently reading this which is phenomenal but super dry so it's going slow. It's possibly my writer background but I'm really enjoying how much of early Arab/Muslim history is informed by a desire to write stuff down.
"The Guns of August", probably the best book written on the weeks leading up to the start of the war and about the first month of the war
> No successful society follows a libertarian zero government model
Yes there have been and are now, in fact you owe most of your current affluence to the part of your own society that functions like that - the everyday anarchy you've gotten so used to you can't even see it and take it for granted. Even at the formal (governmental) level lots of societies have implemented freedom-centric policies and many still do, you just have to read the constitutions for most western countries: they all start by affirming inalienable rights that the state is not the source of and cannot strip them from. You should read what this actual head of state has to say about it. Meanwhile, I can point to mass graves everywhere freedom is frowned upon.
I don't understand why you equate libertarianism (=do not harm others) with love of corporations (=let's get rich by any means necessary). Could you point me to actual examples of corporate feudal slavery ? How do they compare, say, to the feudal model of tsarist Russia ? This is a genuine question, I value people's autonomy more than ideology.
I actually think ancaps play this game with capitalism. The good things are the result of the market and capitalism, and the bad things are the result of statism and corporatism. But a closer look, like for instance that done by historians like David F. Noble and economists like Mariana Mazzucato shows that, in fact, the history of innovation -- especially technological innovation -- is basically the story of the state. Which lines up nicely with the history, which shows the state was crucial in creating the conditions (via coercion and mass murder) for capitalism to come to dominate society.
Just a little taste of the huge amount of literature about this subject.
"As time went on, the labor needs of the land holders continued to grow, and desperate to cultivate the land, they were loathe to let go of their bond servants and the bondsmen and bondswomen’s children (whom they kept in bondage for a legally defined time as well). In the mean time, a growing American peasantry was proving as difficult to govern as the European peasantry back home, periodically rising up in riot and rebellion, light skinned and dark skinned together. The political leaders of the Virginia colony struck upon an answer to all these problems, an answer which plagues us to this day.
The Virginians legislated a new class of people into existence: the whites. They gave the whites certain rights, and took other rights from blacks. White, as a language of race, appears in Virginia around the 1680s, and seems to first appear in Virginia law in 1691. And thus whiteness, and to a degree as well blackness, was born in the mind of America.
As of the 18th century whites could not be permanently enslaved as they sometimes had been before, and black slaves could never work their way to freedom.
This has resulted in a system where centuries later race is still how class is lived in America."
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/5/6/1382872/-Matters-of-Race-and-Class-How-Whiteness-is-One-of-the-Greatest-Scams-in-Modern-History
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-White-Race-Oppression-Control/dp/1844677699
https://www.amazon.com/Working-Toward-Whiteness-Americas-Immigrants/dp/0465070744
I have actually looked at the constitution of Liechtenstein. The Prince can override any decision of the parliament. Liechtenstein's Constitution makes it in effect an absolute monarchy (Wikipedia notes that media and European institutions criticized it for precisely that). There are 3 important differences. The Constitution allows the people via popular vote to:
Interestingly the third part pretty much guarantees the future of the monarchy as even if people vote to remove the monarchy a municipality can secede and keep the monarchy. Liechtenstein is basically a private company owned by the Princey family which provides the service governance and people voluntary choose to be its customers. If they don't they can secede. And it is not like the neighboring countries are bad places to live. They can choose to be part of Switzerland or Austria if they secede. This is not just my interpretation. The Prince wrote a book called The State in the Third Millenium where he pretty much states that the government should be run as a company and citizens are its customers - https://www.amazon.com/State-Third-Millennium-Prince-Hans-Adam/dp/3905881047
You should read his book:
http://www.amazon.com/State-Third-Millennium-Prince-Hans-Adam/dp/3905881047
Anyway your sentiment is exactly the same as people in the 1700's who thought the American colonies could never be independent, or in the Interwar period where nobody thought the British Empire would fall. And time and time again, people like you get suckerpunched by the newest twist of events and are left flabbergasted at how your expectations could have possibly been shattered.
If your insinuation is that the West is heading towards some kind of Balkanized realm of liberal republics, well I suppose you're the real one living back in the 1700's. ;)
Norman Finkelstein has also written eloquently about this in his books "The Holocaust Industry" and "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History".
http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/185984488X
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Chutzpah-Misuse-Anti-Semitism-History/dp/0520249895
I know this is an old post, but it really saddens me how much people ignore the truth. There was a study done by David Noble that concluded that the vast majority of our advances in technology could not be done in the private sector. Did private industry put a man on the moon? They certainly want to take credit for it now. It would not be possible without the massive collective effort of the WHOLE WORLD.
You don't have to accept anything, faith is belief without evidence. I'll take evidence any day.
Also, if you had the choice between a government you could (theoretically) vote out if it was abusing you or one which could do whatever they wanted with impunity with no recourse for the citizen, which would you choose?
Maybe you never read about the labor struggles of the past; that only the government could tell private industry to not kill people or provide them basic wages and working conditions.
What do they say? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it?
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Chutzpah-Misuse-Anti-Semitism-History/dp/0520249895/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405874948&sr=8-1&keywords=Beyond+Chutzpah
It's a good book if you want factual documentation, and read the reviews.
Instead of making meowing ducks Amazon should get on this bug and fix it. Reported it a year ago. Scroll to 'about author'